Hello my Sinister Gardeners,

No doubt, you’ve noticed a whole lot of no activity here recently, if you are a visitor of the site on a regular basis. That was not intentional but ended up being unavoidable. I do have a new episode of the podcast on the horizon here shortly, which was supposed to be available a week ago but I had some significant delays that got in the way. The first was just time. Over the period of October, I had been rushing to complete everything for Halloween but I left basically no time to get anything else done, including something that I teased at the end of the last Dracula episode. That is still on its way but it is taking a bit longer to do because I had been trying to tackle everything all at once and by the end, it couldn’t be done faster.

And that brings me to the other issues: exhaustion. I have been extremely tired for a lot longer than this, as I’m sure many people have. This year has been very difficult for many and I’m no exception. It was a great deal of work to put out all the Dracula episodes and while I’m happy with what was done, I can’t pretend it didn’t take its toll on me. Again, I was already behind in trying to get the November episodes done and by the time that Halloween rolled around, I was pretty much flatlining for any extra energy. It was my intention on getting everything out today but that brings me to issue number three!

Since about March, I’ve been having issue with my asthma, which hadn’t been much of a problem before. After a very brief stint of being sick back in the spring, I have found that if the temperature dips or if it gets really humid outside, I end up coughing again, until my voice starts to crack. Given that recording an episode of the podcast can take up to three hours (or more depending on what’s going on in the parking lot), on days where I’m having an issue, I can’t chance recording unless I really want to be hurting for the rest of the week. So recording was originally going to be much sooner but I had a bad bout with all the rain we’ve had recently and that was one delay that set the whole train back by more days than I had wanted. Since editing can take up anywhere from ten to sixteen hours (again, depending on that delightful parking lot), everything got shoved a little further back.

The good news in all this is that the episode is finished and really just needs some finishing touches. My good friend Jonathan Glass is working on making the sound better for me right now (Check him out on Spotify!) and you can expect the newest episode early this coming week. And though this is the November theme, I will also be pushing back the second episode of the month back as well and you should be able to expect that (assuming my voice is cooperating), by December 5th. There will be one Holiday episode after as well as a leftover Halloween treat that didn’t make it out of the line for October but should be available over the Holidays.

Thank you for your patience in everything. Again, none of this was by design but I’m looking forward to getting everything back on track and I’m already making efforts to get ready for the new year and new episodes. Until then, keep studying and I’ll get some new content to you soon!