The battle begins

In earnest. And it's two battles, really.

The ongoing battle with my weight is one I'm losing right now. I'd rather report that I'm losing weight, but in two months the loss is negligible.

I'm tired of paleo, but I know that carbs are killing me. As I'm now moving more (I averaged 11,000 steps per day last week), I hope the increased activity will help boost my metabolism. I naturally want to eat lighter when the weather warms up, so I'll work on taking advantage of that – fruit salad instead of pie, right? Heh. The goal is the proverbial move more, eat less, and I'm adding to that to eat less often. If I'm not hungry in the morning, why eat breakfast?

I'd like to think I'm winning the battle with the weeds. The asparagus bed is almost cleaned out, and asparagus is on the menu almost daily. I'm going to put some in omelets tonight. The peony bed is looking good – weeds are mostly gone and the old, dead lavender plants have been replaced by creeping sedum, which is a natural mulch that spreads itself every year. That's my kind of mulch.

I put cardboard down between the asparagus plants and brought a couple loads of mulch from a big pile we have on the side of the field we like to call our "back yard." That pile has been decaying for a couple of years now, and is perfect for weed-suppressing duty. Except for two things.

One of the best garden tool investments
I've ever made. This thing really gets a workout!

As I was working on filling up my large rolling bucket, I thought I was running into the blackberry brambles that have grown up there. (Volunteer blackberries is Thing One.)

When I actually looked to see what was sticking my ankles, I saw Thing Two: ants. Crazy, biting, red ants. Thousands of them. The entire mulch pile is teeming with them. (So gross.) I decided, after two loads of mulch, that it probably isn't the best idea to introduce ants into our living space: The asparagus bed is on the south side of our garage, and only a few feet from our house.

I'm still going to use it – it's a yuge pile, and perfect for spreading around the base of several trees, far away from the house. I'll be wearing tall muck boots, instead of sneakers, to fill the bucket however.

For the asparagus and flower beds, however, I'm heading to town later for bagged mulch. And hoping that having a ready supply will encourage me to keep working on the flower beds.

I have to pace myself (stamina still isn't where I'd like it to be), and I also have to believe that even as little as an hour of weeding a day will eventually result in garden beds worth looking at.

Thank you for your recent kind comments … I appreciate them, and you!

A Lucky update

Our friend Lucky is less than 300 miles from Katahdin, Maine, on his hike of the Appalachian Trail.

He's in New Hampshire, but has just 16.5 miles to get to the Maine border. Here's his most recent entry. It's more of a placeholder; hit the "Previous" link to read full journal posts.

Experienced hikers say that the last 20 percent of the Appalachian Trail is 80 percent of the work, and it sounds like Lucky agrees.

My walks continue to get slower. My hip never really doesn't hurt these days. I'd hoped that getting back to solid paleo eating would help, but it doesn't. The only consistent thing about the pain is that it's almost completely gone after a night's rest. I don't have much trouble first thing in the morning, and so that's when I take my walks.

It's been so hot, that morning also is the best time, temperature-wise, to be outdoors.

Yesterday I cut back all the weeds in the herb-garden circle, covered the bed with compost and then my husband and I layered pieces of cardboard over the whole thing. We put rocks on the cardboard to keep it from blowing away and next spring we'll have a nice weed-free bed in which to plant flowers. A lilac or butterfly bush in the center, with perennials and annuals surrounding it. AND MULCH.

Mulching is a big job, and mulch isn't cheap, but I'm more convinced of the value of it as this year drags on. All my lovely landscape beds are full of weeds, and we haven't had enough rain to soften the ground to make pulling – or even digging – them a manageable job, for me anyway.

The combination of a normal walk and a big gardening job really did me in, though. Let's just say I played lots of Scrabble on my phone yesterday afternoon … sigh.

Making progress

It's been a week since the end of the Whole 30, and a week since I've checked my weight. I thought about weighing daily, but seeing that number every morning can be onerous. Once weekly is plenty. For now.

I lost a pound, so 11 total for 36 days. I expected to do better, but as long as I'm losing – even a little – I'll take it!

The meter reader came by yesterday and gave us the water pump meter reading, saving me a trip. We're doing fine there, as well – less than 1 kWh per day. It's still a mystery as to the why of the reduction in electrical usage, but perhaps it's one of those things one doesn't question.

Although every time we describe the situation to someone new, if they have a mechanical mind they're full of ideas and suggestions. My daughter-in-law's father was fascinated with the problem when I talked about it last weekend. He's probably still trying to figure it out.

They smell heavenly! And they're right outside
the kitchen window – a real treat when I'm doing
dishes. (No progress on the broken dishwasher.)

I'm making very slow progress in the gardens. I work on the weeds, but that doesn't happen every day. The lilacs finally burst open yesterday. I was beginning to think they weren't ever going to! All the lilac bushes in the county have been full of blooms for a week or so, while mine have remained tightly closed, making me wonder if I'd have to wait another year to actually see and smell them. This is the third year they've been in the ground. Must be the magic number.

I do a couple rows of knitting each evening, and I'll have a new sweater to wear probably around the 4th of July. Heh. But that's okay. And it's okay if it's too big. I love the look of a normal-sized person wearing a big old sloppy sweater. I fully intend to be normal-sized when it gets cold enough to wear sweaters again.

I've made NO progress on the indoor painting project. None. Zilch. Nada. Nil. ZERO. Between walking, daily household chores, mowing, volunteer projects, and travel, painting has been moved to the back burner. Sadly. I'm not even going to make a whisper of a promise about when I might get back to it. Who knows? I'm thinking the spirit is going to have to move me on this one.

Week One DONE

On the whole, this Whole 30 is going really well this time. So far. You're supposed to eat enough at each meal so that between-meal snacks aren't necessary, and for the most part that's what I've done. However … when I'm too busy for lunch (my protein-packed breakfasts keep me satiated well past a normal lunch hour), I'm ravenous for dinner and I find myself picking at things after dinner, as well.

Fortunately there's nothing off-plan in my refrigerator or pantry at which to pick.

Miles per day, April.

I managed a four-mile walk yesterday during a lull in the rain. It sprinkled a couple times, but I don't melt in the rain. I'm already up to 36 miles for April, which is fairly unbelievable, but I double-checked and it's true! And 313 for the year so far, which is just the teensiest bit over the 100-mile-per-month goal.

Awesomesauce.

Our door order is complete and they will be delivered Saturday. Installation begins Monday, and we're also replacing the carpet in our tiny den with laminate flooring. I bought paint while I was arranging for the door delivery and soon – well, maybe not soon, but eventually – all our rooms will be builder beige (or a variation thereof) with white woodwork. And six-panel doors. And a front door that works.

All at the same time.

More awesomesauce.

The garden is, necessarily, being terribly neglected this spring. One can only do so much with the time one has available. Once this house project is finished, I can get to work outdoors. The weeds in the perennial beds are massive, and it's been too wet to even begin to think of working in the vegetable garden.

I'm doing tomatoes and peppers in tubs on the back porch and the garden plot is going to be cucumbers, onions, and squash, which the deer don't eat. I plan to visit the farmer's market a lot this summer, as well. It's just too heartbreaking to put all the work into a vegetable garden only to have it ravaged in one night by critters. I've gone as far with fencing as I'm willing to go. At some point, the cost-per-vegetable goes beyond reasonable when you keep buying preventive materials and products.

Okay, so we've covered running walking, eating, and reaping. I'm knitting a Wonderful Wallaby, sans pouch and hood, for myself, and have been for a couple months. I'm using a textured grey-and-white blended yarn that I've had in stock for decades. Time to use this stuff up, I'm not going to live forever! The sleeves (which I like to call swatches) were done first. I've been knitting round and round and round on the body since the Super Bowl. I might finish during the MLB playoffs.

And that, my friends, covers all the blog bases (ahem).

Time to buckle down. Again.

My weight is creeping up again.

Abandoning my 1500-mile walking goal made it So. Much. Easier. to walk fewer miles, walk less frequently and just not walk at all.

Hurting my hip didn't help this week, but that doesn't even begin to explain the lack of will I've been experiencing this summer.

I spent last Monday morning at the sewing machine, creating a Frozen cape for my younger granddaughter, who is enchanted with the icy princess Anna. As I was walking down the hall from the spare bedroom to the kitchen, I suddenly couldn't walk without pain PAIN.

I spent most of the day resting, except for a meeting that evening. I spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday morning resting and the pain had almost completely gone by Wednesday, when I had another meeting to attend.

My husband insisted I rest yesterday so I would be comfortable going out for our delayed anniversary dinner. I mostly rested, taking a little time to put some ground cover plants in the ground. (I feel lucky they've not died in their little plastic pots for the past month!) Dinner was fine, no pain at all.

I hope to walk today.

Of course, exercise isn't the only component to weight loss, just as lack of exercise isn't the only thing to blame with weight gain. I need to clean up the food plan, and late summer is the perfect time to do that. I'm going to get a few tomatoes, we've been eating summer squash almost daily, there's a row of green beans out there than needs picking and the peppers are beginning to turn orange.

Which is what they're supposed to do.

I really should have been a squash-only farmer, though. Look!

 

Butternuts on the left, and spaghetti on the right. Each plant has multiple squashes in various stages of maturity. I'm thrilled to have as much spaghetti squash as is out there. They keep for a couple of months and cooked spaghetti squash also freezes well.

So it's back to basics for me. Clean eating – no nibbles or tastes, and treats on special occasions only. Otherwise they're not treats, are they?

Time to dance – again – with the one who brought me.

More gardening

So yesterday was fun. I filled the back of our pick-up truck with a variety of shade-loving perennials and then came home and started putting them in the ground.

SO fun! Heh.

I'm quite sore this morning. And I'm not at all done planting everything, not by a long shot. And I'll probably have to go back and get more plants, so I'm really not done.

These are what's left to be planted. Hoping I
can get them all in today. If not? OH, WELL.

The beds along the driveway will, eventually, have something growing there that will live, or at least I keep hoping. If these don't make it, I'm going to remove the rock walls and plant grass seed.

The maples on either side of the driveway keep the center section in shade virtually all the time. So I'm putting ferns and shade-loving ground cover plants there. Each end has ornamental grasses, day lilies and dwarf spirea, and I have a few other little things to fill in as needed.

Yesterday's efforts involved a gas-powered tiller, a hoe, a shovel, a wheelbarrow, a trowel, my hands and knees, and three lengths of garden hose.

My attitude toward these never-ending garden chores is improving. As I mentioned a month or so ago, if I just do a little bit each day, eventually it will all get done. I'm glad I'm not having a big reunion where everything has to look good at the same time. 'Cause that ain't happening this year.

But each little area that gets weeded and trimmed and tidied up gives me a sense of accomplishment. I don't feel overwhelmed, thinking I have to do it all.

What a concept!

Wow, what a long day

Hah.

I saw so many Facebook posts yesterday humorously referring to the summer solstice, such as "looks like it's gonna be a long day," and "this day goes on and on."

But you know what? It was still just 24 hours, like the one before and like today. I hope you spent yours wisely.

I did not walk. I had a lot of trouble getting motivated to do anything yesterday for some reason. Maybe because the day just stretched e-n-d-l-e-s-s-l-y ahead of me. I finally got outside around noon to work on the perennial beds that line our driveway.

Those large maples in the yard on either side of the driveway drop their leaves, as maples do, and I hadn't yet raked from last fall. I like leaving them there over the winter, offering a bit of protection to the plants. But I gotta be honest, the driveway is the last garden area on my list of beds to tend. Maybe because I don't look at it every day.

At any rate … both sides (about 100 feet from one end to the other, so 200 feet of garden space) are now cleared of leaves. Many wheelbarrows full, dumped along the edge of the "lawn" so that if I need the leaves for compost I can easily retrieve them. Next I need to clear out the weeds to make room for new plants.

The only thing that has survived over the years are day lilies, ornamental grasses and Autumn Joy sedum. When I pulled all those leaves away, I found a tiny hosta with only two leaves and a white astilbe, already flowering. Quelle surprise! I'll probably move both of them to the brick planters in front of the house.

I talked with my friend who owns Groundworks, and we think a combination of grasses, spirea and a low-growing sedum would provide a low-maintenance solution to the problem of now what? I have plenty of creeping sedum around the front yard flower bed and it's spreading like crazy. Free plants! Might as well relocate it from where it doesn't belong, right? Better than just attacking it with a hoe.

At any rate, that was my first-day-of-summer activity. My shoulders and back are a little sore, in a good way, because I don't use those muscles just walking up and down the hills on our road. But I also didn't log any miles. Grrr. I probably could have taken a walk before all that yard work. But I know me, and I know if I had, I wouldn't have done the work. And I was much too tired afterward to walk even one mile.

I did take a walk through the vegetable garden after dinner. The summer squash is beginning to bloom, I picked three more cherry tomatoes and I think the beets have started coming up. They're slow germinators and there are already lots of weeds in that row. I'll have to wait until what I think are beets get a little more mature before I tackle that job. The winter squash is coming along, too, as are the green beans. If I can keep the deer out, this might be a decent garden year.

Have a good, good Sunday. I'm taking a long walk this morning and hope to work on those driveway weeds later today. If I don't … they'll be there tomorrow.

Swing … and a miss

Missed my 35-mile goal by three this week. Yes, I could go out right now, and I thought about it. But I'm really not very awake.

I'll be on the road for much of the day, and there will be no opportunity to work it in later. But it's fine. I'm more than a little compulsive about this, wouldn't you say? Heh.

It's been a good week, all in all, even missing a couple days of walking. Food has been fine, and I'm accomplishing a few little outdoor projects that have been on my list. The garden is completely weeded unless something has popped up overnight.

I started cleaning out the perennial beds lining the driveway yesterday – a HUGE job and one that will take several days to complete. But the nice thing about starting is the gratification I get from looking at the cleaned-out section, and looking forward to seeing all of it done and ready to plant.

I also cut back some kind of shrub that was blocking our view of oncoming traffic as we exited the driveway … wouldn't want to pull out in front of a horse and buggy! I have a grand plan for the whole sloping area to the left of the driveway. It constantly needs to be cut back, so I'd like to put down a cardboard kill mulch this fall and then plant sedum (which I can dig up from other areas of the yard – yay! Free plants!) and let it spread. I have some zebra grasses at the top of the slope which are teeny tiny now, but will be lovely when they mature.

Three areas remain that need lots of attention, and one is the herb bed, which I can barely force myself to look at. It was so pretty when I planted it, and it's such a mess now. The others are a tiny bed of peonies which needs to be weeded and the blackberries need a major cutting back. The old canes are growing every which way and the flowers are on the new growth, so I don't think I'll hurt anything by chopping them.

What I'm finding with all this yard work is that I absolutely CAN do a couple hours' of hard labor AND take a long walk AND do laundry/fix meals/clean the house/go shopping ALL on the same day. That couldn't and didn't happen 46 pounds ago. More incentive to keep doing what I've been doing.

Here's to a good week coming up – for all of us!

June 6 - Adventure

Adventures in gardening! Dill is popping up all over the place, and I didn't plant it.

And on Thursday, May 15, she rested. Maybe.

It's going to rain all. day. long. Well, maybe not all day, but when I look at the hourly forecast it's supposed to let up at noon. When I'll be in a meeting.

And so, unless something really inspires me later this afternoon, this will probably be a no-walking day. I'd like to keep the streak going, though – I haven't missed since April 7 – so I wouldn't be surprised if I hit the road later. And you shouldn't be, either! Heh.

The coming week will at least be better for walking temperature-wise than the last few days have been. If you don't get out early on a day when the thermometer rises to nearly 90 (in MAY!), you're going to suffer. Or at least I do. But we have a week of 60s and low 70s coming up – pretty perfect for walking and running and gardening.

I still don't have the fence around the garden, but I've planted the onions, summer squash, tomatoes and peppers. I dumped coffee grounds around the tomatoes and peppers, because I've heard the deer don't like the scent and, well, we have plenty of coffee grounds around here. But no fence. One does what one can.

Primary day is done and dusted. I ran unopposed for a seat on our county's Democratic Executive Committee. I didn't need to campaign, which was nice, but I was still invited to all the meet-the-candidate events, so I got to test my public speaking skills a few times. Not something I've ever been especially comfortable doing, but the older I get the less self-conscious I am. Imagine that.

Republicans don't turn out for the primaries the way Democrats do, which gives us Dems a sense of hope, looking at the numbers. But Democrats don't turn out for the general election the way Republicans do – why is that!?!?! – so we have a lot of work to do. We have some great candidates with good plans and policies, and we'll need to push, push, push to turn Democrats who vote in the primary into Democrats who vote every damned chance they get.

That would be me.

On a sad note, my neighbor died yesterday. He'd been in two different ICU units for the past two weeks, one in West Virginia and one in NC. He was married but had no children. He was a farmer and a railroader and the best neighbor anyone could ever hope for. We talked about sports and politics and weather – always the weather. He gave my grandchildren tractor rides when they visited, unasked – just showed up when they arrived and told them to get in the cab. He made sure our driveway was plowed when it snowed. He let me pick apples and turnip greens from his garden.

I'm sure going to miss him. He was only 57. A hard worker, and a good man with a fatal flaw. Rest in peace, my friend.

Oh the weather outside's delightful

Pretty sad when the only thing you can think of to blog about is the beautiful weather.

I guess it's better than the endless posts about winter, though, right? RIGHT?

Should get the right half finished today and then PLANT!

I finally got the tiller out yesterday. The upside of that is that a big chore got started. I turned over a little more than half of the area I'm going to plant. The downside is that I only walked four miles in the morning, thinking I'd get that other mile or two in later, but I was so tired and sore after tilling (I also got some weeding done in the herb bed) that I didn't get another short walk in.

WHATEVER.

I banked a couple extra miles Tuesday and Wednesday, so I'm still ahead of the game. I've already logged 26 miles this week. I'm trying to do 40/week while the weather's good, anticipating the fall and winter days when I'll end up doing less.

So today is the last day of the Gingerzingi/Knit.Run.Reap.Eat. Whole 30. Which isn't going to make a whole lot of difference in my menu planning. As both of you know, I feel/sleep/function better on a primal plan. But it'll be nice to have another pumpkin muffin made with nut flour.

I'm disappointed I didn't lose any weight. In fact, I weigh exactly the same today as I did when we began. I'd still like to lose about 20 pounds and I'm 3 points above a normal BMI.

But my size 10 jeans still fit. So there's that.

It feels way wonderful to wear clothes that fit comfortably and look nice, rather than fit comfortably and look like I'm ready for bed. Heh.

Plan the plans …

Well, replacing the pulley on the rowing machine proved to be more than I could handle. This old brain simply can't remember how I did it the last time. I have an instruction sheet, which assumes one has much more skill and intuition than I do. I've put a request in for a friend's husband to have a look at it. If he can't, I'll ask a neighbor who is handy with things like this.

I hate to admit defeat, but there you go.

Today's plan is to walk first, finish mowing next and then meet my husband at his mother's to prune her Chinese maple tree. The one that's never been properly pruned and is so overgrown it's blocking the sidewalk.

I've no idea how long that job will take.

While I was at the garden center getting pruning advice, I picked up a few herbs – rosemary, cilantro and parsley – hoping for a bit of gardening inspiration. The herb bed I so lovingly built a couple years ago is overgrown with weeds and the lemon balm has spread everywhere. It's discouraging. The comfrey, chives, rhubarb and marjoram (or is that oregano?) are doing well. Some cilantro has reseeded but that lemon balm spread into the cilantro area and I know I'm going to have to rip everything out.

I'd much rather be working on my herb bed than my mother-in-law's tree, but that tree is blocking access to the sidewalk in front of her house. It must be done.

The herbs can wait.

Anyhoo … busy day on tap and I'm going to get it started! Hope your Sunday is pleasant and peaceful and as productive as you want it to be.

Wow, way to drop the ball

So whoopsie, sorry for ignoring you this week. It was a combination of late mornings and too much to do. Something had to go, and blogging was it.

But I'm still here, alive and kicking, just too busy for words. LITERALLY! But the daily photo posts have continued, thus keeping the spirit of the daily post alive.

IF I'm going to publish a post every day, I have to be up and at 'em pretty early, in order to have some quiet time to spew reflect and record what's been happening in my head in my world. That's been impossible this week, as we had to be up early a couple of mornings to pick up our Amish neighbor, who painted our garage. He finished Thursday afternoon, I spent the rest of Thursday preparing for overnight guests and yesterday morning was fixing a big breakfast to send them on their way.

Don't get me wrong: I've had plenty of down time to cruise Facebook and Twitter and some down time to browse through Instagram and Pinterest. My email has piled up again, however, and I just can't seem to write later in the day.

So. We both got a break. You're welcome! Heh.

The Whole 30 is going well. I roasted a turkey Wednesday and have been happily eating the leftovers for lunches and snacks. I haven't yet needed to go back a year in my LoseIt files to see what I ate then, because seriously? Meat and vegetables is pretty easy to do. I'm eating lots more vegetables than I'd been eating lately. So much so that LoseIt gave me an award!

I started this Whole 30 out logging food every day, but that has quickly gone by the wayside. I do think it's a good habit to establish, however, so I'm going to begin anew today. I skipped Thursday and Friday and can't even begin to go back and figure out what I ate.

What else … I'm knitting a scarf – my least favorite project to tackle because they go on forever – and I'm loving how it looks. The yarn is a really thin white cotton with occasional slabs of either black or white. I'm using big fat needles and plain old garter stitch and it's moving along. But I still have to knit a couple more feet of plain old garter stitch before it will be long enough to call it done. It's stretchy and you'd better believe I'm going to stretchy it out as long as I can when I block it. I actually wish it would knit itself, though.

The only thing I've planted in the big garden is grass seed (in half of it). Downsizing the vegetable plot was a good idea. When I look at the remaining plantable space it'd not nearly so overwhelming to me. We have a couple more cold days coming up next week and then I think I'll begin throwing seeds in there. The herb bed is only slightly less messy than it has been – I've pulled a few dead plants, but the lemon balm took over last summer and I need to dig a lot of it out.

The one gardening success this week has been the asparagus bed. Lots of little stalks are shooting up and I was able to get the entire bed weeded and mulched before the painting project began. (The asparagus is planted next to the garage.)

And I haven't even talked about all the political stuff going on! You're welcome!

A busy week, indeed. I halfway thought about doing a local 5K this morning but I'm just not feeling it. I tripped over an exposed root out in the yard day before yesterday and I think the daily walk is as much as I want to do until my left knee feels a little better. I'm doing great with my mileage. Even skipping Monday (rain, rain, rain), at this point I still only have to average 4.6 miles/day to make the 1500-mile goal for the year. And the nicer it is outside, the farther I want to go.

Which explains why my house is such a mess.

PRIORITIES!

Spring health hazard

If you've had enough of winter, as I have, but spring weather has still not made it to your neck of the woods (I'm lookin' at YOU, northern Ohio and Canada and upstate New York and Minnesota and … well, you know who you are), may I offer a tip?

Do NOT be tempted – because the sun is shining, the temperature is moderate and the ground's not muddy – to spend an entire day DOING YARD WORK.

The yard's not going anywhere. I promise.

To be honest, I didn't weed and seed and mulch from sunup to sundown. I also took an hour-and-a-half walk, with a half hour of 60:60 intervals thrown in.

(Which, by the way, pushed the miles for the past week to more than 40. WOO HOO!)

By the end of the day I'd spread grass seed over half the former garden space, pulled a bunch of dead plants from the herb bed and completed weeding and mulching the asparagus.

I finished up my farmer chores at around 7 p.m. I am, possibly, too old to work outside from 9 in the morning until 7 in the evening. I was so sore last night. I took an Aleve and went to sleep early, which OF COURSE meant I woke up around 4 this morning, aching but well-rested.

So here I am, listening to the rain and trying to remember if anything else of significance happened yesterday.

OH! RIGHT! I started another strict Whole 3031, a day ahead of Gingerzingi, because last year's first foray into the World of Paleo began on … April 6. I'm not going to post a report every day, but I will share yesterday's kickoff report, just FYI. (Report is from LoseIt, and I haven't yet decided if I'll keep it up on a daily basis. I'm leaning toward "yes," only because keeping a food journal has been shown to aid in weight loss, and that's one of my primary reasons for repeating a strict Whole 30. It's not my only reason, however. Also, I only recorded an hour of yard work, even though I know I did way more than that. The calorie count for one hour of weeding seemed excessive to me.)

There will be no intentional activity today, because the forecast is for constant precipitation (good for that grass seed!) and because I'm going shopping. I need to be home by mid-afternoon to prepare for a 4 p.m. meeting and then there's a Meet the Candidates event at 7 this evening.

I absolutely can't imagine being this busy and actually getting this much stuff done a year ago. Increased energy + elimination of joint pain = 1 happy Debbi!

Getting sprung

I posted a photo yesterday on Instagram/Facebook/Twitter of a little white wildflower I've been seeing the last couple of days. I learned it's called bloodroot (because it has a red stem), Native Americans used it for dyeing purposes and according to one commenter bloodroot is a sure sign of spring.

There's no doubt in my mind, however, that spring has sprung here in southern West Virginia, but not because of the newly emerging bloodroot. It's because of ASPARAGUS!

Prior to the last snowfall (I pray it's the last, but one never knows), one little stalk had popped up in the asparagus bed. The cold nipped it quickly, sadly, but now that I've cut back the dead stalks and cleaned the bed up there's plenty of room for new growth. There will be enough to pick and add to an omelette by tomorrow, probably. Tuesday for sure.

Other signs of spring are showing up all over our property and neighborhood. The day lilies and lilacs are leafing out. The daffodils are putting on an impressive show. 

I've also noticed tiny leaves on the apple trees and horseradish plants pushing their way up through the dirt. 

And you know me … when the food starts growing, it's SPRING.

Who knew?

Both my father and my grandmother on my mother's side loved growing things. I have, at various times in my life, thrown some seeds in a patch of dirt and then forgot all about them, only to watch the weeds take over.

(And there was that time when the seeds really were weed. But that was long ago and far away. Another universe, possibly. Certainly another lifetime. Heh.)

But gardening has grown on me, both the food kind and the flower kind. Never have I looked forward to gardening season as much as I have this year. Who knew, indeed? The winter was far too long and dreary.

It's such a joy to look across the front yard and see bright yellow daffodils. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday afternoon cleaning out the asparagus bed and working on the perennials in the front yard. I dumped seven loads of dead leaves at the edge of the yard, available if I need them but I probably won't.

The two big differences between this year's gardening season and last year's are these:

• I'm not working at my part-time job this year, thus opening up several hours a week where I can concentrate on the yard and garden, and
• I have less pain, more energy and weigh a lot less this year, making it so much easier to move and bend and tote and haul.

And that, my friends, is more incentive for me to stick with the paleo/primal plan.

Plus I'll be making and canning my own organic, delicious SALSA in three or four months! (I eat salsa a lot.) I'm cutting the size of the garden in half this year, and concentrating on tomatoes, peppers and onions, with some Italian green beans, okra, and kale. But it's mostly going to be a salsa garden.

I haven't begun cleaning up the herb bed, which was completely neglected last year. I'm hoping the cilantro will reseed itself. But if it doesn't, I'm prepared with several packets of new seeds.

'Cause you can't make salsa without cilantro.

If my dreams have anything to say about it …

my knitting intention will be cleaning out my knitting magazines. I ripped out or copied patterns in my sleep all. night. long.

I'm not sure which method I'll choose. Ripping out means discarding the remaining periodical, because I wouldn't feel right donating it if it wasn't complete. (Although there is a local group that might be willing to take them.) Copying favorite or potential patterns is a lot more work, and uses toner (if I use our copy machine) or ink (if I use the printer).

I'm leaning toward ripping.

I've been collecting knitting magazines for years and years – Interweave Knits, Knitters and Vogue Knitting are the big three, plus many, many, many other single issues that I haven't subscribed to but thought I couldn't live without. So many patterns are now available digitally; I store them all in Dropbox. Much better to have them in the cloud and instantly available, I think, than taking up all that physical shelf space.

With Dropbox, I also can organize them – folders for pullovers, cardigans, toys, household items, for instance – so whenever I want or need to knit a particular project, I can browse easily.

As for the gardening intention … I'm cutting the size of the vegetable garden in half, and will be growing tomatoes, green beans, onions, cucumbers, okra, peppers and squash. Those are the things we eat most; there's no need to grow anything else. I'll be cleaning up the herb bed, which is a disaster but at least it's not a large space to deal with, and this is the year I work on the perennial beds lining the driveway.

I'm in much better physical shape to tackle all these projects this year, and I don't have to do it all at once. I hope an hour a day, beginning in April, will have all areas done by the end of June. If not … well, I can always extend the arbitrary deadline on gardening.

I forgot to include in yesterday's list that I'm journaling my food again. I've been tracking exercise all along – it's so easy with MapMyRun. Tracking food isn't hard, it's just remembering to do it, either when I plan my meals for the day or after I eat. (I use LoseIt! for food journaling.)

Speaking of running, I did a little bit yesterday. The middle portion of a 10K walk was 30 minutes of 1/1 intervals. I'm much slower than I was last time I did this, but that's okay. It felt great to begin a new year by picking up the pace.

Other than a bit of a cold, I'm feeing well and confident and happy and inspired to make 2014 even better than 2013 was.

Things I love

My job
I'm going to be so sad not to work at the garden center any more. My responsibilities this year have been opening in the morning (just two days a week) and watering everything, as well as helping customers and keeping things tidy. I haven't done a lot of potting, and that's fine with me. I like doing that, but I really like watering. I get to see every single plant in the nursery, what's new, what's doing well, what needs some attention … and especially what would look good in my own landscape!

XL T-shirts
I love how an XL tee covered a multitude of lumps and bumps when I was fat(ter), and now that I've dropped a few pounds makes me look kinda skinny. For instance: a collarbone peeking out of a too-big V-neck. Never thought I'd see that again!

Coffee
Especially hot coffee, ready and waiting in an insulated carafe, every morning. And the coffeemaker loaded and ready to go when I finish what's left in the carafe. Courtesy of my husband.

Pulling weeds
I don't actually like the pulling of the weeds, but I LOVE the result. It's been too hot to work on the weed project this week, but temperatures will be going back down to reasonable after today, and I'm very motivated to finish the herb bed and begin working on the vegetable garden. I saw an almost-ripe tomato out there yesterday!

Running
Wow, do I love running. Although I'm really still at the jogging stage. Maybe I should just call it "picking up the pace." My husband loves my running WAY less than I do, and cautions me DAILY to 'take it easy,' 'be careful,' 'don't hurt yourself.' I am careful and I haven't hurt myself, but I have to admit I haven't really taken it easy. I try to challenge myself, especially on Cto5K training days. I've been inching up the hills at a slightly faster pace, running halfway up some that I could barely walk up six months ago. Progress!

The hummingbird feeder
This has been the best $7 I've spent in a long, long time. Those little guys are SO entertaining! I've seen as many as three at a time, and there are only four feeding stations. Why did it take me so long to jump on the hummingbird-watching bandwagon? Maybe I thought that was something old people did. Even if it is – and even if I am – SO WHAT? I'm delighted. A shout-out to my friend Lynne, whose hummingbirds charmed and inspired me to the point where I had to get my own feeder. (She probably didn't want me as a nightly dinner guest, either.)

Fresh flowers in vases
I love flowers more than I ever thought I would. When I began gardening in earnest, I was all about food. Heirloom tomatoes and several varieties of squash and unusual (at least for me) beans. The vegetable garden these days has been pared down to a minimum, and the flower beds have taken center stage. I love bringing an armful of black-eyed susans or hydrangea blooms inside to brighten up our dining-room table. Next year's vegetable plot will be cut in half, to make it more manageable. It's that getting-old thing.

Getting old …
and being healthy, pain-free and able to enjoy finding new and interesting ways to fill my days. I'm not really old, right? Sixty-two is the new 50. RIGHT? I'm sure not getting any younger chronologically, but I feel better than I did when I was 61, so there's that progress thing again. HOWEVER … my first Social Security check gets deposited in less than a week. That's the kind of old-person benchmark I'm happy to claim!

YOUR TURN
One thing … what do you love? Don't think hard about it, just leave a quick comment. What have I forgotten? What would you add? What's on your list?

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!

Reaping

I've pulled all the garlic and it looks good. The heads aren't quite as large as last year's, but they're plenty big. I didn't plant quite as much this year, which turned out to be a good thing since I still have quite a bit of last year's harvest "in stock."

I've been adding cherry tomatoes, both yellow and red, to salads for the past week or so, and there will be plenty more from the two pots on the patio. The garden tomatoes aren't doing very well. The plants are small and there are only one or two fruits on each one. I may have to – gasp! – buy tomatoes at the farmer's market for canning this year.

Half a dozen onions were large enough to dig up, and there will be many, many more. Yes, onions are cheap and easy to find at the market, but they're also easy to grow and I find it very satisfying to add a homegrown onion to our daily fare. At least for a couple months, until I run out of them.

Zucchini, as you probably know, can be prolific. I bought four plants and planted six hills of seeds. I've yet to harvest a single fruit. Every tiny zucchini on the plants has, so far, turned yellow. I've been pulling them off, hoping for green ones that will actually grow and this morning I found two. So we'll see.

The seeded plants are growing well but have no flowers yet, and I have rows of cucumbers, butternuts and cushaws, each growing like the weeds which have taken over most of the garden space.

I'm really, really hungry for gazpacho – I'm pretty sure cavewomen didn't have tomatoes, but for those of us in the modern world following a paleo plan, gazpacho has to be one of the more perfect dishes. I can't bring myself to pay $2.99/pound for tomatoes, which is what Tiny Kroger is still charging for them, when I'll have ripe ones in my back yard in a couple of weeks.

I didn't mind paying $2.49/pound for spaghetti squash when I found it at Big Huge Kroger when I went shopping yesterday. It took most of a $20 bill to pay for two large ones. I stopped at another market on the way home that had them for $1.39/pound, so I added one more to my inventory. And wished I'd stopped there first!

I started feeling not-so-great at dinner last night (chicken taco salad, mmmm), and took my temperature, which was a couple degrees higher than normal. No other symptoms, but I went to bed super-early and slept for 12 hours. Something must have been going on. It's over now, and I'm ready for a walk and then work. It's raining very lightly, but I think I'll walk between the raindrops and just do it.

Wouldn't that make a great motivational poster? Heh.