Sunday, March 22, 2009

Saturday at Ye Olde Homestead

Saturday actually brought some sunshine along with the chilly temperatures, so J and I jumped at the chance to work in the garden without getting rained on. While J dug trenches in on half of the front garden so he could finish installing an irrigation system, I toiled in the back garden, planting the first of the season's vegetable seeds and freeing our strawberry patch from invading weedy marauders.

Two weeks ago, I put down sheets of plastic to help the soil warm up and dry out nominally. It was still pretty soggy, but the top layer was fluffy and lightly damp, hopefully exactly what the seeds desire. (Sidenote: I was extremely spoiled in our previous house, at which I did all of my vegetable gardening in foot-deep, wood-framed raised beds, built by J and filled with lovely soil mix from Cedar Grove. For this garden, we tilled up the weedy lawn and have been gradually mixing in loads of compost. The clay soil is improving, but it's still far from perfect.) The leafy stuff you see are remnants from the late summer-fall garden.

I planted arugula, beets, lettuce, carrots, radishes, spinach and turnips. I meant to plant peas, but I forgot to soak them the night before. Oh well...there's always next weekend.

While the gardening season is making it's shaky start, so is the garage sale season. On our drive back from our walk/run at the park, we were lured by the sirens call of "Estate Sale." There's always something sad about pawing through the material remnants of a deceased mother's life (or she may have been moved to a nursing home, I suppose), but we came away with a 2-quart Pyrex measuring cup (which I have been needing/wanting for some time), three cute blue and white plates, a silver jigger (which J has been wanting for some time), two sturdy dineresqe bowls and a pretty blue-and-yellow print bowl made in Luxembourg. All for $13. If we had been a little earlier, we could have picked up some cool metal garden bed edgers. Grrrrrrr...

A thought about how this whole "accountability via blog" thing is working: Normally, I lift weights on a MWF schedule. I skipped my Friday workout because, frankly, after going to happy hour I didn't feel like it (normally I workout after work before J gets home). But I resolved to reschedule the workout for Saturday, because of the blog. And I followed through on that plan...because of the blog. It's very hard for me to lift weights on weekends, because my schedule, while not hindered by things like working for a paycheck, tends to be fluid and variable, and I find myself getting involved in other things and running out of usable time. In this case, I was certain of two things: I was going to post that workout on the blog AND I was not going to do something pointless like lie!

Saturday, March 21
Breakfast: 12 oz. fruit smoothie; espresso w/ 1% milk.
Morning workout: 2.5-mile speedwalk + 2.5-mile run/walk.
Brunch: 1 whole egg + 2 whites, scrambled in olive oil with 1/2 yellow pepper, 3 large white mushrooms, 1 oz. feta cheese; fresh mango and pineapple; 1 slice sprouted grain toast w/ 1 tbs natural peanut butter and 2 tsp orange marmalade; espresso with 1% milk; 16 oz. water
Mid-day workout (sort of): 4 hours gardening.
Snack: Apple; 1 oz. white cheddar; 4 oz. turkey breast; 10 almonds; espresso; 16 oz. sparkling mineral water.
Snack: Larabar + 1 tbs peanuts.
Post-gardening workout: Weightlifting (Body Fat Solution workout B).
Snack: Orange; 16 oz. water
Dinner: Lamb stew w/ couscous, caramelized onions, raisins and almonds; small martini; 6 oz. red wine.
Snack: espresso; 16 oz water.





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