Bonsais and mulch

Which have nothing to do with each other.

After a lecture (of sorts) from my garden neighbor, I decided to mulch my garden. Not having any mulching materials readily available, I headed over to my friend Sam's house to pilfer some from the streets. We grabbed some giant leaf bags and started shoveling grass clippings in. At one point, her neighbor came home as we were gathering grass clippings from in front of his house. He looked at us like we were crazy, then started laughing. I doubt he thinks we're crazy, just a bit eccentric. I got two giant leaf bags of clippings, which covered about 2/3 of my garden, which isn't bad. I'm curious to see how much it helps keep the weeds down and the water in. But so far, my garden is doing great!

One of my experiments this year is corn. I bought quite a few corn plants, some organic and some regular. I honestly can't remember which is which, but one group is doing far better than the other group. this is also the first time I've planted herbs other than basil, and they're doing better than expected at the moment. The beets are doing great! I picked a few the other day and roasted them, and they were delish. I'll have to plant more the next time around. I love beets. I pulled all of my shallots and I'm getting ready to hang them in my closet, the only cool, dark, dry place that I house. I also have a few volunteers, which I think are melons left over from last year. I don't actually remember what type of melon they are, but I know I didn't get the same kind this year, so I'm very hopeful they'll turn out to be good.

On a somewhat related side note, I've decided to take up bonsai, although probably not too seriously. Just a bit seriously. We'll see what happens. For now, I have two starters and no tools, so I can't do much other than just keep them alive (which is going well so far).

So if any of you want ideas for birthday gifts for me, bonsai tools and a tomato machine would be awesome!

So much to do in a 3-day weekend

I have undertaken quite a few projects during this 3-day weekend, and one of them in particular is eating up my time faster than I can believe. On my list:

Installing my new portable bike pump on my racing bike and moving my old pump to my commuter bike - Done!
Cleaning out my closet - mostly done
Setting up itunes so i can listen to podcasts at work - done
Setting up my portable hard dive - done
Transfering files from my old computer - taking FOREVER!

My sister Stacey was kind enough to help me clean out and organize my closet, and I took six bags of things to the Salvation Army to donate. That felt great! I also had quite a few bags of garbage and a lot of recycling, but there's still so much more to do. I know I'll have a few more bags for donation, but at the moment, I'm fresh out of bags to put stuff in.

My next project is to transfer everything off of my old computer so that I can give the monitor to my mom and dismantle the old CPU. So far, this hasn't worked as I planned, mostly because the process of transferring files is really quite slow. And it seems that every roommate I've ever had saved stuff on my computer, and I'm now laboriously going through all of it to determine what's good and what's not.

At the moment, Max (aka The Cutest Cat in the World) has resumed his love affair with my laptop and keeps trying to delete this post. Probably time to post it and get back to transferring files. Sigh

Another attempt at gratefulness

I'm going to try to come up with 5 things I'm grateful for, which isn't so easy for me these days. Here goes...

1. My bike! I love it. It gets me where I need to go, and I realize that I might have been grateful for it before, but I am still very, very happy to have my baby. Especially since my on-the-fly patch from the bicycle scavenger hunt seems to be holding. This is the latest place my bicycle has taken me:

2. Really nice spring days. We haven't had too many of them around here in the last few years, so it's awesome when they happen.

3. My job. Even though I complain about it a lot, I have wonderful people to work with, and plenty to do, and they pay me for it. In this economy, that's pretty good.

4. My cats. They're still soooooo cute. Even the annoying things they do are cute! How is that possible??

5. My garden. It's finally starting to look good. My winter garden just didn't get enough sun to ever look like it was doing well, but my summer garden is a different story. Check out the pics:
In this picture, you can see beets, green beans, tomatillo, lots of peppers, shallots, onion, and watermelon.


In this picture, I have herbs (oregano, sage, and thyme), green beans, pole beans, cucumber, eggplant, corn, carrots, and cabbage. And in the second bed over, i have basil, leeks, honey dew melon, zucchini, and pattypan squash. And dillweed. As it turns out, there's a reason why they call it a weed. They should call mint "mintweed".

Bonus item to be grateful for: Star Trek.

In which I succeed for one day at doing everything right

Yesterday was off to a fantabulous start. I got up early to go water the garden and made it to work on time. I ate a healthy, low-calorie breakfast and lunch, but by midafternoon, I was ready to crash. I knew I would be staying late at work (I ended up working for 10 hours, plus I had Toastmasters at lunch, so it was an 11-hour day), and I was having a hard time concentrating. So I decided to just buy a soda. It probably would have been fine, but when I went to talk to my structural engineer, I spotted a piece of a cupcake on his desk, and since I absolutely can't resist chocolate cake, I ended up eating half of a ridiculously large chocolate cupcake as well. Then I went running in the evening, and only put in about 1.5 miles, which I had to walk almost half of. Pathetic!

Today was much better. I made it to the garden and to work on time again, then ate my small, healthy breakfast. I was in meetings for the entire morning, which kept me from snacking, then I had soup and whole wheat bread for lunch. After working late again, I found the energy to go for a 16.5-mile bike ride. I was hoping to ride farther, but at around mile 8.5, another cyclist passed me and said it was really windy on the ride back into town, so I decided to turn around right away rather than risk being tired and/or running out of daylight on the ride back (I ride a slightly longer trail out, so the ride back seems a bit nicer). After a sensible dinner, I feel great! So perhaps it's time for a (separate) gratefulness post...

On Star Trek, exercise, and heat

I was lucky enough to see the new Star Trek movie at the IMAX theater near here this weekend. It's a new IMAX theater, and I'd never been to it before, but I have to say the screen seemed awfully small. I assumed it's because I was sitting a bit farther back than I was used to for an IMAX, but as it turns out, IMAX has started making movies that are MUCH smaller than the traditional IMAX format, yet promoting them in the same way. I can assure you, despite the fact that it was an awesome movie, I felt a bit ripped off. But still, it's a great movie. It's not exactly pure Star Trek (and I'm a proud Trekkie), and there were a few too many gratuitous fight and chase scenes, but definitely worth seeing at least once, if not more.

I'm finally getting back into the hang of exercise, and I'm finding that it makes me a much happier person. Despite the fact that it's been over 100 degrees recently, I managed to get outside this evening and go for a short run. A VERY short and pathetic run. I only made it 1.5 miles, and I barely ran more than half of it, but to be fair, I haven't exercised much lately, and my legs are incredibly sore from gardening on Saturday. I'd still like to get in shape and lose weight by midsummer.

In order to accomplish my lofty goals, I've finally set up an exercise plan consisting of running 3 days a week, spinning once a week, swimming once a week, and hopefully a bike ride on the weekend. Also, it would be good to fit some climbing and yoga in there, but I'm not going to push too hard just yet, especially on the yoga (since I am incredibly unflexible). I'll keep you posted, and tomorrow I should know approximately how many pounds I really need to try to lose, but I'm guessing it will be 10 to 15. I'd like to lose a pound a week, and drop 10 pounds by the end of July, but that might be asking a bit much. I'll just take it week by week and see how it goes...

The garden is almost finished!

Yesterday I planted around 25 corn plants, 12 pole beans, and 5 more bell peppers, and I removed 5 peppers that are apparently hot. Although who really knows? I also planted a new yellow pear tomato and some begonias in the planter outside my house. This brings the tally of plants in my garden to:

12 red bell peppers
6 yellow bell peppers
4 yellow banana peppers
1 great aconcagua pepper
1 serrano chile pepper
1 italian white wax pepper
3 blue jay peppers
3 orange bell peppers
1 lemon cucumber
1 pickling cucumber
3 eggplants
corn and pole beans
lots of bush beans
oregano
sage
some other herb that i can't think of right now
20 roma tomatoes
6 slicing heirloom tomatoes
1 yellow pear tomato
1 tomatillo
1 heirloom zucchini
1 yellow pattypan squash
1 honey dew melon
1 sugar baby watermelon
2 green and 1 purple basil

That might be too much for one plot, especially since I still want to squeeze in 6 more yellow peppers and a light green squash. I'm determined to use my garden to the maximum extent possible this year, after practically wasting all of the space last year.

Even more extreme gardening

I finally had a chance to spend some time in the garden today, and I planted quite a bit! I put in six more red bell peppers, six italian white wax peppers, the rest of the romas (20 in all), a tomatillo, two green basils and one purple, a yellow pear tomoto, four more heirlooms (white tomesol, striped german, brandywine, and cherokee purple), two cucumbers (a lemon and a slicing), and three eggplants (nadia, listada de gianda, and oriental express).

I still have a wee bit of space, so I want to plant one more tomato (maybe a black or a yellow), a hot pepper (for my good friend GeVil to use), and a melon or two, but I'll still have half a bed left over. i'm trying to decide if I should use it for potatoes or perhaps something else. Any ideas?