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OK, I’m almost through! I will do this thing. V is for violets.
These are very particular violets. I have another pot, different colored flowers, that blooms all the time, but these bloom, drop all of their blossoms, then sit with no blooms for months on end. But when it blooms, it’s gorgeous.
W is for windsocks and waxwings.
Part of our school day involves completing a daily calendar book. DJ has to fill in the date, then record some kind of data about the day. For April, we have to record the wind direction, so we thought we’d make a windsock. The kids helped me pick out the fabric, then I did the sewing. It’s a little loud, but it’s in the backyard, so who cares? And it’s great for telling the wind direction.
The other night we were eating dinner, and a flock of cedar waxwings flew into a dogwood tree outside the kitchen window. They’re one of my favorite birds. They’re beautiful, and they love red berries, such as those on nandinas and hollies. They sat in the dogwood and then took turns at the birdbath, getting sips of water. We just sat and watched them, forgetting about dinner.
Uncertain is the future state of a new garden bed we created yesterday…but I have high hopes!
Ever since we were engaged (13 years ago!), my husband and I have dreamed of having a wonderful vegetable and herb garden every summer. So far, although we have grown things like tomatoes and squash and cukes now and then, we have never achieved the garden that is big enough to feed us all summer and really provide some satisfaction. Part of the problem is our yard…while plenty spacious, it’s surrounded by trees and completely shaded, except for small pockets of sun here and there. Our tomatoes and squash have been grown in pots, planters and buckets on the driveway (aka Redneck Planters), but they never have done really well. (Probably because I’m not a very faithful waterer, and containers need a LOT of water).
Well, this year we’re trying something new. We used to have this big boxwood hedge along a sidewalk at the back of our house, which faces south-southwest.
It didn’t used to look that bad, but time has taken its toll. And a few weeks ago, while once again lamenting our lack of sunny spots for a garden, my husband said that maybe that area would be a good garden spot. So yesterday, with the help of a chain and his truck, we yanked those babies out!
Notice how my poor husband is doing all the work in these photos, while I’m the one snapping the pics? :)
It’s a pretty good-sized area, maybe 3 feet wide by 10 or 12 feet long. And right now, while there are no leaves on the trees, it gets lots of sun, basically all day long. We’re going to make a 6″ tall raised bed in this spot using untreated wood boards all around, and fill it with the planting mix recommended in the Square-Foot Gardener book. I’m concerned about what we’ll find when the trees have leafed out–whether or not there will be enough sun–but I’m optimistic, and have already ordered $40 worth of seeds for things like tomatoes, cukes, squash, zucchini and eggplant. We’ll grow the viney things vertically. And hopefully I can finally transplant my ages-old rosemary bush, which is in a planter and stunted as a result. We’ll also need to replace our compost tumbler that was crushed by a falling tree a few years ago, because compost is key to a great garden. But I’m so excited, it’s all I can think about right now!
How about you, what are you growing this year?
…tree. My Meyer lemon tree, to be specific. When my mom and dad gave it to me last summer for my birthday, it looked like this:
Not bad looking to begin with, it grew more over the next few months into a really lovely tree:
And, although the leaves dropped off terribly once I brought it inside for the winter, it now has flower buds all over it! I counted at least 60 this afternoon when I went to take this photo.
I can’t wait to take it outside when it warms up for good and see what happens. I hope to be covered in lemons this summer!
Oh, yeah…S is for snow!
Not that there’s much left at this point. And tomorrow it’s supposed to get to 70! In like a lion…
Well, I know. 2008 is long gone. But, I never finished the ABC-Along, and I’m a girl who finishes things! I’ll even finish a book I can’t stand, just because it bugs me to leave it unfinished. Which is good, because there are lots of slow-starting great books I would have never finished, like Cold Mountain. But I digress.
I mentioned in a post last fall that I had started the Couch to 5K running program. I started it at the end of August, and, being a finisher, finished it right on schedule at the end of October. I don’t remember now exactly what made me decide to start running at that point in time. I mean, why then specifically, because I grew up with marathon-running parents–my mom even worked in the running business at one point–and my brother has run a marathon, too. Why I never got the bug before is a mystery. Probably I just never gave my body enough time to get used to it, because I tried many times and always hated the gasping and wheezing and side stitches. But then fast forward to 2008. I turned 36, and it surely had something to do with having a birthday that summer. Suddenly the need to get in shape became apparent. But also, something about joining Facebook, and seeing so many of my old high school and college friends talk about running, inspired me. For some reason, a ton of people I know from the past run!
So anyway, one day the Couch to 5K program, which lots of bloggers have done, came to mind. I decided to print it out and give it a whirl. Oh, it started out so hard. I thought I was OK, somewhat fit (ha!), and yet I couldn’t even run 90 seconds without wheezing and bribing myself to “just get to the next mailbox”. But I did it. The weeks went by, and I did sometimes repeat a day when I felt like I didn’t meet the requirements of that day. But I got stronger and started looking forward to running, enjoying it way more than I ever had before. It was never really easy, still isn’t, but I liked the challenge of it, and I couldn’t deny the health benefits. I haven’t lost any weight since starting to run (I probably overcompensate with the eating, because I love food), but my resting heart rate has dropped considerably. In the mornings, before getting out of bed, I check my pulse. It used to be somewhere around 60 beats per minute; now it’s between 49-53 most mornings. Which is CRAZY, but in a good way. And I no longer have to count mailboxes. In fact, yesterday I ran my longest run to date: 5 miles! I love the feeling I get about it, like I’m the boss of something. I’ve run two 5K races since finishing C25K, with times of 30:25 and 27:17. I hope to keep getting faster, while also increasing my distances, and just maybe one day I’ll join the rest of my family as a marathoner. That would be so cool!
So, anyway…R is for running.
