this little life of mine

Friday Five #4

1. It's not quite the end of 2012, but I've already made, and started working towards, one of my resolutions for 2013: to run a 5K race or fun run. I've thought about doing a 5K before, thought they sounded kinda fun, but not too hard. Still I never really felt all that motivated to actually put in the work to train for one. Then I found this: a 5K with ZOMBIES!! And, I thought, oh, yes, THIS is a 5K worth training for! So, Wednesday night since my trainer was out, I went to Kennedy and started training. Sort of. I did an alternating walk/jog/run-kinda thing on the treadmill for a little over 20 minutes. I was just going for 20 minutes to start with, but then I was so close to a mile and a half I thought, let's just go for that, but then I was really close to burning a full 100 calories, so just kept going until I had that, too.  So it was actually about 22 minutes 15 seconds, but who's counting, right? I actually expected to be in a lot of pain today, but am pleasantly surprised at how good I feel. Maybe it'll hit me later.
2. Also before I even went to Kennedy, I got my hair cut and had a "blow out", which I know sounds really dirty, but isn't what you're thinking. Sadly. I've never had a blow out before, but I've heard about it and have often wondered, what's the point? I guess the whole idea is to use a really hot blow dryer and a big round brush to get all the dust, dirt and other crap out of your hair. I did see some clouds of what looked like grey smoke poof out, and honestly since I spend all day inside in air conditioned comfort, I'm not surprised my hair has a bunch of crap on it. In the end, my hair looked nice. REALLY nice.  I should've taken a picture, but I didn't think about it. I do feel a little guilty that the guy went to all that work, and then I went and worked out, perspired all over the place, and had to go home and wash my hair. Ah, well.
3. Yesterday I saw my eye doctor for a check up of my broken eyeballs (chronic bilateral iritis, fyi), which are actually much, much better thankyouverymuch. I haven't had a major flare since October when I tried some new undereye wrinkle cream one night, and woke the next morning to a flurry of floaters. Some quick action with the prednisone drops for a couple days cleared it right up (as did tossing the offending eye cream!), and I haven't had any more trouble since. My doctor was very pleased (he saw no floaters or inflamed cells and was thrilled at my nice, normal eye pressure), and even gave me an exam and prescription to get glasses!! I've never had glasses for distance - only ever readers which I usually buy at the drug store - and I can. Not. Wait! My vision has gotten so bad over the past few years, and not all due to the inflammation because let's face it, I'm almost 47, that driving is becoming complicated, and sightseeing and photography is becoming a chore, if not totally impossible Now I just need some super cute, hip eyeglass frames, and I'm set.
4. The world didn't end today. Yay! At least not yet; it's only a little before 9:30 pm, so who knows. There's still a few hours left!
5. And finally, here is your photo for the week, a pretty flower I spotted on my way to the eye doctor. I think it's a snowdrop (?), and I was surprised because I didn't think they bloomed this time of year. Still pretty, though.  Cheers!

First of December

Greetings and welcome to this little life of mine! Generally people use the first day of Holidailies to introduce themselves to other Holidailies participants, but I really don't know what to say about myself that would be at all interesting, so instead I'll just blather on about my day.

Being Saturday, it was grocery shopping day. Typically my mom and I would get up and head off to Bru Coffeehouse for two of the best lattes in town and the best toasted bagel we've ever had, then go to Big Lots and the "Other Little Store" (actually called Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, which is a magically place that saves us TONS of money every trip). Also typically as the the first Saturday of the month, we would first have stopped by the Flea Market in the hopes of finding something fabulous, like paperbacks for .25, before going to Bru. The rain, however, drowned out the Flea Market today so, we decided to just have breakfast at Starbucks, then hit the "Little Store" (our name for the Atascadero Discount Grocery store, the original discount grocery store in town) for some great deals on slightly dented boxed foods like Hamburger Helpers and Rice-a-Ronis, and cheap cleaning products before heading to Vons.

After surviving Vons (and managing to get out under $100. due to meticulously sticking to our shopping list and using coupons), we headed home. I went out to the back yard to get some shots of wet rocks and leaves, but had to run inside because it started raining. Again. I ended up with some good shots, though, including this pretty shiny wet rock and some waterdrops on some white flowers that were supposed to be annuals, but have been coming back again and again for the past five or so years. Enjoy and Happy Holidailies!

 

Cheers!

Last Harvest

Well, our little Earthbox garden is done for the season. Yesterday I went out and harvested some peppers and tomatoes for dinner, and today mom and I decided it was time to take the plants out, so I brought in the rest of the peppers and one more little tomato that seemed to pop up over night. 

I'm kinda sad to see the end of the garden (mostly going to miss those sweet, delicious tomatoes!!), but I'm looking forward to next year. We're planning to just get 2 bush goliath tomatoes next year because the one we had this year was the best producer and we just weren't impressed by the big beef tomato, and a couple bell peppers, and I might even do zucchini again, or try something else.

Cheers! 

Garden Update in Lomo

Two Sundays ago I went out and took my weekly garden pics, but never got them resized or posted due to having put a bunch of my rubber stamps for sale on eBay, and subsequently selling them all within a couple hours. So then there was packing and printing and shipping, and gah! Why can't all my crap super good quality stuff sell this fast??

Then this past weekend I ended up with a cold that I'm despiratly trying to get over quickly since the Central Coast Writer's Conference is this coming up this weekend and my vacation with my mom to Cambria is next Monday thru Thursday. So I never even made it outside to harvest the few little tomatoes I can see from the kitchen window, let alone take a new set of pictures.

Anyway, the other night I was playing with one of my favourite photo sites, dumpr.net, and decided to do my garden pictures in lomo, just to be different. (BTW, dumpr looks.net has the best lomo filter for pictures,  IMHO.) So, here's what the garden looked like a couple weeks ago. It probably hasn't changed much.

 

Everything is crazy huge. My pepper plants are both pretty loaded down with peppers in various shapes, sizes and even colours. A lot of them have been turning red, and some have a little orange in them, too.  They have all been delicious sauteed in a little EVOO!

 

The Big Beefsteak tomato plant itself is ginormous, but the tomatoes never got too terribly big. They have been delicious, though, sweet and meaty, and hopefully we'll get some more over the next couple weeks.

 

We did get some pretty good-sized, uber juicy and delicious tomatoes off the Bush Goliath plant, but they're starting to fizzle out, too.  This plant was so successful we're planning to just get two fo them next year and skip the beefsteak.

I think the garden may be just about done for this year. The tomatoes are not getting as large, and there are fewer and fewer blossoms on the plants. The weather is finally (hopefully?!?) changeing from the hideously hot summer to a somewhat cooler fall, and I think in a few weeks we'll be saying farewell to the garden of 2012.

See It Sunday: Rose

One of my grandpa's roses. Used the Diana effect on Camera+. Cheers!

Attack of the {Deliciously} Killer Tomatoes

OMG. Check out this garden:

It's huge and we're suddenly getting tons of produce!

Both pepper plants are going strong. The little one has some baby peppers and blossoms, and the bigger one has several big peppers that are slowly going red. I left them and just took a nice big green bell and a couple little ones that were slightly burned. 

And, the tomatoes! Holy cow! The Big Beef tomato plant has exploded! Although none of the toms are very big, they're very red and juicy and delicious!

My Bush Goliath tomato plant, however, has several very good sized toms, most of which were ready to harvest today, too. Although they're not ginormous, either (I think it's been too hot and they're ripening faster than they're growing), they are the best tasting tomatoes I've ever had!

And, I love this awesome harvest bag from Fiskars! 

I was lucky to have it today as I ended up harvest a LOT of tomatoes and really needed something other than the bottom of my shirt to carry them in. 

Here's my haul in all its bright red glory:

Cheers!

 

Gardening Update!

As you can see from the series of photos below, our Earthbox garden is going like gangbusters! I harvested four more tomatoes from the Bush Goliath plant - the largest of which made for a delicious bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich! - and noticed the Big Beef tomato plant is looking like it might give us some fruit eventually as well. As for the peppers, the largest plant is still busting out ginormous peppers, all of which I'm keeping on the plant as long as possible in the hopes that they'll go red (although I don't have a picture of it yet, the kinda red one I picked a week or so ago has along completely changed colour! I'll try to remember to get a piccie of it before I roast it!), and the little plant we thought wasn't going to make it actually has TWO good sized peppers on  it!

In the front, all of my roses are doing very well. The Midas Touch has not stopped blooming all summer and my two mini red rose bushes are both growing and blooming!

How's your garden doing??

In the Garden

It's a little warm today, so the garden is a little droopy, but it's still doing pretty well.

The bush goliath tomato plant is stuffed with tomatoes, a couple of which were ready to harvest:

This little critter (I'm guessing it's a caterpillar??) tried hitching a ride on my tom. I transferred him to our tree where he'll hopefully be okay.

My Big Beef tomato plant is still huge, but still not really producing much except a few mutant-looking toms:

The peppers are both still going strong, too. The big plant has several big peppers on it. I really want to hold out to see if they will turn red, but I'm afraid the plant will break off with the weight of them, so I took, a couple in. The little plant actually has a tiny pepper starting on it which is pretty exciting!

Here is my haul for the day. These guys are going in a pasta salad for lunch - yum!

Cheers!

@Earthbox Garden Update #earthbox #organic

Well, our little Earthbox garden is going along just fine! No ripe tomatoes this week, but the Bush Goliath tomato plant is quite full of good-sized green ones, so we should be getting some soon. Also, I noticed the Big Beef tomato plant is finally starting to get some more little green tomatoes on it. I'm curious to see how big they actually get! As for the peppers, the one on the right is still going strong, and has a couple peppers I could harvest, but I'm holding out to see if they'll turn red, and the runt ont he left I think might actually have grown a little bit! There may be hope for it yet!

First Gardening Update in July

Hopefully I'll be better at updating our growing garden during July than I was in June. We've already harvested one tomato and I'm sure there is at least one more ready to be picked. Let's find out!

Here is our Bush Goliath tomato plant. We got our first tomato of this one and it looks like there's a couple more ready to go!!!

This ginormous monstrosity is our Big Beef tomato plant. We only have this one odd-shaped little "frankentom" so far, but the bush is covered with blossoms, so I'm still hopeful!

Okay, so I just don't know what to think about the sad, little dwarf pepper plant on the left there. It's not dying, but it's not really growing, either. The other pepper plant is doing really well, and even had a pepper ready to pick!

For lunch yesterday I used both tomatoes and the pepper in a pasta tuna salad - it was SO yummy! The tomatoes were juicy and sweet and the green bell pepper was really sweet, too!

Cheers!