Lots on tap today

If it (a walk) is to be, it's up to me. And it had better happen earlier, because later is booked.

I have an appointment this morning at 10:45 followed by a lunch meeting at 12:30, after which I will pick up a few groceries and come home to do laundry, make dinner and then leave for my volunteer gig at the prison.

The walk will begin at 7 a.m., fog or no fog. It's really foggy this morning, pea-soup foggy, LONDON foggy. (I've never been to London, but I'm thinking they didn't create an entire brand of outerwear called London Fog for no good reason.) I really, really, really don't like walking when it's this foggy.

But I shall.

Yesterday I finished Week 2, Day 1 of Cto5K. The number of interval sets was reduced from 8 to 6 and each interval was 30 seconds longer. Which would have worked out fine if not for the hills. It's so much easier to walk out my door and start walking than it is to drive to a flatter route. Until I'm supposed to run up a hill.

I couldn't do a couple of them. I ran when I could – and y'all know that the word "run" should really be "jog," right? – and walked when I couldn't.

No matter. Progress is being made, even though it truly doesn't look like it from the results.

Working my training sessions into a longer walk works well for me. I walked/jogged for about 2.25 miles before I started the warm-up walk. There's no way to work it out so that all the running intervals are downhill, though. Too. Many. Hills. Once I was done with the training, I had 2.3 miles to go to get home, and I ran jogged as much of it as I could, including the entire last mile.

So that was fun. Heh.

Then I worked in the herb bed weed patch off and on for the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon. The bed is a circle divided into eighths, and I was able to clean the weeds out of three slices.

Here's a handy tip if you ever decide to plant lemon balm: Put it in a bed all by itself.

The only thing I use lemon balm for is iced tea. I tie a large handful of leaves in a piece of cheesecloth and add it to the water, along with regular tea bags, when I make sun tea. It adds a light lemony flavor that is very refreshing.

Lemon balm, like mint, spreads like crazy. So does oregano. Or marjoram, whichever one I have planted out there. So does comfrey, I'm told, but this is my first year for it, so maybe I'll be able to keep it under control, since I know what to expect.

At any rate, three-eighths of the herb bed looks pretty darned good. I'm working my way around to the hard part, which is an entire slice of cilantro which is going to seed. I want to keep it going – I didn't have to buy cilantro plants or plant seeds this spring – but really? There's enough cilantro out there to stock a salsa kitchen. Or there was, it's pretty much dried up now.

Okay, that's it for now. I have 12 minutes to finish my coffee, get dressed and go swimming in air, which is what I call walking in fog. Have a great Tuesday!

Toil in the soil

I spent two – just two – very hard hours in the garden yesterday, pulling weeds, dismantling the [ineffective] fence and pulling up tomato stakes. I was hot, tired, sweaty, dirty and itchy when I finished.

And I didn't even get the tiller out of the shed. You've heard the expression "too wet to plow," right? Well, it was! And I was more than a little grateful, because two hours in the fall garden is quite enough, thankyouverymuch.

Self-seeded cilantro makes me happy.

(While I'd love to have a year-'round garden and while I envy those who pull kale and chard from their back yards in December, I'm apparently not there yet. Although the cilantro has self-seeded, and if I can make fresh pico de gallo sometime this fall I'll be a happy farmer. And chip eater.)

I was hungry when I finished, but a shower trumped food. There are many more bugs in late summer than spring, and I felt like I was crawling with critters. The shower helped. A lot. Much more than lunch would have.

As I pulled weeds around a couple of onions, I noticed more onions. And more. And ended up finding an entire row of walking onions that I didn't even know was there. I'll still plant more, but it's nice to know that Mother Nature has given me a head start. Also? I'm a little embarrassed at finding them under all those weeds.

More proof that I'm not not not a fall gardener.

For Diandra, here's a primer on Amish culture. It can't be conclusive, however, because each community makes its own rules. Many of our neighbors moved here from Kentucky, and when they lived there they were allowed to smoke tobacco. With the move to West Virginia, apparently the elder decided to have a new no-smoking policy. (I say apparently because I don't know if it's a community vote or if the elder decides for everyone.)

At any rate, I'm glad they're here. They are peace-loving, hard-working, generous and stable.

And they make good donuts.

This week's winner is …

MamaKaren!

(And if you click through to her blog, be sure to scroll down and read her take on the chicken wars. If I'd weighed in on that subject – and I wanted to, but thought better of it – she says what I wanted to say, only with much less emotion. Suffice it to say I have gay family members and family members who supported CFA Appreciation Day. Blech.)

Anyway, congratulations to Karen! If you will e-mail me at shrinking knitter AT gmail DOT com with your snail-mail address, I'll pop your yarn in the mail.

If you didn't win and you really wanted to, stay tuned for more goodies coming up later today. I kind of dropped the ball on searching the stash yesterday to come up with this week's offer, but will get it together before the end of the day.

Now to answer a couple questions:

1. I missed watching President Obama's address to BlogHer'12. I'm not much for watching videos online, I'm not sure why. I am going to go back and watch Usain Bolt's gold-medal winning run in the 100m dash. And I'll try to watch my President talking to the BlogHer crowd.


2. I don't run at all any more. I used to. A lot. I've finished three half-marathons and the Army Ten-Miler. My mind loves to run, but my body, at my current weight, doesn't. I would be more comfortable if I were at least 30 pounds lighter and every additional pound lost would add to the comfort level. It's also easier to get hurt when you're an obese runner, so I've been taking the slow road. And, finally, my husband was with me at the Army Ten-Miler in 2008, where a young fit man collapsed and died near the finish line. He is not a fan of my taking up running again. So there's that.


3. Cilantro is not a cut-and-come-again plant, like basil or lettuce or spinach. It's best started from seed, and all of the gorgeous, lush cilantro I was enjoying in June is now brittle and dry and gone to seed. Which isn't a bad thing, except I should have staggered my initial plantings a little more frequently. If yours has also gone to seed, those seeds will drop and replant themselves (I'm going to throw a layer of compost over mine to help it out). If you're going through a dry spell, water it regularly. A friend of mine was harvesting fresh cilantro last December!

Thank you all for your lovely anniversary wishes. We talked together yesterday morning, the first time I've walked in a long, long time. Since before the storm hit (June 29), actually. He does his four daily miles faithfully, and I, um, don't. I'm paying for the walk this morning. One probably shouldn't restart a walking program with a three-miler in a pair of Vibram Five Fingers. I have blisters on both feet and some soreness. But it's a good soreness, one that tells me I did something positive for my body and my mind.

Now to keep it up.

Back later ...