Very cool! I also decided to start everything from seed this year. I didn't hear about any seed exchanges in my area, but I had an Amazon gift card, and another gift card to a local nursery and I bought all of me seeds. Yesterday I ordered a very fancy grow light system from Gardener's supply, and am anxiously awaiting its arrival. I only work part-time, so I had the same thought as you, Nancy--it'll give me something to do.

Have you made any progress?

I had far more books in the past than now. I'm down to about 200 of them, and I sometimes wonder why I keep them--dogeared as many of them are. Pages are crumbling and falling out of some. Some pages are missing in some as well. I keep them around because they're comforting. I glance into them at times. Many have my marginal notes from student days. Who would want such overused books with my scribblings in them? So there they are, the chief dust-catchers around here, while I let the dust gather and do 99% of my reading by listening to audiobooks and have been doing that since 1983. I've listed my books on LibraryThing (the books I own) but haven't updated that in a while. Also there are my translations (half a shelf) as well as books by friends and relatives. My translations, though published, are not runaway best-sellers because they're on topics that are fairly specialized (successive approximation in math, problem-solving in schoolchildren, the child's concept of number). Not real page-turners.

Well, I've discovered since using the internet that I'm rather sloth-like in my reading pace compared to other bibliophiles (and I do so love to savor words and sentences). I don't read in big visual blocks, for one thing. If I read that many books, they would blur together, I wouldn't be able to keep my plots straight, and it would most certainly turn into a curse for me. I've never understood the A-Z goal. I'm mostly driven by my moods and what is reasonably available to me, so I can't imagine setting up such an arbitrary parameter for myself. The other day, I noticed on GoodReads someone had rated a book that hasn't even been published yet... now that's quick reading! (it was probably done in error, but given how neurotic some competitive readers are about being 'the first' to read something, I laugh a little at those things).