State of the [Garden] Nation: Late May

I love this time of year. We're full into growing season around here, and things are starting to fill out. I was out for a walk tonight, enjoying the scent of Lilacs in the air. And exciting things start showing up in the produce section.

I wish I was one of those people who naturally loves all fruits and vegetables. I know they are out there, but I'm not one of them. Which is not to say that I don't eat them, just that the list of fruits and vegetables that I really, truly enjoy for their own sake is short. But I found one of them in Pete's Frootique today.

iPhone photo

These are not local, still too early for that. Not as good as what my parents will be picking from their cherry trees a month from now. But they are juicy and sweet and I will do my best to eat my fill before cherry season wanes.

Out in the garden, things are looking lovely. It's warm enough most days to enjoy being outside, but not silly hot yet. I think I could quite happily live with this weather year round.

Tuesday, when I was out planting seeds, Frank was doing his best to crawl into my little green basket. I use this basket to carry my seeds, garden gloves, scissors, twine, a bottle of water...all those small, miscellaneous things that I want to have with me out in the garden. I wasn't sure why Frank was so enamored, but I had to pull out the camera. I snapped a shot or two, then zoomed in closer and realized he had dumped my pea seeds all over the ground and was nosing around in them like he thought they might be something good to eat.

For those of you who have never planted peas, the seeds are literally dried peas. They are often coated in something that turns them pink. I don't actually know what it is - I remember seeing these pink pea seeds when I was a little girl and I've always just accepted that is what they look like. But I wasn't so sure it would be a good idea if Frank were to ingest any of it, so I immediately stopped to pick them all out of the grass.

At this point Zappa joined the party. Obviously there was something interesting going on here and he had to check it out.

With all this good stuff, there is still more to come. These baby plants are still waiting to be transplanted in their final locations.

Which is why I love this time of year so much I guess – so much more to look forward to!

Get This Garden Started, Part II

My Mom and I spent Sunday afternoon shopping and had a lot of fun. It was a beautiful day to be out and about. Unfortunately, toward late afternoon I started not feeling well. I tried to keep on trucking though, because I didn’t want to spoil anyone’s weekend. We BBQ’d for supper and then went for a family walk around the neighborhood. Unfortunately by later in the evening I was feeling worse and it became pretty noticeable to everyone else.

I went off to bed and woke up on Monday still not feeling great. My parents and brother left after breakfast and I spent most of the day on the couch catching up on Lost. I’ve been recording the episodes but just started watching recently; I find with Lost it’s good to be able to watch it all at once. Made for good sickie day activity.

However, it was pretty much killing me to be sitting inside on such a beautiful day, so later in the afternoon I decided I was feeling well enough to go out and do a bit of gardening.

I was accompanied by my usual feline garden buddies.

How happy does he look? I think I should send that picture to my Dad, to let him know that his chairs are being enjoyed.

I spent the afternoon weeding my little vegetable plot, getting it ready for planting.

I actually did one spot, probably 4 weeks ago now and planted some bunching onions which are coming along quite nicely.

But the rest still had to be done.

The other bits of green that you can see sticking up are the garlic plants that I put in last year. It’s spread out in a few spots, throughout the garden and it’s looking like I should have a pretty good crop this fall.

Yesterday, feeling much better, I went out and did some planting.

At this end of the garden I planted peas, beans, lettuce and cabbage. Not a huge amount, obviously, and I will probably find spots to stick in some more lettuce and cabbage when I’m finished putting in my tomato plants.

I also planted some peas along the back edge of this flower bed.

 

The soil is not good in this bed. I dumped on what I had left of a bag of compost and a bit of soil that I had; it could probably use more but I don’t have any at the moment. But pea plants are good for the soil, or so I’ve heard, and I still have quite a few seeds that need to be used. So I decided to plant some there. Worse case – they don’t grow; best case – I end up with more peas. Seemed like it was worth a shot.

Back to the subject of TV for a moment – I just finished watching this weeks episode of Glee. The first few episodes when Glee came back this spring just didn’t seem to have the same ‘Oomph’ as the first half of the season. But the past two episode have really knocked it out of the park. Glee is back!

Still more garden updates coming. Stay tuned!

Let’s Get This Garden Started, Part I

This past weekend was a holiday weekend here in Canada; Monday was Victoria Day. On the East Coast Victoria Day weekend is traditionally the weekend when you start planting your garden.

My parents & brother were coming to visit for the weekend, so things were busy, but I couldn’t let the weekend go by without a bit of garden time…

First though, look what my Dad brought for me!

Dad retired recently and now has more time to spend on wood working, which he has always enjoyed. He’s been making chairs and benches to sell. Coincidentally, I had been thinking I wanted wooden chairs for out in the yard, so now I have two chairs that were made by my Dad.

My mom brought some Hostas from her garden at home. We decided to plant them in the newer bed at the far end of the yard. There was one spot that, aside from a couple of tulips, was all weeds.

So out came a bunch of weeds, and in went Hostas.

Still lots of weeds, as you can see, but now Hostas as well. Yes, the weeds have to come out.  It’ll happen eventually!

The other thing that I asked my parents for was a few seed potatoes. I’m trying an experiment this year, and Dad & Mom helped me get things going.

These are Potato tubs. You add some soil, put in your seed potatoes and cover with more soil.

Then as the plants grow, you add more soil until the sack is full. There are Velcro slits down one side where you can reach in and pull out potatoes once the plants start producing. I’ve never tried growing potatoes at all before – I really don’t have space for them in my tiny little garden, but this seemed like a neat idea.

Stay tuned! More garden photos coming!

Garden slowly coming to life…

This would from about a week ago…

And these photos are from yesterday (Sunday)…

Things change fast this time of year!

Some close ups…

 

And just because we’re so pretty….

May Plan

I intended to do a better job of this post, but my weekend has been more hectic than I expected, so this will be a quick rundown.

Recap of April - at least what I have written in my notebook; I haven't been doing a great job keeping track lately. I missed a week of workouts when I was sick, so there's a big gap in there.

Apr 02: Upper Body C + Cardio[65 mins]
Apr 04: Upper Body A[30 mins]
Apr 05: Lower Body A[45 mins]
Apr 06: Upper Body B + Cardio Intervals[55 mins]
Apr 10: Hyperbolic Resistance For Time(31:15) + Cardio[60 mins]
Apr 11: Upper Body C[40 mins]
Apr 12: Upper Body A + Cardio Intervals[55 mins]
Apr 13: Lower Body A + Cardio Intervals[55 mins]
Apr 14: Upper Body B + Cardio Intervals[50 mins]
Apr 25: Upper Body A + Cardio[45 mins]
Apr 26: Lower Body A + Cardio[45 mins]
Apr 27: Upper Body B + Cardio Intervals[45 mins]
Apr 28: Upper Body C[30 mins]
Apr 30: Upper Body A + Finisher for time(10:05:38) + Cardio

I've let Lindsey know that I may be cutting back on some of the formal workouts now to give me more time for playing outdoors in my gardens and getting in some walks around the neighborhood.

I have signed up for Nutrition Coaching though. I've been doing some stress eating lately, I can't seem to help myself. I'm hoping that having a plan and being accountable in the form of a weekly check in will help.

I actually got out to do a bit of digging in the garden for the first time today. It seems late, but I've just felt like I had so many other things to do. There were other things that I probably should have been doing today, but I took an hour (which flew by way too quickly) to plant some bulbs and do some weeding. Things are really coming alive out there and the weather is pretty fantastic. Hope this is a sign of a good summer coming up!