We're in for it now

Yesterday was SO gorgeous. Mid-60s, crisp and clear, bright sun, a slight breeze and I had nothing inside the house that was pressing. No chores, no laundry, no guests … for once, the interior of my home was in decent shape. The only agenda yesterday was to wait for the door delivery.

Offering us plenty of time to pay attention to the outside.

Our perennial gardens are full of weeds, and the beds are large. No way I can do all of them all at once. Frequently while weeding I wish for a magic gardener to come along and fill all my buckets and wheelbarrows with what doesn't belong in the garden. Never happens, and yesterday was no exception. So while I filled one big bucket-on-wheels (I think it holds about 25 gallons), my husband picked up fallen tree branches.

The Yellow Transparent is NOT shedding limbs, but is full
of buds – potential apples. So is the Granny Smith. YAY!

Lest you think that's a small chore, we have three acres of mowable grass, and more than a dozen trees.

So what are we in for? GREAT weather – today and tomorrow will be slightly warmer, but the rest of the week promises mid- to upper 60 temperatures, which is perfect for outdoor work.

Because we needed to stick close to home, waiting for the doors, my miles were broken up into several small walks. I went to the water pump to take a reading (still having problems there) – that's 1.4 miles. I walked to the post office and back, for another 1.6. Then three separate walks at different times in the afternoon and early evening from my driveway to the first driveway on the right, up the road a half a mile, and I managed to get six miles for the day.

The sixth mile wouldn't have happened if I hadn't checked the FitBit and noticed I only needed another thousand steps to hit 20K. I actually ended up with 22,039 by the time I went to bed.

The morning door delivery we requested stretched into 3:30 pm, but Lowes refunded the delivery charge and some additional money for our trouble, appeasing our frustration. We've had nothing but great service since we began our remodeling project – a definite change from the Lowes of yore – and so the delivery snafu was unexpected and disappointing. But the resolution was satisfactory.

So there's that.

Food continues to be on plan. I made another pork tenderloin yesterday and we have enough left for two more meals. Which is good, because when I'm working outside for hours on end, I don't feel like starting dinner from scratch. I'm going to slice and warm some of the roast tonight and throw a pan of vegetables into the oven – peppers, onions, cauliflower, zucchini, asparagus and carrots – and call it a meal.

Day Eleven DONE!

A spring in my step

I can't remember a nicer spring than this one. Frequently here in southern West Virginia we move straight from winter to summer, with maybe a week of moderate temperatures to mark the transition. We haven't had a truly hot day yet. It's cool enough in the evenings to need a jacket. We still keep a just-in-case blanket folded at the foot of the bed.

Yesterday might have been the warmest day – we noted it was 82 in town, but it's always a bit cooler on our little mountain. My husband and I walked together again yesterday, down by Indian Creek, and it was pretty warm there. I'd watched the Boston Marathon (congratulations, Meb and Rita and everyone who started!) while I finished up that design job and was inspired to do one of my Run Double interval trainings.

I chose the 60:30 one. I've been doing the 60:60 option (Run Double has lots of training routines), but I'm trying for a 30-minute 5K. I figured if I ran twice as much as I walked, I might be able to add a little distance.

And I did, logging 2.63 miles in the 30-minute interval phase of yesterday's workout, instead of the sub-2.5 I've been doing. Walked and ran 7.07 miles total in 1:45, which is slightly less than a 15-minute pace. The longest distance I've done recently during the interval training is 2.7 miles. So lots of room for improvement.

At any rate … it feels so good to me to move faster, even when I was dying of thirst on the way back and even though I forgot my visor and even though my right calf was cramping and, and, and … I love to run. What else can I say? I wish I loved lifting weights, if only because grabbing a glass of water is so much easier.

Maybe I need to set a dumbbell goal the way I've set a running goal. I'll have to think about that one. Your suggestions are welcome on this. I'd hoped to reach my weight goal by my birthday (May 25), but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

So … your assignment is: What can I do with light weights in the next 34 days that would be significant and challenging, but not be overwhelming or feel like punishment? Help me out here, I can't afford a personal trainer! Heh.

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.

Preparations

I walked yesterday, a nice loooong walk in which I was not at all in a hurry to be done. I wasn't in a hurry while I was actually walking, either, as my pace ended up being just slightly faster than 3 mph. But the distance was seven miles. I would have been awfully tired on the way back had I been going much faster.

Or so I like to tell myself. Justification and rationalization can be very good buddies.

It was a perfect day for walking – upper 60s, breezy, sunny. Spring is here, finally.

It occurred to me as I was ambling along that the by-the-book Whole 30 I'm doing with Gingerzingi will begin a year and a day after the first one I did last spring. I might have to do a Whole 31, and begin anew on the same day as last year.

This week has been pretty good. It's easy to get off track, but knowing I've made this commitment makes me want to stay ON track. A few days of clean eating and several decent walks have made a weight-loss difference in the amount of two pounds this week. It's so very nice to see the number go back down again, and it reinforces for me the idea that this thing really works.

For me.

I'm going to make some pumpkin muffins (using almond meal and coconut flour), because I've been wanting "bready" things but haven't taken the time to make them using paleo/primal ingredients. Much easier to eat a saltine or 10.

And I always pay for it – with achy joints and interrupted sleep – when I eat a saltine or 10.

Mostly, though, I'm ready.

And I'm especially ready for more long walks. I'd hoped to make it to 100 miles in March, but that didn't happen. In fact, I fell well short. But each month's mileage grows and I'm still going to work hard to hit the 1500-mile goal by New Year's Eve.

A week ago I had to lose 19.5 pounds to reach a normal BMI. Today it's down to 17.5. That's 5.5 more than my lowest weight last year. Winter was brutal, outdoors and in!

This week's progress makes me feel so, so hopeful.

At the prison last night I happened to run into a woman who used to come to the AA meeting. I recognized her, and wished her well, and she shared with me that she'd be leaving soon, going back home to St. Louis.

She asked me what my volunteer service was. I told her, and she said she used to go to that meeting and had, in fact, been the group leader for a month. She absolutely didn't recognize me as the same person.

A little thing, perhaps, to not be recognized by someone who you didn't know very well anyway.

But a big thing, too.

May 17 - Season

'Tis a misty May morning, indeed. Spring has sprung!

Time's a wasting!

Here it is Wednesday again, a work day for me, and I have to leave the house in an hour. I'm still drinking coffee, haven't eaten breakfast or gotten dressed, and I need to Swiffer the floors. Instead, I've been cruising Pinterest, clearing out e-mail, catching up on Facebook and thinking about what (or whether) to write. You know, since I posted twice yesterday.

That run felt darned good. And I'm not especially sore this morning because of it. I could very well do it again this afternoon, weather permitting.

It rained overnight, and there's more rain coming in today, so the weather may not be permitting. Perhaps Mother Nature is trying to tell me I don't have to run two days in a row.

But. Still. It did feel good.

I planted one row of onions yesterday afternoon. The remaining sets will go in the ground in two weeks and again in four weeks. The really big gardening job is going to be simply going through the seed inventory to see what I have and what I still need. Most gardeners do this in February. I'm a little late.

However. Working at a garden center means the seeds and plants I will need are at my fingertips. It's not like I need to place orders and anticipate deliveries.

Things are really growing around here. I planted some pink tiger lily-type bulbs last year and they're coming up. I'd forgotten where I put them. It's very fun to watch the perennial bed come back to life.

And a little chocolate mimosa tree has teeny tiny new green growth on it. I thought for sure I'd killed it, as I am wont to do.

Okay, for not having much to say I've managed to say quite a bit. Time to get this party started. Today's photo prompt is "busy," which I plan to be very soon.

'Tis a work day

And again, I got up a little later than I usually do and find myself scrambling for my "me" time before I go to the garden center.

The weather outside is DELIGHTFUL, and it will be a good day to be outdoors. The temperature should get into the low 80s by this afternoon.

As both of you know, I volunteer at a women's prison on Tuesday evenings. I kind of expected it to cool off last night, so I wore a long-sleeved top. When I got into the room where we meet, it was NINETY-TWO FREAKIN' DEGREES! I thought some of the women were going to pass out.

We got permission from the staff to meet outside. The prison has this crazy rule that they keep the heat on in all buildings until May 1. What's bad about that is that it frequently gets pretty chilly in May, when no heat at all is available. I'm quite sure I could save the government some money if they put me in charge of the Bureau of Prisons. I especially have some ideas on how to reduce payroll expenses. Heh.

I hope you're having a good week so far, and if spring is supposed to be springing, I hope you can get outdoors to enjoy it. That's exactly what I plan to do.

Right now.

March 19 - A sign

of spring!

March 17 - Green

Chives, growing indoors for now but soon to go back outside! Yay, spring!

Mother Nature is conspiring against me

Well, she IS!

The forecast is for rain and rain and rain, today and tomorrow and maybe even Tuesday. Not only will the rivers rise, wreaking havoc on the garden center … again … but this kind of steady rain rarely offers a window of opportunity to get outside to walk.

Days like this are exactly why I have an elliptical.

I'll have to check today's movies to see what might keep me going for more than an hour. (Speaking of movies, I saw the very entertaining Oz the Great and Powerful yesterday at the theatre and my husband and I watched The Help [again] on television last night. I'm definitely in a movie mood.)

Enough of that. Happy St. Patrick's Day! My family is German, Irish and Welsh, and my husband's is Scottish, so we've got plenty of blarney to go around here. I'm making a traditional Irish feast today, carbs be damned. I've never made Irish soda bread before; I'm using Jenna's recipe for my first attempt. And we're even having dessert.

But, wait! This isn't a food-porn blog, it's a … knitting blog! Heh.

I've been working on a square – that's right, just a square – which will be sewn and stuffed to make a bunny. I can't remember when I began knitting it, but it's been more than a week. FOR A SQUARE! And then last night I finished it off and started and finished a second one, all while watching The Help. Not sure where that knitting mojo came from, but I'm glad it did. My Democratic women's group meets this Thursday, and I'm hoping we complete an armload of bunnies to donate to the sheriff's department, who will then take them on domestic violence calls for any children involved. In order to complete them, however, we need squares.

It's also a reaping (gardening) blog, from spring through fall, and spring arrives this week. My seeds have been ordered and I have a neighbor with a load of sawdust-and-manure ready to spread on the garden, if it ever dries up enough to do that. I still need to buy electric fence tape. The very bold deer have been grazing on the lawn like cattle this winter, and the thin wire I've been using didn't keep them out of the crops last year. The garlic has started coming up and I expect to see horseradish soon.

Even though the first day of spring isn't until Wednesday, today – St. Patrick's Day – has always seemed like the first day to me. So, kiss me, I'm Irish, and go plant a potato!

The weekly wrap-up ... move along, there's nothing to see here

Ten hours and 40 minutes of logged activity (not counting housework, I never count that).

Thirty-two miles of outdoor walking or working out on the elliptical – mostly walking.

An approximate calorie deficit for the week of 1800, and I didn't go over the limit once, not one day.

A gain of 1.5 pounds.

What the hell?

I understand that a gain at this point may be attributable to water retention in my very sore muscles. And they are, indeed, very sore. Twenty of those 32 miles happened Friday, Saturday and Sunday. If there were a figure of speech like "her eyes were bigger than her stomach" that correlated to walking, you could insert it here.

I am really loving walking outdoors, and the weekend weather was simply perfect. That eight-miler Friday afternoon whetted my appetite for more. My friend and I decided to walk 10K Saturday because it was so gorgeous and why not keep walking? And I talked my husband into another 10K yesterday. I tried urging him on to seven miles but he wasn't buying it.

This tiny creek meandered
beside us for most of our
trek. Truly, a babbling brook!

We walked a new route, one we'd driven previously to make sure it wasn't too strenuous. The road mostly goes beside a tiny creek that then flows into Indian Creek. There were a few gentle hills and a couple friendly dogs, but mostly it was just the two of us in some beautiful country.

Who put this hill here? I surely
didn't remember it coming down!

Sunday's walk was nine minutes longer than Saturday's of the same distance. My husband doesn't walk as fast as my friend does. And we did have to stop and play with puppies a couple of times. And there were hills, which slow me down. But I wasn't going for speed, I was just … going. It was 64 degrees and sunny, with a gentle breeze. Simply perfect.

So all that activity and a week of good eating and I gain weight. AND I'M NOT THROWING MYSELF OFF A BRIDGE! (One of the many, heh.) Because you know what? I tried on a pair of jeans I haven't worn in two years and, while I wouldn't want to wear them out of the bedroom, I can at least get them on and zipped, with considerable effort. When I tried them on in January, I couldn't even get them up past my hips. So something is working. And I can't stay this weight forever.

Right? RIGHT? RIGHT?????

March 10 - I want …

spring! Apple blossoms and daffodils and green grass and asparagus and
all kinds of shoots and sprouts and growth. Spring! Bring it on!

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow!

The streets and driveway are snow-covered this morning and it's freaking COLD outside! I did 40 minutes on the elliptical yesterday (no workouts the previous two days, alas) and it looks like I'll be hitting it again today. I also will be doing a major housecleaning today, in preparation for company later this week.

But tomorrow? Mostly sunny and 43°? I will be OUTTAHERE! I think I could actually be outtahere every day except Wednesday. Usually when the forecast calls for rain there's a little dry time – enough for a three- or four-miler, anyway.

Spring is taking her sweet time this year. Everyone I know is ready for winter to be done and dusted. I can't really say that March has come in like a lion, but she sure hasn't shown up like a lamb, either!

Thought for the day

Here's what popped into my inbox this morning from the Universe:

Whoohoooooo, Debbi! Guess what? Everything, absolutely everything you've ever wanted, now lies within reach! Of course ... you still have to reach.  Tallyho,     The Universe

Not much reaching going on yesterday, unfortunately, but I really, really, really needed a rest. I rarely nap, but I went to bed after lunch and slept until 4 p.m. Completely unlike me, which is how I know I needed it. I had a sore throat and a headache, but am much better this morning. In fact, I feel fine, fine enough to get out to the grocery in a little while.

Yesterday was the first day since Christmas that I ate more than the calorie limit AND skipped a workout on the same day. It all averages out, though. I'm still committed to my eat-healthy-and-workout-regularly plan, and I trust that I'll be more fit as time goes on. Whether I'm less fat remains to be seen, but I'm a patient person.

This month's NaBloPoMo theme is Risk. I have more than a little experience along those lines, and I might actually respond to some of the prompts this month. It's an interesting topic to explore, particularly for someone whose motto used to be "If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space." Ah, those were the days.

Part of my recent malaise – perhaps most of it – is the weather. We're not marveling at the mild winter this year, as we did the last one. We're filling the ice-melt bucket and keeping the shovel handy and securing things that will blow away in the wind and oh, how we're wishing for spring. I have a work day at the greenhouse coming up in a couple of weeks and I can't wait to get my hands dirty. We're going to put 2,000 tiny baby annuals (they're called plugs) into pots, starting them on their journey from a commercial greenhouse to your gardens.

And mine.

The first breath of spring comes from the garden, doesn't it?

Or maybe the bakery. The Amish bakery down the road opens today! Yay! I need oats and eggs and a loaf of their good old-fashioned whole wheat bread.

Happy March. What says "spring" to you?

January 29 - Grow

Another shot of the too-early-to-sprout daffodils.

Spring-ish

Look closely at those little green shoots poking up from that patch of dirt. This photo was taken at a rest stop in east Tennessee, near Bristol, late yesterday afternoon as I made my way back home from Nashville.

Those are daffodils. January 13, 2013. Mine are popping up, as well. See?

But you know what? I went back in my photo files and found a similar shot taken on January 20 of last year. And they bloomed when they were supposed to. Well, maybe a little earlier than expected, but the early growth spurt didn't results in a lack of flowers.

I'm not sure what to think of this. Winter isn't even a month old and I'm seeing robins and daffodils, two sure-fire signs of spring, at least in my mind.

It was 70° in Nashville Friday and Saturday. A cold front has now moved through – if I were still there, I'd be appropriately dressed. As it was, I was too warm in my long-sleeved shirts. I didn't even take my jacket out of the car. And it was a good thing I packed two dress-up ensembles, as the one with the quilted jacket would have been far too warm to wear to the performance I went to Saturday evening.

Which was lovely, by the way. My granddaughter is so talented and so graceful, a natural at dance. Watching her move delights me.

And I am beyond grateful she inherited the lithe, lean genes of her mother, who got them from her father, rather than the vertically challenged and horizontally enhanced ones from my side of the family.

LoseIt!'s week begins on Monday, while mine begins on Wednesday. (You perpetual dieters will know what that means.) LoseIt! sends a report every Monday letting you know how you've done. As I'm only weighing myself once a month, I have no loss to report, but I've stayed below the calorie limit every day since I began 20 days ago (-5519 calories), and have managed to rack up 18 hours and 10 minutes of intentional activity (nearly an hour a day!).

Not bad for an old lady.

The cold front that moved through Nashville is heading toward southern West Virginia. There's a lull in the rain right now, and the temperature is manageable, in the low 40s. If I'm going to walk outdoors today, this would be the time to do it. (My designated Monday rest day got switched to yesterday again. Two consecutive weeks! Perhaps I should re-think the rest day plan. Or perhaps I should continue to remain flexible.)

One more cup of coffee 'fore I go …

Because I'm OCD like that

Okay, I'm going to start posting photo-a-day here beginning April 1. (No, I'm not joking.) Thanks for your input and I'll be sure to clearly label the photo posts with a date and subject so you don't have to look if you don't want to.

I do like things to be tidy and neat (usually, I'm having a little trouble finding time to clean my house lately), which is why I'm going to switch on the first day of the month.

The tidy-and-neat-and-wanting-to-finish-things-in-one-session character trait flaw got the best of me yesterday. It was another beautiful day here in the Middle of Nowhere, a perfect day to work on the new herb bed I'm putting in this spring.

Clicking on the link will take you to the beginning stages of the project, where we laid out the area and covered it with a kill mulch. We used a layer of cardboard, a layer of compost and a layer of straw, and then we used the area for composting over the winter. We stopped adding vegetable matter to it a couple months ago.

The herb bed yesterday morning at 11:30 a.m. The white things
are coffee filters, and there are several large dandelions in there.
My mission was to spade the entire area.

I knew I would be lightly tilling it when I was finished turning it over with a spade, so I got the tiller out of the shed and let it sit in the sun while I worked. A warm tiller is easier to start than a cold one. That's your gardening tip du jour.

One way to tell if you have decent soil is by noting how many worms turn up as you dig. The true worm test is to dig an area one foot square and one foot deep and place that soil on a piece of cardboard. Sift through the dirt and count how many earthworms you find – 10 is a good indication that your soil is healthy.

Since I was digging such a large area anyway, I just decided to see if I saw any worms at all. And I did! In every spadeful of turned earth I found at least one and usually three or four worms. Decomposed cardboard must be especially tasty to worms.

Two and a half hours later my crop circle was done. The next step is to ring it with rocks and create individual pie slice-shaped beds for various culinary, fragrant and medicinal herbs. There will be LOTS of basil, that much I know for sure. I've opened my next-to-last jar of frozen pesto.

Next step: Rocks!

I also tilled the vegetable garden again; weeded another row of onions; really, really, really thought about uncovering the strawberries, and mowed another big part of the lawn field.

I came in around 4 p.m., dirty, exhausted and wishing I had a cook. Oh! Right! I'm the cook. Here's what we had for dinner, and it was DELICIOUS. Sounds wacky, but the combination was really, really good; I had all the ingredients (except I subbed asparagus for the carrots), and it was easy to throw together. I rested after dinner and didn't stop resting until … this morning!

So that was my second day of spring, which is totally coming in like a lamb. How was yours?

Eleven weeks, nine pounds

Slow and steady wins the race, right? Well, unless you're running a marathon. Then you'd probably better pick up the pace.

So. On the last day of winter, I mowed the lawn. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I've never cut the grass the first time in the season before spring actually arrived.

After yesterday's slow start, I ended up getting a LOT done.

• Client meeting
• Workout
• Grocery
• Weeding a flower bed
• Mowing the front lawn field
• Tilling a little bit of the vegetable garden
• Digging up three plants
• Moving one of the plants to a new location
• Fixing dinner

Not a bad day after all. And seeing that I'm down a pound this morning from last week makes me think the first day of spring is starting out pretty well, too!

Except for the little bit of chest pain I had about half an hour ago.

It was scary, but it's gone now – completely gone, no worries, my husband's a doctor and believe me if he thought there was anything to worry about we would already be at the hospital. I've made an appointment for a general check-up because, well, it was scary. It's been a couple years since I've been to the doctor for anything, so it just makes sense to go in and let Dr. C have a look.

Lots of things can cause the symptoms I had: stress, acid reflux, hiatal hernia, heart disease. Pick one! I'm going with acid reflux until I find out otherwise.

Happy first day of spring to you. May your heart always be joyful. And may it not hurt.

So, so tired

Four toddlers will do that to you.

About an hour ago I started to perk up a little bit, so I went out to cut back the asparagus to make room for the new stuff which should be popping up soon. Imagine my surprise when I found this!

 And this!

It was April before we ate the first stalks last year.

The daffs are doing well, and the sedum looks great. I planted tons of creeping sedum last year and it's all come back. The lilacs are budding out, as are the apple trees and the redbud I planted in memory of my dad.

In other words, spring isn't tired at all! Yay!