gardening

Germination, Continued

I’ll spare you the continued pictorial of the baby plantlings, but I did want to share their ongoing march toward being full-fledged seedlings.

The score so far: Hollyhocks have two tallish sprouts, and two are just starting to pop. Lemon Basil is slow going, with two seeds just barely starting to grow. Sweet Basil has had the lead until today, with all six pellets having good (if still small) growth, and two pots having two sprouts apiece. Parsley isn’t budging yet; that’s OK, though, because it still has to make a few more visits to hell before it’ll start to grow for real. The catnip has been the come-from-behind sleeper hit, though, with five of the six pellets having at least one plant, and most having two or three. This is a recent development — as in, the catnip grew a quarter inch *today*.

I’ve propped open one corner of the lid of my mini-greenhouse, to improve circulation amongst the almost-seedlings. Some of my hollyhocks have a white fungus starting to grow, which I understand is commonly known as damping-off disease. Supposedly, improving circulation should help, as should misting the seedlings with a peroxide solution. We’ll see how that goes. For now, I’m just propping the lid to see if that makes any improvement.

I’m documenting all of this mainly so I can look back later this spring and summer and remember that there was a point at which I was actually growing things, instead of just neglecting and killing them.

[Andrea? Do you have any hippie gardening nuggets of wisdom to share?]

memories 3 Comments

The Joys of Home Ownership

Granted, this particular joy isn’t limited to only homeowners, but… I just got to clean up after my very first completely overflowing toilet! Yaye! 😛

I mean, I knew I had taken a pretty dense crap, but jeez.

I’d never actually experienced the kind of clogged toilet that actually overflows onto the bathroom tile. It’s like one of those slow-motion “Ohhhhh nooooo…” moments. I managed to keep the rug from getting completely soaked, and the overflow was luckily *not* completely nasty toilet water.

Still, though… spending quality time re-mopping the bathroom floor was not fun.

(As a side note, I had a particularly memorable bad dream when I was maybe four or five years old about the toilet overflowing and filling up the bathroom to my armpits. While I mopped this evening, I recalled that bizarre nightmare, and how I and my dream-friend saved ourselves from being swept away or drowned by pulling out straws and drinking the overflow water. I was a weird kid.)

gardening, photos 1 Comment

Growing Things

This weekend, I drug Aaron out with me to purchase some planting supplies — most notably, a seed starting kit. I’d purchased several packets of seeds last year, and decided that this is the year I start my own plants from seed.

I ended up starting five plants each of hollyhocks, lemon basil, sweet basil, parsley, and catnip. Well, each peat pellet pot has two or three seeds in it, but they’ll be thinned to one per pot, so we’ll just say it’s five plants apiece.

I’ve never done this before, so I had no idea how peat pellets worked. It is SO COOL. They start out as little flat discs. You water them with warm water, and poof! They become little miniature biodegradable pots! How cool is that?

And what’s cooler? My hollyhocks and my basil are already starting to germinate, after only two days. There are little, pale green stems curling up out of the soil. I opened up the lid of my mini-greenhouse, and it smells like those bean sprouts we planted in first grade. *squee*

So, what’s my diabolical plan? Well, I’m planning to plant the hollyhocks close to the fence that borders the neighbors. This will hopefully act as a bit of a privacy screen, as I understand that hollyhocks can grow pretty tall. Beside the hollyhocks, farther away from the fence, I’m hoping to plant one or two of the potted Rose of Sharon bushes/twigs I’ve been trying not to kill for the past two years. I’m hoping to manage this in a way that doesn’t complicate Aaron’s lawn-mowing mojo.

In the NE corner of the backyard, I’m planning to plant a little herb garden, with my basil and catnip and parsley and maybe some store-bought plants. There’s a decent little patch of sunshine by the fence and the gate, so hopefully I can nestle a little corner of herbalicious goodness there — and, again, not complicate Aaron’s lawn-mowing mojo. I’m hoping that my strategy will reduce the amount of edging for me to neglect.

As much as I’m tempted to go buy myself a nice climbing rose, I know I should hold off. I’ve already just about killed one rosebush from neglect; I don’t need to continue my murderous rampage of flora until I can take care of what I’ve already planted. Plus, goodness knows how much I’ll be able to take care of any of this once we pop out a kid. I can’t help but assume that infant care and gardening are not particularly compatible.

But that’s not for some time yet. For now, I’ll be content in watching my baby plants germinate and make condensation inside their little greenhouse.

weight loss 5 Comments

Diet & Fitness Update, Week #9: Two Months

It occurred to me today that I never posted my weigh-and-measure from last week. So, let me throw that up here before I go do my PUSH workout for today.

I decided to count Thursday’s weight and measurements as my Week #9, instead of Saturday, because Thursday the 16th marked exactly two months on my fitness regimen. And here are the results:

Weight: 209.5 »» down three lbs from starting weight
Bust: 45.5″ »» down ½” from starting measurement
Chest (under the b00bs): 38.5″ »» down 1″
Waist: 44.5″ »» down ½”
Hips: 49.5″ »» down ½”
Neck: 14.25″ »» down 3/4″
Upper Arm: 13.5″ »» unchanged
Lower Arm: 10.5″ »» unchanged
Thigh: 26.25″ »» down ¼”
Calf: 15.75″ »» down ¼”

I still think I need to get myself a body fat monitor, though. (Maybe I’ll get one for my birthday…) These numbers still don’t really reflect the changes I’m seeing. These changes are slight, but noticeable to me. For instance, the fat on my abdomen — my gut, as it were — seems to be shrinking. I have a small pouch of empty skin beginning to form. And I’m happy about this. I’m not seeing the results I’d like… but in order to get results, I need to push myself more, and buckle down, and not coast along or do things half-assed.

I received my first PUSH DVD last Monday, and discovered that I may have underestimated myself on my fitness level. I marked myself as a beginner, and thus ended up with a first (and second) workout that involves no resistance at all, not even the resistance bands I received with the disc. The workout is relatively easy, compared to the ways I’d been challenging myself previously, although the upper body workout is challenging for me. I can see where the workout is going, though, and I’m willing to stick with it.

I’m also supposed to do 100 minutes of cardio per week, and I definitely didn’t reach that goal last week. For that matter, I only did the workout itself two of the three times I was supposed to. I’m going to work on improving both of those numbers this week.

I’ve been eating healthy, trying to stay from evening carbs, going a little heavier on the carbs for lunch. It seems to be working to keep me from afternoon hunger, especially if I eat a little smidge of my afternoon snack right when I get back from my after-lunch walk. Fools my mouth into thinking it’s had a snackie, I guess. I’ve also been keeping myself well-watered — in fact, I’m feeling a little odd without a water glass by my side right this moment. I could use a drink.

*goes upstairs and swigs out of the cold-water jug in the fridge*

As for my mood… I oscillate between being excited to lose the weight and get fit, and being depressed that I haven’t seen better results. Holding steady is certainly better than a slow gain, that’s for sure, but still. When it comes down to the moment in the morning when I know I should get out of bed and make some eggie-weggies, and maybe someday jog my ass around the block, I make the wrong decision and turn the alarm off and go back to sleep. Or, when I come home from work, I sit at the computer just a little too long and let myself get hungry before I start my evening workout, and then it’s all over. No workout, and possibly a less-than-stellar super-quick dinner.

I feel sometimes like my health and fitness is in a precarious balance. If I let myself slip, either physically or mentally, it’ll throw everything out of whack. I mean, I know I can always jump right back on, but it’s still frustrating to always need to be on guard. I feel like I’m thinking more about food now that I’m just eating to live than I did when I was living to eat.

But enough of this. My chicken is going to be done baking before my workout is done, at this rate.

I’m really not overly depressed or anything… I’m just… disappointed in myself, I guess. I expected more.

(PS – I read my diary from when I was ten years old last night. For my birthday, I got a purple jumpsuit from my best friend. It was a size 14. It didn’t fit. …Did I mention I was ten years old? And couldn’t fit into a size 14? Yeesh.)

memories 4 Comments

Farewell, Clock Radio (1986 – 2006)

Apparently the lifespan of a digital clock radio is about 20 years, give or take.

I got this alarm clock in 1986, for my tenth birthday. According to my diary from that year, my Aunt Sammie got it for me. I’ve used this alarm clock ever since. I’ve lived in six different cities; in a trailer, two houses, four dorm rooms, and five apartments; and my simulated-wood-grain clock radio has consistently lived on my nightstand.

Over the past few years, the buzzer has slowly faded to a weak-sounding bleating, so I’ve been setting the alarm to radio, instead. Usually, the click of the radio turning on has been enough to waken me, as I’m almost awake by the time my alarm goes off, anyway.

However, on Sunday, I awoke 20 minutes after my alarm was supposed to have woken me. I looked at the clock. It was silent. I hit the button to turn off the alarm, and it made the tell-tale click; it had been on, but with no volume. I was willing to accept that maybe I’d hit the volume knob with my book before I went to bed. Before going to bed last night, I double-checked the volume and went to sleep, confident that my clock radio would wake me in the morning.

This morning, I awoke five minutes before I was supposed to be at work. WTF? I hit the button that either turns off the alarm or displays the time at which the alarm will sound — and it read 5:06pm. Now, I *knew* I hadn’t set my alarm for 5:06pm, and I hadn’t reset the time recently, so it couldn’t have happened by accident.

Time to get a new clock.

After a failed alarm clock hunt at Meijer over my lunch break, I went to Wal-Mart after work and got myself a new-fangled alarm clock. It is now time to plug in the new clock, and retire the old.

Sometimes I’m strangely attached to *things*.