Looking forward

I have decided that my life’s ambition is to own a vineyard in Tuscany and become entirely self-sufficient. Since it does not appear to be my destiny to win the lottery, I’m going to have to obtain this dream by hard work and determination, blah blah blah.

Considering the mountain of debt that I have to clear before I can consider investing in property, I have decided to make this a 5-year plan, and take it step by step. To that end, I have decided to chronicle my efforts here.

Step 1: see if I can actually make stuff grow. So far in my life I have not had much success with this, so trying to produce vegetables when I have very black thumbs may be a bad idea. For my next trick, I will attempt to grow my own herbs, starting with something easy like basil and parsley. Watch this space for many plant updates!

This is not the first “life’s ambition” that I’ve had. When I was about 6, I wanted to be a cowgirl, and I seem to remember wearing WAY more plaid shirts than can be healthy for a girl of that age. Then, at age 12, I was 100% focussed on becoming a game ranger/conservationist and living in Kenya. Joining the army put me off a bit, though, so I gave up on that. Then I went through various phases of marine biologist, vet, zoologist, archaeologist and mission doctor. Then, when I got to know myself a bit better and realised that I preferred being indoors, it was actress, travel journalist, or book editor.

I am currently combining a couple of those ambitions, much to my surprise, since I do proof-reading and layout for pet magazines. But I have now decided that I need to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse by becoming entirely self-sufficient and generating all my own food in an isolated location far away from the major city centres that will be hit first by the Dread Scourge, and in a house that has already withstood generations of wars and so forth and is therefore secure against marauders intent on eating my brain. The fact that I will also be producing wine to see me through the long nights of vigilance against the evil undead is just a bonus.