Just a Quick Note…

So, it’s been a crazy week!  4 photo sessions in 5 days has kept me hopping!  But because I’m feeling so much better I’ve been keeping up pretty good!!  I’ve even continued to eat good.  As a matter of fact, Stephanie (my daughter) and I went to Panera Bread ysterday after my session and I was thrilled with my selection.  I’m just amazed how I’m not at all attracted to all the goodies and sweet stuff any more.  NEVER thought I would see the day!  Honestly.  They were packed as it was the lunch hour, so I had time to really look over the menu.  I ended up selecting the BBQ Chicken Cobb Salad.  I have to say it was out of this world.  Lettuce,  tiny sautéed onions and green peppers, grilled corn, black beans and grilled chicken cut in strips with a scant drizzle of bbq sauce on top.  The only really bad thing was the tortilla strips that were in it.  It would have been just fine without those.  And I did not touch the two side containers of dressing.  It was quite healthy and delicious.  Definitely something I could duplicate and enjoy at home.  So glad we went there.  🙂

I’ve allllllmost lost another pound.  Just.not.quite.there.yet.but.really.really.close.  Maybe tomorrow.  🙂

Absolutely love juicing.  I have a glass of something every morning with my breakfast and I have to say, between that and good eating I feel so energetic every day.  No more sinking spells.  Shoot I can even watch tv at night now without dozing off!  lol  Guess it’s time to start adding some walking.

The garden is looking good, although I did see that another lettuce bit the dust.  Not sure what’s going on with the Romaine.  They just kind of get limp and die.  Anybody know what the problem is?

So that’s it in a nutshell!  Just wanted to pop in and tell ya’ll hello!  Hope everyone’s week is off to a great start!

Dancing with the Stars tonight!  Woo Hoo!!  🙂

See My Garden Grow!

Well it’s been about a week and a half since we planted our little garden and things are just hopping along!  It is looking wonderful!  Lost one lettuce, but other than that everything is faring pretty well.  The radishes are getting big and the carrots are just now coming up.  It’s so exciting to go peek at it everyday and see how it’s doing!  Love it!  I did notice today, however, that the leaves on my cherry tomato are looking kind of crinkly and curling in on the edges…  anyone have any guesses as the cause?  I’ll take a picture tomorrow.

Here’s some recent pics after if got it’s “pretty” on!  Hey, just cause it’s a garden doesn’t mean it can’t be pretty, right?  🙂

Here’s Gidget giving everything a quick glance over.  Now we just need to come up with something to cover the path … probably some sort of loose rock.  Anything to cover the dirt and mud!

And my garden bunny…. he’s been with me a long time. His “hare” is getting pretty worn, (lol) and he lost one of his legs in a freak accident, but I still love and adore him. I thought he would be perfect as the garden centerpiece. Don’t you? I know you do. Now please tell my hubby that he looks cute amidst the lettuce.  🙂

On another note, I ordered a juicer and it’s due in tomorrow!!  I can’t believe that I’m actually excited about drinking some fresh fruit juice!!  Not sure about veggie juice yet, but maybe I can just sneak a few in with the fruits.  😉  I’ll let you know what we think!!

Our First Garden {{heart}}

So, over the weekend, my hubby and I outdid ourselves.  Literally!!  We built and planted our first raised bed vegetable garden!!  WooHoo!!

We began by pouring over some Pinterest ideas on raised beds, then took ourselves down to Home Depot to purchase our supplies.  We had planned on building our frame out of cedar or redwood, but HD had neither.  So we bought just plain old construction wood (non pressure treated).  Not sure how many years we’ll get out of it.  But it’s a start.  🙂  Building the frame was the easy part!  8’x4′ with posts in the corners.

The hard part was filling it with soil!  Yikes!  We got two scoops of rich black soil from Newton Farm and Garden.  They had the kind with “some clumps and sticks” for $5 a scoop or a sifted type for $15 a scoop.  He assured us that both grow beautiful gardens.  So we decided that we were able bodied humans who could rake out a few clumps and sticks.  So for $10 we filled our little frame with good rich soil.  I added the finely chopped leaves every few inches or so and mixed it really well.   The result was rich, airy soil that I’m sure the plants will love.    Now the soil…  whewwee !  That was backbreaking work.  First of all, two scoops of slightly wet  dirt had our F150 almost dragging the ground.  Good thing we live close by!  We had to get it out of the truck, to save the tires, and beat the impending rain they were forecasting!  So, because it had clumps and sticks in it, we just shoveled it into a pile so we could go through it BEFORE putting it into the frame.  So, basically we shoveled twice.  Hubby shoveled it out of the truck and I shoveled it into the frame.  Overall, the soil was great!  A few big sticks and some clay clods, but otherwise rich and dark.

At Home Depot we selected two trays of Romaine lettuce, a tray of spinach, 4 small green pepper plants, 1 Roma tomato and a cherry tomato, 2 flats of broccoli, some onions, carrot and radish seeds.  Then once I started planting, I realized I had too much for our 8’x4′ frame!  lol  Forgot about spacing the plants out!!  haha   Here I was going to plant some geraniums and marigolds in there as well to repel bugs….  Oh well, they’ll just have to go in their own pots outside the frame.

We are so tickled with how it turned out!!  Cutest thing ever!  We spend about $100 on the frame, dirt and plants.  So not bad at all for our own fresh veggies!  I think I’m going to add some large pots for cucumbers and maybe some potatoes.   I also need to get some pine needles to sprinkle around the outside to make it all pretty and stuff.  🙂

Here’s some pics of our first veggie garden.  🙂  Check out the cute marigold yellow tomato cage I got at HD.  🙂

Our Future Garden & A Pulled Back Muscle

It was such a beautiful weekend here in NC.  My hubby and I worked outside all day on Saturday.  I cleaned up the side yard – a monumental chore.  The right side of our house has always been a problem spot for us.  We’ve had erosion issues over there and over the years the beautiful red clay we call soil has pretty much turned into concrete.  I’ve got a few hostas, a hydrangea and assorted other struggling plants over there, but that’s it.  A couple of years ago we put up this cute fence to block off the offending side yard.  And that helped.  But what to do with it?

Part of the problem is the trees.  We have a lot of them.  They create a lot of shade which is great during the dog days of summer, but not so great for growing healthy plants and grass.  Well last fall we had our trees trimmed up.  Way up!  Now they are tall and grand and we’ve got some filtered light coming into places that has never seen the light of day.  One being our poor, pathetic side yard!  It is now getting quite a bit of direct sunlight.  So we’ve decided to do a raised bed veggie/herb garden over there.  Hubby is excited!!  He has always wanted to have a vegetable garden.  We’re going to start small.  Probably something about 10’x5′ or so.  Raised and filled with some nice rich black dirt and compost from our never ending leaf pile!

So Saturday I raked all the leaves together into one massive pile – and I do mean massive.  Hubby mowed over it several times and then my next door neighbor graciously brought over his push mulching mower and chopped it up into barely there little pieces.  AMAZING!!  And the whole time I’m thinking and WHY do we spend weekends and weekends every fall hauling leaves to the woods when we could be doing this??  Next, we’ve got to build the frame and fill it with dirt.  Then the exciting part, going to pick out our plants!!  I’m also excited about turning our ugly little side yard into something beautiful and useful.  I snapped a couple pics so you could see the before.

It was great to be feeling better and have the energy to work outside and not have to sit down every 20 minutes.  And Vitamin D?  I got tons of it!!  🙂  But then it happened.  Went to bed Saturday night feeling just fine.  Got up a couple of times to .. you know.. pee.  Was just fine.  Then about 4:00 got up one more time to .. you know.. pee and had this super sharp pain running from just above my left should blade and extending down about a foot.  Owwwwee!  Obviously I slept wrong and cricked or pulled something.  It hurt like the dickons yesterday.  Hubby kept telling me to ice it.  I finally did last night, twice, but it didn’t really help much.  Going to try the heating pad today – just for a little bit.  Was so disappointed that I couldn’t go outside and work yesterday.  Oh well.  I guess it’s not going anywhere.  I sat in my front porch rocker and just admired all my handy work from the day before.  It was nice.  🙂