Good-bye to August...

Sad to see you go since you gave us the little bit of actual summer weather that we had this year. It's already starting to feel like fall. The days can be sunny and warm, but it cools down quickly once evening rolls around.

It feels like it's been a bit of a lazy month. As far as exercise goes, I stuck to my Fat Blasting Boot Camp Schedule, but didn't do much else. Lately I just feel like I don't have time to get anything done - not sure why, it's not like things are any different than they ever were. But it seems like getting in the boot camp workouts is as much as I can manage. At least they are butt-kicking workouts!

I started the final 4 week phase tonight. This is the first time that I actually couldn't do everything in the routine. There were 4 sets of walking push ups in the strength series and 3 sets of push ups with mountain climbers in the cardio series. Each set is 10 push ups, so that would have been 70 push ups total. I managed the walking push ups. When the first set of the push ups with mountain climbers came around I did try. Managed 5 or 6, but that was it, so I just did the mountain climbers. Second time around I tried to do a push up and knew right away it was not going to happen, so the second and third sets were just mountain climbers. I sort of feel like I failed. But, I've got 4 weeks to try and work up to doing them all. No promises, but I'll do my best.

August
Aug 31: FBBC Week 11 Workout A[40 mins]
Aug 29: FBBC Week 10 Workout C[35 mins]
Aug 26: FBBC Week 10 Workout B[30 mins]
Aug 25: Walk[20 mins]
Aug 24: FBBC Week 10 Workout A[35 mins]
Aug 22: FBBC Week 9 Workout C[35 mins]
Aug 19: FBBC Week 9 Workout B[30 mins]
Aug 17: FBBC Week 9 Workout A[30 mins]
Aug 15: FBBC Week 8 Workout C[45 mins]
Aug 14: Gentle Hatha Flow #2[45 mins]
Aug 13: Walk[25 mins]
Aug 12: FBBC Week 8 Workout B[30 mins]
Aug 10: FBBC Week 8 Workout A[35 mins]
Aug 08: FBBC Week 7 Workout C[45 mins]
Aug 06: FBBC Week 7 Workout B[30 mins]
Aug 05: Treadmill walk[45 mins]
Aug 04: FBBC Week 7 Workout A[35 mins]
Aug 02: Kickboxing: Core Cross Train[45 mins]

I got an iPhone recently and I set it up so that I can post from my phone to the blog. I played around with a couple of posts (below) and it is pretty quick and painless to send a photo and bit of text.

I've thought about food blogging. I like reading food blogs. I like food. I can see the advantages - it would keep one accountable, it would be easy to go back and review. I'm sure it would also make one think twice about eating something, which could be a good thing.

Flip side, I think I would feel pressure to always have interesting meals. It's one more thing to add to a to-do list that I already have a hard time keeping up with.

So I just don't know. It's something I keep thinking about, but I haven't come to a decision yet. I may play around with it for the next little while and see how it goes.

Stay tuned for more schizophrenic blogging...

Hodge Podge

It's that time of year! Leftovers from Hodge Podge made last night.
Easy supper. :)

Just for sake of comparison - took a photo of the Hodge Podge with my camera as well. Above photo is from my iPhone.

Testing

Let's see if my iPhone can turn me into a food blogger...

Lazy Blogger

I apologize for being such a lazy blogger lately. I don't seem to have energy for anything extra at the moment. I'm doing the things I need to do, and that's pretty much it. And tonight my internet connection seems to be ridiculously slow - not sure what's going on but I don't have the patience for it.

Just wanted to throw a short post up to say that I am still alive and kicking and hopefully things will be back to normal soon.

Too hot to blog...

The weather turned extremely hot at the end of last week - particularly the weekend. Like gross hot. Too-hot-to-move hot.

Saturday I did move - we were going to one of our theme dinners - the theme of the evening being appetizers. So I went out and got groceries, came home and did my boot camp, then spent the afternoon in the kitchen. I was drained. Wilted.

Fortunately, our friends have air conditioning in their house. Every so often, Husband will bring up the subject of getting some sort of air conditioner. But I always say we don't get extremely high temperatures often enough to need it; he has one in his computer room, so we can get by. But this weekend was just nasty.

Sunday I did as little as possible. And ended up camped out with Husband in his computer room to enjoy some air conditioning.

I did venture outside in the evening. It hadn't cooled down much at all, but some of my plants actually needed watering - first time all summer.

As soon as I came in the gate I saw this:



My first (non-cherry) tomato of the season!



Yesterday was still hot, but not quite as bad. Which is good since it was another boot camp day.

Today was supposed to be cooler - I'm sure that's what I saw when I looked at the weather forecast yesterday. So I was thinking I'd come home from work and do some house cleaning because things are in pretty bad shape around here. But, we arrived home to a wall of heat. Back to the air conditioned computer room I went. It's starting to cool off a bit now, but it takes our house so long to cool down.

I don't like to complain about the heat, after all my griping about the constant rain, but this is a bit much.

Anyway, out to water my garden again and have a bit of a look at things...

My other variety of miniature cucumber is starting to produce.



And my Rocky Cucumber is still going.



More tomatoes!





I didn't spend much time out there though because the mosquitoes were pretty vicious. However, I came in with:



Some string beans; there are more on the plant that are not far behind, so I'll collect them in the fridge until I have a decent amount. I did dig up a bulb of garlic, and it's pretty small so I'd say I'll be taking The Bag Lady's advice and leaving most of in the ground until next year.

When I put all the tomatoes together like this, I was actually surprised at what I have so far:



All I've eaten so far is a few of the Cupids. I know, what's wrong with me? I think it's the heat...

Wednesday Garden Report

Halfway through the work week already! Today was a lovely sunny day, warm with a pleasant breeze. A beautiful day to be outside; too bad I spent most of it in an office.

I walked up to the City Market and finally found a basket of decent looking peaches at Pete's Frootique. Aren't they pretty?



Right after work I did Boot Camp B for this week, then before supper I went out for a walk around the garden. Look what I found!









I love tomatoes!

I can't wait to see what these ones are going to look like. They are called "Striped Cavern", but we've got a ways to go yet by the looks of it.



I so want to dig up a bulb of garlic. This is my first year growing it and according to the instructions it's ready when the tops turn yellow. The ones that were planted earliest are definitely looking more yellow than the later plants, but I don't know how yellow they should be...



My lone Green Bean:



There are more on the plants, but just little ones that are not ready to pick. This vine is still trying to climb - I need some taller poles.



The Bag Lady sent me some Poppy seeds last year. I planted some outside but they didn't grow - a common theme this year. But I also started some inside and planted them in a pot. They bloomed a while back, but I didn't think to take any pictures. Today I noticed another bloom so I made sure to get a picture. Thank you Bag Lady!



So this was my big harvest for today:



I ate them and I did not even offer to share the bounty.

Weekend recap

The weekend flew by. Nothing too exciting - just doing things around the house.

We had some leftover Chipotle Peppers in Adobo sauce in the fridge, and I started wondering if I could make Chipotle Salsa. Once I start thinking about something like that, I'm not happy until I try. It's too early for field ripened tomatoes around here, which make the best salsa, but I found some organic vine ripened hot house tomatoes that looked half decent. It was an experiment, so I just made a small batch anyway.

I ended up with 3 jars of Lime & Chipotle Salsa, and about half a cup left over. In the back there are some miniature cucumbers that I picked off my plant on Saturday as well.





I taste tested with these Artisan bread crisps which are pretty tasty.





I'm not sure what I think of the Chipotle flavor in the salsa. I keep going back and taste testing. Obviously it's not terrible, because I keep eating it, just not sure if I like it enough to make it again or if I'd rather stick to my usual. One moment I think I don't like the smokey flavor, next minute I decide that it's good, especially with the lime in there as well. We'll see.

It was insanely hot on Saturday. After I finished slaving away in the kitchen, I went down to the basement to get in my final boot camp workout for the week. I think Workout C of this phase may kill me. It took me 45 minutes. Then again, maybe it was just the heat and the fact that I hadn't been feeling so hot all weekend anyway. Guess we'll see how it goes this week.

After my workout, I took a shower, then took my baby for a walk. It was a pretty nice evening.







Then I planned to have supper and relax for the rest of the evening. Some of the neighborhood deer put in an appearance, and this is how confident these guys are.

The neighbors came out, got in their car, backed out of the driveway and drove away; the deer kept munching on their lawn.





Sunday I did some work in the yard. Our landscapers discovered that we have cinch bugs which are killing our grass. The worse was the area outside the cat fence, so they sprayed out there, but they know I prefer not to spray inside the fence if I done have to. Since the situation was not as bad inside the fence, they explained to me how I could get rid of them in a cat-friendly way. Not particularly JavaChick friendly though. It was a slow process and it was really hot out.

Basically, I made a homemade insecticidal soap. I would spray spots on the lawn where it looked like the cinch bugs were killing the grass, then lay a cloth over it. I'd let it sit for awhile, then lift up the cloth. If there were little red cinch bugs on it, I'd brush them off into a bucket of the insecticidal soap and put the cloth back down. I'd repeat on that spot until it seemed like they were all gone. While I was waiting, I did some weeding in the gardens.

Fun, no?



When it got too hot and I felt like I'd had enough sun, I came in the house for a break. Then I did some house cleaning. After supper I went out in the yard to do some more work. I took out the citronella torches that I bought in the spring at the dollar store.



I also had to prop up my grape/cherry tomato plants that had fallen right over.



My gardens have been pretty neglected this year - so much rain, it has hardly ever been decent to go out and do any gardening. Fortunately, things seem to survive without my interference. :)



So no formal workout on Sunday, but it was a busy day and I was tired by last night.

Today it was back to my Boot Camping. Then I made Penne pasta with Shrimp & Vodka Sauce for supper. Tasty way to end the day.

Weekly Garden Report - Vol VI

Welcome to this weeks garden report - a little later than usual. We've actually had some sun this week which is exciting. We still had some rain, but at least it wasn't every day!

I think we are entering Tomato Watch Season.

These are Sweet Cluster tomatoes, and it may be hard to tell from photos on a monitor, but they are definitely showing a change in color - a little more yellow, a little less green...







I think the Cupids are going to win the race again though.



For those following along from my Garden Q&A: The Sweet Cluster tomatoes were started from seed and are growing in the ground; the Cupids came from the garden center and are growing in a container.

My little bell pepper is coming along as well.



Here we have some cute little onions:



Not sure how well you'll be able to see this but I think it looks pretty neat. This is a bean plant that has wound it's way up a pole, then reached over to latch onto a taller pole.





I'm even starting to get some green beans. Hopefully my beans will do better than my snap peas did.



I just think that's a pretty photo.

Last but not least, I picked some lettuce last night and pulled a few more carrots.



One of the carrots looks like it has a nose.



It made me think of Watto from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace for some reason. Or Gonzo the Great. So much fun to be had in the garden!

JavaChick's Garden Q & A - Vol I

When I saw Merry's question on this post I thought it might be fun to do a post in reply. It's taken me a while, but I'm finally here to do just that. Please note: I do not claim to be an expert; I just like playing in the dirt.

So, without further ado, I give you JavaChick's Garden Q & A!

(I know you're all at the edge of your seats with excitement. Tee hee!)

Merry asked: And when you get back, please tell me: did you grow your tomato plants from seeds or plant them as starts?

I've got Gardener's Envy. (Or Gardener's Chagrin, the symptoms are identical.) The tomato plants that I grew from seed are teeeensy tiny little things. while the one tomato plant that I bought as a start is looking more like yours. Not sure if the fault is in my seeds or in myself.

The short answer is: most of my tomato plants were started from seed, though I did buy a couple at the garden center. My dad, who has been gardening for years, usually buys his at a greenhouse. You're guaranteed to get strong plants that are well along that way, and it's a lot less work. But in the dead of winter, I page through seed catalogs and see all kinds of interesting varieties that I'd like to grow and I can't resist. Because that is the downfall of buying your plants at a greenhouse - at least around here - you don't tend to have as many choices in varieties.

As I say though, it is a bit of work.

I started my seeds at the beginning of April, and from that time on the gardening operation took over a good amount of space in my kitchen. The seed trays got the choice location - right in front of the patio doors where they would get the maximum amount of sun.



I like that tray on top, with the nice high plastic dome. That's what I use to start my tomatoes and peppers.

I start them in Jiffy Pots which can in turn be planted directly in soil. Much easier later on.



Somewhere around the middle of May, I started transferring the tomato plants in to slightly larger containers - yogurt containers work well. I simply dropped the jiffy pot into the yogurt container then filled around the sides and over the rim of the Jiffy Pot with container soil. If the plant was not quite tall enough, I would add some soil to the bottom of the container first.

With most plants, you want to be sure when transplanting that you do not bury the crown of the plant (where the stem comes out of the soil). With tomato plants you can bury the stem up to the first set of leaves, and the plant will grow more roots from the stem. This makes the plant stronger.



At this point, the gardening operation really starts to take over the kitchen. I'm moving things around, trying to find space for as many containers as I can.

Once the plants are established in their new pots, and the weather is decent, I start hardening off the plants - putting them outside for a few hours at a time to get them used to it.



Eventually, I am able to leave the plants outside. The deck gets lots of sun and offers some shelter, so I am able to put the plants out there some time before it would be safe to put them in the ground.

By the time I did put them in the ground, they were looking bigger and bushier. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have a picture of them at that point!

For the sake of comparison...

These plants were started from seed:



They're pretty spindly this year, but I think that is due to the weather - copious amounts of rain (record amounts, endless even), very little sun. The soil in our yard is mostly clay, which means the vegetable garden does not have good drainage.

These came from the garden center:



But these were started from seed:



I think that being in containers is what made the difference this year - better drainage.

Whew! Even I didn't know I was going to go on for that long. Merry is probably sorry she asked!

One more question, from the same post:

Patty asked: Do they just grow cats prettier in Canada? My sister-in-law lives in Edmonton and has two of the prettiest cats--much like yours.

Why yes. Yes we do.