Getting ready …

to visit family in another state, which means, Man, there's a lot to do around here today! And it's soooo boooootiful (that's how my younger granddaughter pronounces beautiful) outside that I don't wanna pack and I don't wanna get organized and I don't wanna clean out my car. So there. Harumph.

Heh.

Planted the gardenia and azaleas yesterday, mowed the front lawn and worked a little more on garage reorganization. The garden is still too wet to plow, as the old saying goes. The fence goes up today. Between my dog, who likes to stroll through the mud, and possibly a rabbit (or maybe the dog) who ate the leaves off the only cabbage plant out there, fencing is the current Job One.

I don't think I'll electrify it while I'm gone, though. There's nothing else for a rabbit to eat, and Molly won't be able to get through or over or under the wires. No sense in wasting battery life while I'm gone.

I'm new to this electric fence thing. We had them when I was a kid (Dad's Job One), to keep horses in their pasture and critters out of the garden. My little brother accidentally touched a wire once and liked it so much he kept going back for more. Me? Not so much. Watching him shock himself (that explains sooooo much about my brother, heh) made me Back. Away. From. The. Fence.

I realize that the fence isn't "hot" unless you hook it up to the gizmo that makes it hot and you have to then turn the gizmo on. But still. I keep thinking that just stringing that wire around the fenceposts is a dangerous job.

Somebody has to do it.

I will weigh myself manana, but I won't be posting again until Tuesday, assuming I make it home safely. Have a great rest of the week and a great May Day and a great weekend and a great next Monday. And I will, too.

NSV

Those of you who have been weight-loss blogging for a while will recognize that today's title stands for one of those unexpected, always-hoped-for benefits of diet and exercise and healthy living – the non-scale victory.

I haven't had much in the way of scale victories lately, so it was with great delight that I slipped – yes, slipped! – on the pair of jeans that have not fit all winter. It was cool enough yesterday that jeans were welcome. I have refused all winter to buy a larger size (I've been living in yoga pants the past three months), but I have also refused to try this pair on because I didn't want yet another blow to my ego.

I've been doing a lot of physical activity lately, though, and felt that maybe, just maybe, they would fit. They not only fit, they were comfortable.

My go-to NSV has always been my wedding ring. When it starts sliding around my finger, I know some changing is going on.

I worked at the garden center yesterday afternoon and brought home a little of my paycheck: two small azaleas and a gardenia, which will be the centerpiece of a brick planter in front of my house. They all look like not quite enough to fill the space, now that I have them here.

When I moved to this house, the areas on either side of the front porch were filled with tall, ugly evergreen shrubs, things no one ever trimmed or cared for. They were taller than I was, which made trimming impossible. I eventually had them taken out. We had the concrete porch redone several years ago, and at the same time had brick planters built. I've got some perennials in there – hostas, dianthus, artemesia, some other pretty plants that I can't name – but it's haphazard and unattractive. I think the plants I brought home yesterday are a good start in the landscaping home improvement project.

I won't be weighing myself on the first of the May, as I'll be out of town. Not sure yet if I'll record this month's progress on April 29 (the day I leave) or May 4 (the first full day I'll be home). I'm thinking the 29th, as the trip will mean navigating some tricky food situations. One thing for sure: I'm having birthday cake at my baby girl's 40th birthday party.

Crop failure

Well, sort of.

I put several trays of seedlings – three kinds of tomatoes and two kinds of peppers – outdoors yesterday on a table on our patio. Then I spent the next couple of hours cleaning out the garage. And while I was doing that, the wind started blowing.

And blowing. And … do you see where this is heading?

My husband casually mentioned that "the outside table tipped over in all this wind." With that, I became a runner again. I raced from the garage to the back of the house to find all my little seedlings, plants I've been babying since February, spilled out of their pots onto the patio.

I took a break from garage cleaning to repot as many babies as I could salvage, but I lost a lot.

Two things occurred to me during that process.

• How lucky was it that I brought six bags of compost home with me last week from the nursery (I was out of potting soil) and
• How lucky was it that I was working at the nursery in the first place?

Working there has given me the experience – and confidence – to know that repotting will work, no matter how droopy the plants looked yesterday. And working there makes it much easier and cheaper to replace the plants that died in the wind. (I trade my labor for plants.)

Anyhoo ... in other gardening news, I finally planted peas Saturday. They should have been in the ground a month ago, but oh well. One of these days we'll have peas. More than half the garden space remains unplanted, but there's still lots of time. I didn't plant anything last year until mid-May.

•••••

The astute among you will notice a new header for the blog, one that Marilyn suggested in a comment last week. I think it more accurately reflects the direction I've been taking here. I'm keeping "Run." in there because I always hope I'll be able to run regularly and long distances again. This extra weight is all that stands between me and 26.2.

•••••

In other news, as if we women with weight issues don't have enough to worry about, there's this, the lead paragraph of which reads:

A new study says federal guidelines on obesity should be revised so more women fit into the category of "obese."

Yeah, that's what I need to hear. I'm not fat enough, make me fatter! Grrr.

Testing, testing

Something weird happened to Friday's formatting, so I'm testing to see if it's still happening. Apparently quoting that Asian-character comment had something to do with it. In the HTML view, there are Asian characters sprinkled throughout the post. Hmmm. Hope this one looks okay, and apologies for the white text background yesterday. Grrr.

Friday again

“When we heal the earth,

we heal ourselves.”

~ David Orr

One more nod to Earth Day. And to Food, Inc., because in creating a better way to produce food, we would indeed heal both the earth and ourselves.

Or at least I think we would.


Someone from an Asian country has been leaving comments here lately, usually only on Fridays. (I'm going to have to start thinking of titles for Friday's posts now.) Last week s/he said:

"One-night stand leaf lover wife erotic passion photo beautiful babes self-timer self-timer self-timer beautiful working girl working girl emptied emptied emptied babes strip show Strip emptied of adult pornography masturbation nude self-timer Big Giant aircraft shelling of jacking off to fight a large dairy milk Actress promiscuous sex sex lewd lust With her sister Yinjiao obscene sexual secretion"

 Hmmm. Methinks s/he needs some professional help. Or a hooker. Heh. Or maybe s/he is a hooker!

Anyhoo … I've been working on a couple of personal projects (besides the garden) lately, as well as a small freelance graphic design project, and the combination of to-dos has been keeping me up at night. Last night (or, rather, this morning) I woke up at 12:33 a.m. After an hour I usually just go ahead and get up, but I forced myself not to move and I eventually did go back to sleep, finally. Lack of sleep never killed anyone, but it sure makes it harder to get things done during the day!


We have some rain coming in this weekend. I hope to get more things in the ground before that happens. I'm rethinking whether I should create all those raised beds or not. (Nine down, a million to go.) I might leave the area in the center of the garden flat, for corn and tomatoes, and make more raised beds at the lower end for the melons, squash and cukes. I have more seeds than I have room, but I think that's typical for a new gardener.


So the exercise plan for the next couple of days is a great big question mark. It will probably be too wet to work in the dirt tomorrow and Sunday, so I would guess I'll be gardening today. Maybe I'll get to walk between the raindrops the next couple of days.


Gardening – digging, hoeing, running the tiller, planting and chopping weeds – is great exercise, by the way. And the benefits go way beyond building muscles and burning calories. Perhaps I should rename this blog:


Knit. Run. RepEAT!

Happy Earth Day!

Today's the day – actually every day's the day – to honor our Mother. And you thought Mother's Day wasn't until May 9. Hah!

Forty years ago when Earth Day began, I was less than two weeks from my first child's birth. Saving the planet was not on my radar, to tell you the truth. As a young wife and mother-to-be, I had other, more pressing issues.

As I've gotten older (and when you have a 40-year-old child, believe me you're old!), I've evolved into someone who at least makes some attempt to respect and preserve our environment. I'm not a zealot, and I could do much better. We all could, or there would be no need for Earth Day, right?

My husband and I watched Food, Inc. again last night. Using our resources wisely is one theme of the documentary, illustrated perfectly by Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms, whose credo is:

We are in the redemption business:

healing the land, healing the food,

healing the economy, and healing the culture.

At the end of the film, suggestions for eating better food pop up randomly on the screen. As we read them, my husband remarked, "I'm really proud of you. You do all that stuff!"

I don't do all of it, but I do what I can. And I could do much better. We all could.

Ahhh, blessed rain

My arms get a break today, as it rained last night and I'm declaring the garden is too wet to till. Heh.

Looks like it will be a very nice day all in all, though, and it'll be nice to repot seedlings at the garden center this afternoon.

Groundworks' setting is simply beautiful, a real showplace next to a river. Being next to the river caused major problems during the flood we had earlier this year, but looking at the site now you'd never know how much damage was done.

When I work there, my back is toward the river and I'm facing all the benches filled with flowers, herbs and vegetables. The landscaping plants – trees and shrubs – are past a greenhouse to my right, and the sales pavilion is to my left. I'm looking at beauty and listening to the river's song while I "work." It's quite an ideal way to spend an afternoon!

What I could do this morning is, um, take a walk, something I haven't done for several days now. My intention was to add gardening to the walking, but what's happened is that gardening has usurped walking. I'm burning plenty o' calories and using plenty o' muscles, but I run out of energy if I do both on the same day. Maybe later in the season I can manage it.

Right now I'm still in training. Heh.