The final section, What’s On My Table, is reserved for paid subscribers and is a more personal look at what’s currently shaping my thinking, work, and life.

For the cost of an overpriced iced latte, you get access to the full Procure Picks archive, paid essays, and subscriber-only content.

Subscribe now

I’m writing to you from my first business flight since 2025 and even writing that sentence feels liberating.

I chose to take this trip, and it’s a three-day back and forth to LA for a client. There was zero anxiety yesterday or this morning.

Arriving at Terminal A, I was ready to pick up my Ess-a-bagel, looking forward to walking the Hudson News, and prepped to settle into my Polaris seat. Business travel seems to be like riding a bike.

The last five weeks have been without routine, which I find myself craving. Summer keeps teaching me the same lesson: routines are wonderful, but flexibility is a business skill too. Work is busy. Spirits are up.

Here’s what you may have missed at Procure and Prosper...

What I’m reading

Seven months into the year, I'm confident I've read more than I did all of last year. The biggest difference isn't necessarily the quantity, but what I’m reading.

I spend time on Substack where there are fantastic insights, education, and overall fun reads. I absolutely spend more time reading technical documents (think AI coding) than I have since I was coding my LiveJournal in high school.

From a traditional book perspective, I’m roughly sticking to my “one fiction, one non-fiction” pattern.

Here’s a selection of what I’ve been looking at this year. (Many of these you’ll recognize if you’ve been following along with Procure Picks!)

• A great Substack article from Supernegotiate Building an AI Native Procurement Centre of Excellence: A Complete Playbook for CPOs

  • A favorite line: “Pro Tip: Read transcripts of investor calls with your strategic suppliers – this is gold”

• An important callout from Counsel & Capital Newsflash: You Can’t Sue Your Chatbot

  • AI can accelerate expertise. Accountability still belongs to people.

• Netflix Was Held Together With Duct Tape Marc Randolph

• Inside My 33-Agent AI Operating System Kim Doyal

• Devoured The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. Looking forward to picking up some of Freida’s other novels this fall.

• Blue Bistro, a favorite. With Five Star Weekend now on Netflix, there's renewed interest in Elin Hilderbrand. Personally, I don't think you can go wrong with any of her books and she’s the type of author that rewards her reader as the series progresses.

• Three out of the five Thursday Murder Club series. (I also watched the movie, would recommend!)

  ---

What I’m listening to

This summer has solidly been less podcast and more music/ background noise, with one exception; I finally found my way over to the Smartless podcast.

Listening sometimes feels a little like slowing down to watch a car accident. I'm not sure why it works, but somehow it does. Not all of the humor is for me, but (sometimes) witty banter has a calming effect and when I do laugh, the in-between feels worth it.

Is the real reason I enjoy it so much because Jason Bateman aka Nick Fox from Zootopia’s voice is so familiar? This mom of a toddler says, “maybe”.

What I’m buying

July was a month of personal travel between a week with my girls to visit family and a week with the whole family at the beach. Like any good online shopper, I overordered, returned half of it, and discovered a few things I'll probably buy again.

• At $7 each these towels were great to bring to the waterpark and had the added benefit of being thin enough to pack into our travel bags.

• If you’re going on a car trip, skip the suitcase, buy a large zippered bag, and purchase different colored packing cubes. This may be the best travel recommendation I make all year.

A little bit extra

• Thanks to I joined two wine clubs last year. A summer favorite has been the 2025 Falanghina from The Terraces.

• Can you find less expensive detox shampoos? Yes. Will any of them smell as good as the one from Ouai? Unlikely.

• Crown Affair’s leave in conditioner is fixing the whole family’s summer dried-out hair.

  ---

What’s on my table

I’m not going to give you the common, “Summer is a great reminder to slow down,” line.

Read more

AI agents were going to replace software. Seat-based pricing was doomed. Enterprise applications would become interc…

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And then there are the ones I’d happily buy again tomorrow.

As someone who spends her days helping companies spend intentionally…

Read more

I decided it was worth it to break down and share more specific ways I’m using Claude for Marketing as someone who did not grow up as a marketer.

I’ve used Claude to:

• Analyze customer interviews and identify recurring themes

• Summarize competitor newsletters and content strategies

• Turn long-form research into social media content ideas

• Prepare for customer discovery calls

• Review event attendee lists and identify networking opportunities

• Generate first drafts of campaign messaging

• Spot patterns across survey responses that would have taken hours to find manually

None of these tasks eliminate the need for marketing judgment. They simply shorten the path between information and insight.

Everyone wants to be “data-driven.” How many of you want to spend six hours reading PDFs? Whether you’re preparing for a board meeting, evaluating a new market, researching competitors, or trying to understand what customers really care about, the work is rarely difficult. It’s just time-consuming.

If you’re a finance leader, a founder, or wear many hats at your organization, I’ll bet you don’t have extra time on your hands. You have at least one full-time job.

This is where Claude is useful. It isn’t going to skip the research, but it will help you get to the helpful part faster. That’s where you start to add value the AI can’t replace.

Start Here

You’ll be most successful in implementing this Claude strategy if you’ve already done a few things:

• Downloaded Claude

• Added Instructions found under Settings

• Set up relevant Connectors now found under Customize

Read more

The final section, What’s On My Table, is reserved for paid subscribers and is a more personal look at what’s currently shaping my thinking, work, and life.

For the cost of an overpriced iced latte, you get access to the full Procure Picks archive, paid essays, and subscriber-only content.

Subscribe now

Here’s what you may have missed at Procure & Prosper...

What I’m Reading

In two days, I devoured The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. It was fast paced, slightly ridiculous, impossible to put down. I read it floating in my pool with a book in one hand and a Spindrift in the other, and yes, it was just as awesome as it sounds.

Every summer I convince myself I’m about to become the kind of woman who reads literary fiction on a screened-in porch with a glass of wine and profound thoughts about the human condition. Sometimes that happens. But as of now this summer is shaping up to look like read psychological thrillers at an unhealthy while neglect perfectly reasonable household responsibilities.

Running a business has made me realize how quickly I try to make every interest productive (more on this in What’s On My Table). Every book doesn’t need to teach me something about procurement, AI, finance, or entrepreneurship.

Reading something purely because it’s entertaining feels surprisingly rebellious.

I highly recommend it.

What I’m Listening To

I’ve noticed that every time I hit a creative wall, my first instinct is to consume more information. I read an article. Scan through my email to see what newsletter I missed. Pop onto LinkedIn and doom scroll until I’ve had enough of founders saying they’re disrupting something, or they’ve found a new way to cool data centers.

Many of my best ideas don’t show up when I’m actively looking for them. They usually appear when I stop treating inspiration like a research project. They happen on a walk, on a car ride. Mostly, they happen when I’m relaxed.

Lately that’s meant fewer podcasts and more music.

Current favorites include:

• Noah Kahan

• Zach Bryan

• Anything with “summer hits” in the title

• Whatever Spotify thinks belongs on an “entrepreneur trying to have a personality outside of work” playlist

What I’m Buying

My garden continues to be an exercise in optimism.

Every trip to the local garden center starts with confidence and ends with me standing in front of a plant wondering whether I’m qualified for this level of responsibility. (The research to date would show that I am not. Did you know plants scream when they’re thirsty? This is the thought haunting me.)

—> Recent purchases include:

• More herbs than one household reasonably needs

• Gardening gloves to replace the ones I somehow immediately misplaced

• More fresh flowers from Trader Joe’s

Professional insight: Trader Joe’s flowers and a good playlist continue to cure at least 80% of a bad workday!

Leave a comment

What’s On My Table

If you go back to my very first Substack post, I said that I began writing because I needed a hobby. Substack was something I could do from anywhere. I traveled for a combined total of 4 months in 2025 and being able to do something for me from anywhere was a critical component of whatever hobby I picked up.

Last Thursday at dinner, I gave the same answer. I started Substack because I needed a new hobby. In that moment, it dawned on me. For the last 6 weeks or so, Substack has felt like a job. The complete opposite of why I started, and likely why I’ve been so quiet on here.

Read more

Procurement News Brief — June 2026

Burning Advice

Evaluate your technology roadmap before your vendors do it for you. Consolidation acros…

Read more

Usually the announcement is delivered with the same energy people use when they’ve solved a problem.

The tool has been selected! The contract is signed! Licenses have been distributed! Training sessions have been scheduled!

Project managers mark the last box green. Success. Or at least that’s the assumption.

At the next all-hands there’s a slide showing license counts. A screenshot of a chatbot.

When I start working with a client I typically ask for the most recent firm-wide communications; I want to know what’s going on and being communicated at all levels. When I see slides like I mentioned above, I tend to have the same follow-up:

How many people are actually using it?

Not licenses are deployed. Not how many are trained. Using it. Regularly. To do real work and not busy work (more on that later).

This is where the clear sentences stop. Somewhere along the way, organizations started treating deployment and adoption as the same thing. They’re not. Giving employees access to AI is easy. Changing how they work is considerably harder.

The Corporate Version of Buying a Package of Pilates Classes

In January I finally did what I said I would do and I purchased (at a great price) a package of Pilates classes at the studio down the street.

In April, I realized my utilization was 1x. About 1/10th of the value I should have obtained.

Organizations do the same thing with technology.

A company buys ChatGPT Enterprise, Copilot, Claude, or whichever AI tool won the internal debate. There are executive announcements often externally as well as internally, about how they’re going to better their operating margins.

Then reality shows up.

Employees are busy. There’s no extra time to test and learn because deadlines still exist, and sure, if I used agentic automation to support my daily checklist it would help in the long run, but what about this report request that has to get sent out today?

The LinkedIn update from the CEO doesn’t consider the existing habits that are deeply ingrained. The truth is, most people default to whatever gets today’s work done fastest.

The result is a (not so) surprising amount of expensive technology which ends up sitting beside workflows instead of becoming part of them. The tools aren’t bad, but behavior change is hard.

The Dashboard Says Everything Is Fine

One of my favorite corporate magic tricks is how easily implementation metrics become success metrics.

Leadership asks how the AI rollout is going and someone proudly reports that 95% of employees have access, 87% completed training, and thousands of licenses have been deployed.

Another green slide! Cue the Zoom celebratory emojis.

Here I come with the uncomfortable question: how many people changed the way they work?

That’s the number I care about. It likely isn’t on the slide. Figuring it out takes a lot of 1:1 conversations.

If I apply the corporate logic, I’m healthier and in much better shape thanks to that Pilates package.

You’d tell me that isn’t how it works. I’d tell you that’s the same argument you have about AI adoption.

Here’s What You Need to Remember

Read more

The final section, What’s On My Table, is reserved for paid subscribers and is a more personal look at what’s currently shaping my thinking, work, and life.

For the cost of an overpriced iced latte, you get access to the full Procure Picks archive, paid essays, and subscriber-only content.

Subscribe now

In the month of May, using the code FIF will give you 7 days of paid subscriber access to Procure and Prosper.

---

Here’s what you may have missed at Procure and Prosper

April was the month of Claude experimentation, some good, some not worth repeating. We discussed how to buy it, what testing looks like, and real prompt fixes that combat token burn.

My personal favorite: how to use Claude for marketing. This last one has been so popular on and off of Substack that I’ll be writing a follow up next month.

What I’m reading

A direct reflection of what’s on my mind.

• A great Substack article from Building an AI Native Procurement Centre of Excellence: A Complete Playbook for CPOs

  • A favorite line: “Pro Tip: Read transcripts of investor calls with your strategic suppliers – this is gold”

• An important callout from Newsflash: You Can’t Sue Your Chatbot

  • I can get payroll tax info from Chat GPT, but I still pay a business accountant. I want someone who has done it before and will get it right. AI can accelerate expertise, but it still doesn’t replace accountability.

What I’m listening to

Since the last issue of Procure Picks, I have barely watched tv. I did make it to the movies to see Top Gun Maverick while it was back in theaters, and watching Tom Cruise fly around on a big screen is still the best way to watch it.

What I’m buying

I am living proof that fresh flowers from Trader Joe’s and a good playlist cure a not-so-great-workday at least 80% of the time. The peonies are a $10 instant dopamine hit, making the more than $10 vase feel absolutely worth it.

What’s on my table

Read more

First Things First

There’s a question every executive wants answered right now:

“What’s our AI ROI?”

Fair enough.

If companies are spending millions on AI tools…

Read more

—> For the month of May, using the code “FIF” will give you 7 days of paid subscriber access to Procure and Prosper.

upgrade now

May is one of my favorite months of the year. In the Northeast, it’s when the weather officially shifts for the better. Windows open. Shoes by the door. Everyone collectively remembering they have a personality again. Closet reset.

Mother’s Day also means a completely guilt-free day of pampering, with this year’s highlight being homemade pasta made by my two oldest. Honestly? Tough to beat that.

From a work perspective, May is usually a slower month. More thinking. More strategy. More cleanup before summer schedules fully kick in.

Except this year, apparently.

Since this is my first full year of Procure and Prosper LLC, May has been anything but quiet — more on that in What’s on my table.

What I’m reading

Our local library book sale was held last week which, in our family, is basically a holiday.

We all came home with bags of books and several questionable additions to our already out-of-control to-be-read piles.

I don’t often keep books after I’ve read them which is why I was especially excited to find Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand at the sale. Most of Hilderbrand’s novels are set on Nantucket and although I’ve never been, I’ve read enough of her books at this point that I genuinely feel like I could draw a map of the island from memory.

Blue Bistro has always been one of my favorites. In the middle of busy days and increasingly screen-heavy evenings, reading a few chapters before bed feels less like entertainment and more like a small act of maintenance.

If you have a comfort book you’ve read time and time again—send it my way.

Leave a comment

What I’m listening to

My current audiobook is 10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy. The classic, do more with less, they share how much more impactful or easier it is to aim for a tenfold leap than a modest threefold increase.

The premise is simple but surprisingly confronting: making a tenfold leap often requires less complexity than trying to incrementally optimize everything you’re already doing.

The biggest takeaway for me has been their reframing of the 80/20 rule. Not just focusing on the 20% that drives results, but actively letting go of the other 80%.

Which sounds obvious until you start looking at your calendar. (Hi, my name is Dana and I historically have a problem over-commiting.)

I actually started doing this naturally late last year when I resigned from the advisory board of a company I was involved with. It wasn’t a bad opportunity. It just wasn’t the right use of my energy anymore.

I think there’s a version of ambition that looks like adding more. The one I’m choosing right now looks like becoming increasingly ruthless about what deserves your attention.

What I’m buying

Very much in my gardening era!

• This watering can is something I use daily.

• Our vertical planter is on sale and it’s perfect for growing blueberries, herbs, strawberries, and hopefully cucamelons.

  • Are cucamelons new to you too? My 12 year old introduced me.

Newest part of my skincare routine is this tanning spray. So easy to use and perhaps impossible to mess up. This goes as a base layer. Easy mornings mean a few sprays followed by SPF.

What’s on my table

Read more

Two Pieces of Burning Advice

1. Assess Ariba migration risk if you’re on the legacy stack — the 2026 rebuild is the largest architectural shift in years.

2. Renegotiate TM…

Read more

That’s fine.

The board still wants a clean deck on Monday.
The team still needs talking points.
And someone has to write it.

AI can do the heavy lifting—
but only if you brief it the way a good marketer would.

The gap (and why this feels harder than it should)

Most finance leaders don’t have an idea problem.

They have a translation problem.
The message is… technically right.
The deck still gets rebuilt — usually at least twice.

The time you talk someone else through the updates is the same time it would take to update the deck yourself, and you have time for neither. This means:

A) The output is subpar, and if you’re like me, this will bug you

B) You give up something to spend time making it what it needs to be (sleep, perhaps?)

Learn two things.

You don’t need a marketing degree.

You need this:

Brand voice = how you always sound
Tone = how that voice flexes depending on the moment

Same voice. Different situations.

Annual kickoff ≠ board update.
But both should still sound like you.

Subscribe now

Build your voice

This is where most people skip—and pay for it later.

Turn your voice into Voice Rules, a one-page brief that gives instructions on how you should sound.

It covers:

• Tone → direct? warm? opinionated?

• Structure → short sentences? long builds? punchlines?

• Avoid list → words and phrases you would never say

Think of it as:
the cheat sheet you wish everyone had before they wrote anything for you.

Do it once. Reuse it until you want something new.

Skip it—and everything sounds slightly off or like a committee wrote it.

Create it for the cost of lunch

I spent three years at L’Oreal managing content spend, almost a billion dollars. In my time there I contracted out more Voice Rules statement of works than I can count. Now? Claude can do it for you. Here’s how.

Step 1: Feed it real samples (not polished nonsense)

Claude doesn’t need your best writing.
It needs your real writing.

Pull:

• LinkedIn posts

• Emails you’re proud of

• Slack messages where you nailed the point

The goal is simple:
Show how you sound when you’re not overthinking it.

Step 2: Stop being vague (this is where most people fail)

This is the difference between frustration and leverage.

Bad prompt:

“Build me a deck about Q3.”

That’s not a brief. That’s a wish.

Good prompt:

“8 slides. Audience: CFO. One chart per slide.
Open with the headline number. Close with three asks.
Follow my voice rule. No filler.”

Constraints aren’t limiting.

They’re the whole point.

Step 3: Tell it who’s in the room

This is wildly underrated.

A deck for:

• “Skeptical CFO who read every report”
  vs.

• “New hire on day one”

…should not sound the same.

If you don’t define the audience, Claude will invent one.

And the result may not be what you need.

Step 4: Use the stack properly (Claude + Canva)

This is the whipped cream on your afternoon latte.

Quick level set:

• Claude = thinking, structure, words

• Canva = polish, visuals, distribution

Connect them once, and you can go from:
idea → draft deck → editable design
in one flow.

No tab-hopping. No copy-paste chaos.

Step 5: Edit like you mean it

Claude is a great first draft.

It should never be the final draft.

Always:

• Cut adjectives

• Kill filler

• Read it out loud

If you wouldn’t say it in a meeting—
don’t put it on a slide.

What this actually changes (for finance)

This isn’t about “better writing.”

It changes how work gets done.

You get:

• Faster first drafts

• Fewer rewrite cycles

• More consistent messaging across teams

Which means:
less time translating—and more time deciding.

The bottom line

You don’t need to “learn marketing.”

You need to:

• Define how you sound

• Show examples

• Be painfully specific

Do that—and Claude stops sounding like AI.

It starts sounding like you.

Subscribe now

Can you believe April comes to an end this week? The first part of the month felt slow, while the last two weeks have flown by.

I’ve been investing a lot of my “study” time in upleveling the way I use AI for my business.

I am not an engineer or developer. At UiPath, I spoke at length about the benefits I received from the technology, but outside of clicking a button to run an agent, I never really got my hands on the product.

The amount of joy I’m getting from working on my own agentic journey surprises me.

(Do you remember LiveJournal? I used to code my own page and loved playing around with and updating the aesthetic. This feels… adjacent.)

In case you’re catching up, here’s what’s been happening at Procure and Prosper.

April has been the month of Claude!
This week I wrote about how to get more and pay less, also known as burning less tokens.

If the above seems daunting or you feel like you need more background:

• The AI Questions You’re Afraid to Ask (but should)

• AI Safety, Smarts and When It’s Actually Worth It

  ---

What I’m reading

Did you know you that on Substack you could “Save” specific posts to read later? Here’s what is in my queue:

• Netflix Was Held Together With Duct Tape

• Inside My 33-Agent AI Operating System

• The Wardrobe Audit: What to Keep, Tailor, Replace and Stop Buying

A bit chaotic, but in a way that makes sense to me.

Theme? Systems. Whether it’s tech, closets, or billion-dollar companies held together by vibes.

If you’ve read something recently that made you stop mid-scroll—send it my way.

Leave a comment

What I’m listening to

I just had a week of solo parenting, which meant one thing: TV after toddler bedtime.

Apple TV → Your Friends & Neighbors
Jon Hamm leads, and paired with Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn, the cast could carry just about anything. Fortunately, they don’t have to.

The premise: suburban success story turned thief.
The undertones: loneliness, identity, and what happens when the image cracks.

Netflix → Running Point
If you want something lighter—this is it.

Mindy Kaling wrote it, Kate Hudson leads, and it’s one of those shows that doesn’t try too hard to be clever… which makes it work.

Season 2 just dropped, so you can catch up quickly.

What I’m buying

Truthfully? It’s been a heavy package month.

Seasonal shift + spring sales = dangerous combination.

Sephora

• favorite cleansing oil

• splurgy bath pebbles

• the all-time best moisturizer.

Deck decor

• chairs

• a bistro table

• an umbrella.

It’s wine club delivery season and I’m into the Rhyolite blend and the Tempranillo from Terraces.

What I’m noticing: I’m spending more on things that make my actual daily life better (good wine included) and less on things that look good in theory.

What’s on my table

Productive procrastination. Are you familiar with this term? It means you’re doing things that technically move your to do list forward—but not the thing that actually matters most.

Read more

Here’s what’s actually happening:

Around April 16, token usage quietly jumped — up to ~1.35x for the same prompts.

Same inputs. Same outputs. More burn.

If you don’t adjust, you’ll hit limits faster and pay more without realizing why.

This matters most in Excel. Full sheets = massive token burn.

Tip Number 1: Constrain the Output or Pay for It

Anyone who has chatted with Claude knows it can get a little wordy.

• Update your prompts and be explicit about limits.

Example: I receive a weekly report thanks to a scheduled Claude Task. This prompt turned from, “Gather research… news in procurement.” to “Gather research… Format in bullet points. Include a max of 5 bullet points. Max 6 words each.”

Now I’m receiving the same content, in a way that burns less and is easier to scan through.

Tip Number 2: Stop Letting Claude Narrate

If you’ve asked Claude to de-bug code, chances are it will come back like my golden retriever when she’s fetched her favorite ball — prancing and wanting to share how she did it.

• Ask only for what you need. Cut “nice to have”.

Example: “Fix the code. Output only the corrected code. Don’t provide an explanation.”

Now you have what you need. Have a follow up question? Ask. But now it’s on your terms.

Bonus tip: The same is true in Excel. If you need a formula, prompt “Output only the Excel formula. No explanation.”

Tip Number 3: Start with the Answer

Part of the latest update has made Claude an over-achiever. That means it will provide extra suggestions and context in an effort to be “helpful”. If you’re working on strategy and analysis, you will have to weed through multiple options and paragraphs of explanations to get to the end of the story.

• Get straight to the point.

Example: “State conclusion first. Then 2 supporting points. Max 50 words total.”

Tip Number 4: Don’t Invite Explanations

Claude generates extra versions when underspecified. This includes creating multiple versions of something (I’ve noticed 5 as a baseline) if you didn’t give it enough information.

• If you don’t specify format, Claude will overproduce.

Example: “Using the ppx template in X folder, turn these notes into five slides. Don’t offer alternatives.”

Bonus tip: If you typically have Claude save right to Canva thanks to a connector, review what it has created first so you can make changes if you need.

Tip Number 5: Know What You’re Getting Into

Claude has changed the way it’s working. You need to know what it is doing so you can adjust your behaviors accordingly.

• Give Claude what it needs, not more.

This matters most in Excel. Full sheets = massive token burn.

Example: Yesterday you were sending a full spreadsheet and telling Claude where to look for what it needed. Today, send it only what it needs and state, “Use only the date provided. Do not infer missing columns.”

Any other tips you have for your fellow prompters?

Leave a comment

One day it’s 75 and everyone’s outside pretending they’ve always been a “sit in the park” person. The next day it’s 48 and you’re back in a coat, questioning everything.

But still—there’s that shift.
Longer days. Windows open. The feeling that you might, suddenly, get your life together.

Welcome back to Procure Picks — my weekly roundup of what I’m reading, listening to, and buying. As a perk for paid subscribers, the what’s on my table section will now be for them. Not a paid subscriber? For $8/ month or a deal of $80/ annually, you get access to my historic content, full Procure Picks, and all of my articles.

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What I’m reading

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Slow, thoughtful, and the kind of book that makes you reconsider your relationship with…everything. Nature, gratitude, taking vs. giving. With chapters about different plants and their stories, I’m reading it in small pieces and letting it sit.

If you are someone who reads multiple books at a time, I recommend this one as a secondary. Easy to pick up and read without feeling like you need to remember where you left off.

What I’m listening to

Elderbrook. Thanks to my cousin, I have the perfect, pretend I’m a person who gardens regularly, vibes. If you aren’t familiar with it, I’d consider it spunkier low-fi with lyrics. Give it a whirl.

Hint: Streaming their music videos on a weekend morning will put the whole household in a good mood on a weekend morning. Pair with coffee, obviously.

What I’m buying

Do you also decide you’re someone who grows things each spring? If so, what’s your success rate?

Like many others, we had a flourishing COVID garden with more tomatoes and peppers and beans than we could eat. The next year we did it, but neglected it a bit and certainly didn’t have the bountifulness of the first year.

Skip ahead to last year when I was ready to dive in, buying everything but the plants themselves. How did it go? Let’s just say I have the dirt and tools ready to go for this year, because they’ve been gathering dust for 10 months.

Today, we are headed to the local garden center. On the list? Lavendar, whatever looks pretty for the pots on the front steps, hearty vegetables (tomatoes, kale and green beans seem to be “Dana-proof”).

What have I learned from years past? I need to make tending the garden part of my routine. Go downstairs, feed the dog breakfast, pick what is ripe. Dog gets dinner, water the plants. If you water in the morning, you run the risk of burning your plants! (Ask me how I know.)

Let me know if you’re also planting this year and if you have any tips or tricks.

Leave a comment

What’s on my table

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When someone asks what he does, he says: engineer.

Perfectly fine… until the follow-up comes. And it always comes.

“What kind of engineer?”

Aer…

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Even in high-performing companies, cost center …

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Reading

For those of you who have been here a mi…

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In case you’re catching up, here’s what’s been …

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