Monthly Mayhem from a completely broken amateur home gardener (5.26)

I like being outside! I might have a problem...

Anyone else feeling their age because of yard work? No, just me and my strange, messed up body situation? Well, anyways, happy May! I hope the spring’s treated you well. Let’s do this thang!

This cat must be dying because he doesn’t usually sit on me, yet he’s been living on me lately…

PROJECTS & ARTICLES

So, in case you didn’t notice, this month I started to write about my cub. I know, I know, I’ve written about him before, but that was the endgame and the sad parts and the hard parts. But, I also really want to share about why it was all worth it, and how love and understanding and a distinct lack of judgment have a huge power to heal damage. I think that’s a deeply important thing to share. So if you’ve missed any of this month’s articles, here are the links:

Riku’s Story, pt. I: How We Met
Riku’s Story, pt. II: A Profound Cosmic Coincidence
Riku’s Story, pt. III: The Early Days & A Goober of a Kid with Integrity

Since today’s slot is occupied by Monthly Mayhem, pt. IV will be coming on Thursday instead.

Fabled Magazine

Issue 002 is out now, and you can order copies from their website! My contribution this time, beyond a little glimpse of my writing desk, is a story about fantasy tropes going to group therapy under the ancient wisdom of the Baba Yaga. IT HAS A PICTURE TO GO WITH okay I’m done losing it now. I’ll put a picture in next month if I remember!

Order Beyond the Pages

The Vitmar Chronicles

Inspiration for creative writing seems to be returning to me, slowly and surely. I chalk a lot of it up to getting better control over my online time. If I’m not always going to my phone to amuse me when I get bored, I start to — gasp! — get bored. And when I get bored, you know what creeps into my brain? Stories.

The biggest issue with writing fiction right now is that I also strongly want to tell my cub’s story, and while it’s not impossible for me to write two things at the same time, it does divide my focus. Plus, anytime it’s nice out, I want to be in my yard doing… pretty much literally anything, and right now my laptop battery is busted, so I can’t go write outside and kill two birds with one stone.

But, suffice to say, there is starting to be slow and steady progress in TVC Vol III. I’m a bit hesitant to give myself a deadline while I’m still working actively on something else, but I looked into when the best time of year for crowdfunding is and I figured, to not give myself a heavy deadline right after summer, spring would be best.

So, my current plan is to find some reader-reviewers for Volume I (and maybe Volume II, if they’re up for it — and if you’re interested, please hit me up), to build some reviews and hype for Volume III, when I will crowdfund all of the first three installments as physical books as well. I have no plans, as of right now, to use Amazon for this, if I can help it. I’m hoping this will be able to fund me getting a run of the physical books that I can give to backers and sell on my own later. This is just a loose plan, so far, but I hope I can make it happen.

Off the Record / Gathering of Geeks

Still no news here, but I have reached out to a couple of people! Let’s see what the summer brings.

Merch Mischief

Nothing in May, but I did decide to hop onto some festival slots this summer, because working at festivals is actually pretty fun (at least until weird drunk dudes start pestering you). Plus I generally love the gals I work with.

Reviews

Oh, hey, I finally got the second installment of the Eye of Melian tour report up (finally), so you can check that out if you’ve missed it:

Where You Go We’ll One Day Follow, pt. II

PHYSICAL & MENTAL HEALTH

After my 2 weeks of depressive mindset in April, May was a welcome change of pace. I was able to get outside and do a lot of work in the yard, and of course, there’s still infinite tasks to continue or take up whenever I can. In the latest depression test I did via BetterHelp, I ranked a zero on the depression scale, so I think that says a lot about how much work I’ve done to get myself into a better headspace.

However.

Ugh. It’s never easy, eh? I forget how much I talked about the strange and profound experience I had last June (2025) when I got my back über-cracked and I stopped having spine spasms. Well, guess who only left the house for 11 months and has decided to show up again…

Even better, not only is my spine spasming again, but my right shoulder felt like it was dangling by a few tendons, and my right hip/butt has gone into full revolt. I kid you not. I’ve seen my osteopath twice in 2 weeks. After the first session, my headaches went away (I thought I was just super dehydrated, but after 4 days straight, maybe I should have considered something else was the problem). He’s talked a few times about fluids getting locked up in my skull and this was one of the rare times I could feel what he was talking about. When I stood up after my time was up, I could feel fluids moving through my head and sinuses opening and… it’s a generally quite gnarly feeling.

I was back again today though, because… well, what in the hell ass shit am I supposed to do with my life when I cannot sit, stand, or lie down? When all I am experiencing is a constant throbbing 2-9/10 pain that comes and goes in waves and no consistent movement or pose makes it go away? If you know me, you know that I don’t take painkillers unless I feel like my life depends on it, so it should say a lot that I’ve taken quite a few recently.

So, anyhoo, as you can tell, I could be doing a fair bit better and as you might have clocked by the casual profanity, my mood’s not as good as it could be. Tends to drop when you’re constantly in pain. And my poor partner’s sick, so trying to feed ourselves and keep the cats from revolting is quite a task.

GENERAL BEARSNESS

I did have a lovely vappu party with some lovely people on the 1st, before all the pain kicked in — thanks to anyone and everyone who came out! Then, we proceeded to go to another friend’s party on the 2nd, which was also fun — we tried out a board game called Hot Streak that was… well, it was chaotic and weird AF. If you’ve ever played the video game Fall Guys, you’ll get a bit of the same vibe from it. It was fun, in a weird and frustrating sort of way, since it’s about betting on a mascot race where there’s a bunch of nonsense.

Also, one of my friends had a spare ticket to see Tori Amos in Helsinki, so that was a great time. I only knew her by name, but didn’t know any of her songs, so I was thrilled to find a savant on the level of Elton John with a kickass band to supplement her fun music. I was thoroughly impressed and am very grateful for the opportunity to have checked her out!

As per usual, even though the snow was gone in March already (still blown away by that), we couldn’t plant anything in the greenhouse until May. Kinda feels like it defeats the point of the greenhouse a little, but hopefully it’ll give us some more love in the fall, if the spring’s still too cold for the soil.

We’ve been doing great work out here though. My new pollinator bed is getting a lot of sweeties put into it (thanks also to everyone who did tradesies with me or gave me seeds!), so I can’t wait to see how it progresses. I’ve been adding retaining walls and liners to all the beds I made last year, so hopefully the ground elder stops creeping in so easily (and the dirt won’t creep out).

I’ve been doing some stone work still as well, and I’ve finally got the entire blackberry patch smothered by landscaping canvas, so now all I need to do is find infinite rocks. I did get the north side filled up though, more or less! Here’s some progress shots:

I’ve now saved two good sized frogs from the empty pond (it needs a new liner) as well, and have returned them to Frogborg where they may live in peace and eat slugs from my gardens.

Over in the veggie patch, I’ve filled out the main bed of the literal herb bed, and some strawberries and calendula are peaking out of the mulch. We’re finally seeing some corn in the greenhouse, and some beets, radishes, radishes, kale, chard, and carrot in the raised beds. Sadly, only two garlics, out of about a jillion, seem to have survived the winter. They were too moist throughout the fall and spring, and probably not frozen well enough, so they pretty much all rotted. I transplanted some garlics that I had thrown into a random tester bed though, so we won’t be without anything in the fall, but alas, we might need to bum some cloves from the in-laws again.

The berry bushes are looking nice and I’ve slowly started on unchoking them from the lawn. I also got some lilac suckers from a lady in town who breeds tortoises, so I got to meet the cutest horny little breeding dude while I was digging things from her yard. I’m hoping to get some lilacs growing over in the most miserable corner of the yard.

We also relocated a plum sucker from our dead trees that I’ve been protecting for a year or so since the trees came down. It and the raspberries we moved in May seem to be doing really well, as both are pushing new growth.

So, my May’s been made up of writing and wandering around my yard and trying not to be in too much pain. How about you? How’s spring treated you so far?

Stay balanced, you beautiful people, and I’ll catch you again next month! ❤️🐻

“You better watch out. I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast.”
“You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?”
“…No!”

— Happy Gilmore

Coming Next Month…

Ankea Festival and maybe seeing some friends and probably my father-in-law’s getting married, so I suspect we’ll be making an appearance. Hopefully I survive the festival on this funky bod, so wish me luck!

Here’s my best of 2026 so far on Deezer! I’m considering giving Tidal a shot next though, as I’m having a few issues with Deezer’s interface.

LINK TO BEAR

Bear’s Homepage || Bear’s YouTube || Bear’s Instagram || Bear’s Creative Writing

Bear’s books on (Finnish) Amazon || Bears books on Google
Find them also via the Draft 2 Digital network or read here if you’re a paid subscriber!

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