Weekend Doings!

Just a bit of this and that. I’ll get around to writing about the trip eventually. I had some different meals lately, and enjoyed them very much. I finally remembered to pick up a package of spinach and have been enjoying it in various forms, both in my smoothies, and also cooked. Here it is in a breakfast scramble with some red potatoes, onions, and mushrooms. Oh, and an egg and some egg beaters mixed in. Quite yummy. Adding potatoes definitely ups the allure of eggs for me (I’m not a big egg lover.)

In the same day, I decided to make a big batch of marinara sauce because I wanted to try out the homemade noodles that the 86 year old lady whose farmhouse I stayed in in Ohio had gifted me with. You know I don’t eat pasta that often, but I had to try these. They really were very tasty noodles! And the marinara sauce was yummy. I roughly followed my directions for Darn Good Spaghetti Sauce (but started with a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of diced tomatoes, and a can of tomato sauce) and omitted the meat so I could use it in a variety of ways. Now I have lots of marinara sauce in the freezer!

I added some turkey burger to some of the sauce for this meal.

On Thursday, MLG (master landscaping guy) came over to start on the new raised bed. He worked for 2 1/2 hours IN THE RAIN before giving up. He came over again on Saturday morning to finish the job, and then went to the nursery to get a truckload of dirt to fill it up! I helped out by moving the dirt around as he dumped in wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of the stuff. It doesn’t look like much, but that is actually very hard work. I love the way he did it in tiers.

This picture is taken from my front door, so you can see the first bed and where it is in perspective to that. Of course, MLG pointed out that it would look super cool if we were to continue the flagstone pavers up between the two beds. And he’s right, it would. I am going to price them at Home Depot this week.

I woke up with a very sore back on Saturday morning. Later in the afternoon, I went to the gym for a nice long swim. I don’t know if that helped it or not, but for the time I was in the pool, nothing hurt. It sure was nice.

On Sunday morning I wanted to try a new recipe. I had bookmarked this original recipe for “giant breakfast cookies.” Of course, I had to try to lighten it up a bit. Plus, I didn’t have applesauce, so I sub’d pumpkin. Did you know that applesauce and pumpkin have the same amount of calories??

These were quite tasty (and quite gigantic!) I put it on the plate that I usually plate my scones on for comparison. I think they are the same size as my scones. And I was very pleased with how long it kept me full. To make sure they were worthy, I had another one for breakfast this morning. I’ll post my recipe later today.

Before church, I hit the gym for a fairly long session on the bikes. I don’t really know what other people do on the bikes, but my mileage/time is pretty consistent. In 45 minutes I “rode” 9 1/2 miles.

And then Sunday afternoon I went to a potluck. Oh brother. I guess in hindsight I didn’t do too badly. A few too many dessert samples were consumed. (I took my go-to potluck dish of a ton of fresh fruit and a bowl of the Creamy Fruit Dip.) It was a potluck to benefit Second Chance Dogs. This is Noah’s trainer’s project. She takes dogs from the local humane societies that often times are unadoptable and keeps them on her ranch and works with them until they are perfect canine citizens and then finds homes for them. The transformations are amazing. She has re-homed over 250 dogs in the past 10 years.

And in between, I did some quilting. Lots and lots of quilting. It was a VGW (Very Good Weekend.) Hope yours was a good one too!

Project Garden Improvement Update

MLG (Master Landscaping Guy) (is that a better name, Lori?) was over this week. I haven’t ordered the landscaping stones we need (300!!) so he got busy putting plants in the ground. I can’t really explain how delightful this is to me. After living here 27 years, and always planting things in pots, its almost miraculous to me. The ground is just clay and rocks and tree roots. So each time he digs a hole for another plant, he makes the hole extra big, and improves the soil all around the plant. This time he got FIVE plants in the ground.

This is the camellia, and three hydrangeas. None of them have been happy in pots.

 

Already the camellia looks better than it has looked in years!

And here is an updated picture of the bed. I planted two bleeding hearts (one pink and one white, some little begonias, and some irish moss. I love ground cover. I also planted my favorite corsican mint under the tree, and I am attempting (one more time) to grow elfin thyme between the pavers.

Here is photographic evidence that The Queen is a Pink Flower Thief!!

Y’all have a good weekend. Its finally warming up here, so I am planning to get some serious swimming done today! Right after I get some serious quilting done.

Friday a la Shelley!

When I woke up this morning, I was going to name this post Friday Mishmash. And then I thought, that sounds vaguely familiar? Oh, yes. Its friend Shelley’s famous Friday post! Oops. Anyway, I just had a bit of this and that to post about, so thought I’d share it with you all before the weekend. (This post ended up super long. Maybe you can divide it up and just read a little bit every day, since I can’t seem to make myself blog on a more regular basis.)

Yard guy came over this morning. Oh my. That guy works so hard. And so fast. I can hardly believe all that he got done this morning. And because he was working, and I needed to make decisions about where to move stuff/plant stuff, I worked pretty hard out there too. My yard has not looked this good practically since I moved here, and between him and me, we have even more ideas to fix it up. I am pretty excited about the whole thing. This is the first time I have been able to put plants in the ground in forever. And then I looked back and saw that like five out of the last six posts were about the yard and/or working outside. I guess it is consuming a lot of my time and thoughts right now.

So back to the mishmash. Do you guys floss your teeth? I have never been able to make myself floss regularly. But at my last cleaning, the tech made some semi-threatening statement about having to do some ‘gum work’ if it didn’t improve. And so I became a flossing fanatic.  I got myself one of those Reach thingies. I like it a LOT better than floss.I was so proud yesterday when she kept exclaiming about how good my gums looked! I am a convert.

I tried something new-to-me. I made a veggie stir fry WITHOUT rice. I put a lot of those bean sprouts in it, and I LOVED it. They gave it a nice texture, and without the rice, you can have a bigger volume of vegetables. And you know me, I’m a volume eater. This bowl had about 200 calories. I added some shredded chicken thigh meat and some little shrimp.

I am going to start gathering more complex vegetable recipes. If you have any favorites, let me know.

Here’s this morning’s breakfast. Its not new. But saving the leftover egg mixture is new. (I just mix 1 egg, 1/4 cup egg beaters, and 1/4 cup almond breeze, and whatever flavors I want–usually splenda, cinnamon, and vanilla.) The egg mixture keeps well in the refrigerator, and is plenty to make another English muffin french toast later in the week. I use Thomas’s Whole Grain English muffins. This breakfast only has about 150 calories (topped with spray butter, cinnamon splenda, and SF syrup.)

I got some new frying pans–8 inch and 10 inch. These are the pans I use all the time. My old ones were pretty beat up. I like these a lot so far. (Both of the above dishes were cooked in this pan.) The best part is that I found them at Ross–two for $19.99!)

And back to the yard. Here’s how the yard looked before yard guy came. Did I show you all these little perennials I planted? And that is my favorite corsican mint ground cover to support the mound around the tree.

Bleeding heart:

And this little clump of shamrock. Isn’t it charming?

This camellia was in a huge pot, but was not that happy in there. It is a low-growing camellia, and is the one that has the pretty pink blossoms in November. Yard guy patiently rotated it so that I could choose the angle I liked best before he planted it. I think it’ll be much happier in the ground here.

And then yard guy tackled this very large atlas cedar. It was in a wine barrel, and the pot I wanted it in was narrower and deeper than the wine barrel. He did a super job of transferring it. You can see how huge the pot is compared to the lawn chair in the background.

And my proudest, happiest moment today! A cherry tree IN THE GROUND!! If you only knew what the ground was really like around here. Rocks and roots and clay. And now yard guy came up with some landscaping that we can do in that area of the yard! So exciting.

See that mound of dirt in the corner of the fence? That’s from Noah’s ‘landscaping’ efforts over the past few years. We decided to add a bit of stonework around it and use it as another planting area!

After yard guy left, I moved a bit of yard art around.

And the dawrgums had to come out and investigate what had been going on in the yard! Noah didn’t hold still long enough for me to get a shot of him.

Mr. Man is content to find a sunny place to sit and relax.

Well, if you made it to the end, I will bid you a good weekend. Tomorrow I am going to one of my favorite conferences “Intersections:  Faith and the Arts” at Oak Hills Church in Folsom, CA.

Springtime in the Garden

Daffodils are in full bloom now. Forgive the fences. SOMEONE thinks the pots are for him  to play “King of the Hill” on.

Every day I go out and stand under the new cherry tree to see if it has bloomed. Will it be the cherry tree of my dreams? I do believe it is! At least it is close enough! And I just read a magazine article yesterday where the gardener said that the cherry trees had grown an amazing amount in just 2 or 3 years!

This is an interesting little shrub. It doesn’t really look like much, and then all these funny little blooms pop out. It almost looks like confetti.

The camellia that I have to practically stand on my head to get a picture of. This is one of the bushes I hope to get in the ground. I am pretty sure it will be a LOT happier out of its container.

Pansies and violas are such a cheerful addition. A lot of pleasure for very little investment.

This Japanese maple is covered in seed buds. It almost looks unreal to me.

I bought myself a few new plants at the nursery yesterday. This is a flowering almond, one of my most favorite plants. I have one, but it has never done well. The girl at the nursery said it probably has a canker. I thought she was just making that term up, and then I read it in a magazine the very same day!

Doesn’t it have the most beautiful, delicate blooms?

All the maples are leafing out now, and each one has a different shade.

There seems to be a pink theme going on here. I can’t help it. Its my favorite color.

Its been a good week. I got a lot more functional exercise. The second pile of wood is all stacked up. A lot of pots have been re-arranged. I’ve gotten in the pool twice, on the bike three times, kept up with my PT exercises, and I’m starting to do fast-walking sprints like Tabata intervals on my walks with Noah. Those are really a good workout. And that doesn’t even include all the aerobic quilting I’ve done )

 

Functional Exercise to the Max

Yard guy challenged me yesterday. He brought over the “scoop” of dirt from the nursery and got it all into the bed, even though it was raining. And then he said, as he left, “next time I come over, let’s get this yard cleaned up and finished, and then we can go on to the next project.” Now, I KNOW he did not mean that I was supposed to get it all done before he came over. But there is a LOT to do out there, and a lot of it involved MAKING DECISIONS (not my strong point.) So after a sleepless night where my mind went in an endless loop of “we could move this plant there” and “we could put this one in the ground,” I decided to give up my trip to the gym today in favor of some functional exercise. What I can’t show you is the huge pots that I dragged here and there to see if that’s where I wanted to put them. I emptied some of the pots out, and put the soil in the bed, because we didn’t have quite enough soil to fill in the whole area.

I pruned a lot of bushes and trees (decisions required…) and then I finally had lunch. After lunch I wanted to do something that didn’t require any decisions. So I turned this:

into this:

And then I did a phone consult with my landscape adviser (I had emailed her a picture of the big maple that started this whole project,) and she gave me the courage to go out and prune the big maple! (This poor maple was in that small box and really suffered the last two years. After seeing it looking so stark, I was afraid that it was just too misshapen to do anything with.)

So after my afternoon coffee break, I turned this:

into this:

That required getting the ladder out and taking multiple trips up and down the ladder to make sure I was pruning the right branch. I don’t know if you can see the difference in the photos. In person, it makes me a lot happier. I think there’s hope for it to get healthy now.

Here’s a look at the preliminary stuff I’ve added to the bed.

Noah LOVES THE new bed. I imagine he thinks he can do a better job of surveying his kingdom from a higher vantage point. He also cuts the corner and was mashing the poor little primroses that I planted, so I had to put a little fence up for a while.

All in all, a very good day of functional exercise. I bet I’ll sleep a little better tonight!

Project Update!

Beginning

Yard guy showed up this morning bright and early. Glad I am a morning person too. He got  all this done in just about three hours. He did so much more than I would have done.

The ground is totally uneven, mostly sloping upward away from the house. He worked hard on getting the top of the stones level, and having them evenly placed at ground level, which involved hacking away at some very stubborn gigantic roots.

He even moved a couple of my pavers that I had just put on top of the roots, and got part of the root out and made the pavers more level with the ground. I am so thrilled. I have some planting mix in a bag, and I can fill in the little lower area and put some bedding plants there. How fun to be able to plant things in the ground!

He ended up making it a little larger than I had envisioned, so I am happy about that as well.

Yard guy surveys his handiwork.

I went to the nursery and paid for a “scoop” of dirt, and yard guy will pick it up and bring it with him next time. Then we can fill in the entire area and remove that old box from around the maple. I am hoping it will really improve with the added ‘breathing room.’

Isn’t it pretty?

 

Weekend Fun

Functional exercise! That’s what’s been going on around here the last few days.

Did I mention I have a new yard guy? (I love saying that!) Over the last couple of days he’s turned this:

Into this:

That means a LOT of functional exercise for me as I stack it all. There are two more gigantic piles of wood on the property for me to stack.

Then, after discussing with yard guy and a consultant from the nursery, I am finally going to make a planter bed around my oldest Japanese maple that has outgrown its pot and has roots in the ground. I am pretty excited about this project. (the rotted bench will be removed!)

Excited enough that I took three trips to Lowe’s and brought home three loads of those pavers. And unloaded all three loads, 6 pavers at a time, into the wheelbarrow, and then over to stack.

The dawrgums were quite enamored of the stacked stones.

 

 

Here’s the outline of what we hope to do. Yard guy is going to level the ground a little. And I do believe that I will let him move and stack the rest of those blocks. I think I prefer my little gym exercises!

I did go to the gym yesterday and swam 36 lengths. My real motivation was to get to sit in the spa! Ahhhhhh….

 

Where I Was

Spring really is in the air, isn’t it? To me, the first sign of spring is a few little birds singing. Aren’t birds amazing? How do they last the winter? Some of them never leave, I know it. And I never hear them complaining about how cold it is, or how there is not enough sunlight. They just get on as good as they can. And at the first warm rays they’re so happy they start to sing. Oh, if I could only learn something from the birds.

So I went out of town for a few days to a quilting workshop. I was really looking forward to it because the workshop is held in that wonderful nursery that I told you about last fall. It is just a beautiful place. And I fell under its spell again. And because I finally (after only 27 years of living here) have hired someone to help me with the yard work, I got very enthusiastic. And I bought THREE TREES!!! I do love a pretty tree.

I bought something called Henry Lauder’s Walking Stick. I guess this is a shrub, not a tree. The structure just fascinated me. I couldn’t resist.

And then I saw the blossoming cherry trees. Where I worked, there were two very old and beautiful cherry trees with the biggest fluffiest blossoms I had ever seen. I loved taking a walk in the spring and just standing under those trees. I so hope that this is the same variety (its called Kwanzan Cherry). And even though, in my lifetime, it probably won’t grow to be as big and spectacular as those other trees were, it will be so fun to have one of my own. There is something so hopeful about a tree.

And then, I was just about to escape, and I saw this GLORIOUS tree right by the check out counter. The shape of it is so beautiful and graceful. And it is covered with those fascinating little soft pussy willows.

(look at the tree, people, not at my cabin!)

I have some thoughts about travel and dieting and food, so if you’re looking for that type of chatter, come back in the next day or so, and we’ll have a conversation about that!