Monday, June 25, 2007

How does the garden grow




The newest border--hydrangas at the back, Petunias, My giant hosta





Almost There

Monday is Weight Watchers meeting. So, I weight in as usual, and the receptionist asks me if I am staying for the meeting--I was, and if I wanted my 40 pound loss mentioned--I did. Actually when I got home and looked at my book, I found that I am 1.6 pounds away from my goal! It did take me 4 months to lose 5 pounds, so I hope that the last bit won't take as long as that.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

How does my garden grow?

We are having a dry spell in the northern suburbs. All the rain seems to go south and west, so the sprinkler is going full blast today. I really don't like to overuse the sprinkler, but I just put in a lot of plants and I don't want them to fail.
Last week's work was to finish up my borders. On the north end of the house, I've been trying to grow flowers with mediocre results. So this year, I waited and thought about what I could do in that space that would work, and try to use plant material that I had growing elsewhere. I have some difficult cultural problems, shade, hot late afternoon sun and dryness. So I decided to relocate several hostas, which were getting too much sun, and added two hydrangeas. I had an annabelle hydrangea which was doing well, so I decided to add two more as foundation plants. The golden hosta in front and then I added three lamium--which have white leaves to perk up the area. It does look nice. picture to follow.
I finished off my beds in back with wave petunias and some torenias. Most garden centers are sold out of waves now, so I had to pay premium prices for mine, but they are worth every penny of the additional cost. I also got hanging baskets from Home Depot on sale. The last part of my work was to make my container plants which go on my front stoop. I'm not that thrilled with them. but hopefully as they grow, they will grow on me.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Am I Going Nuts?

It is very hot today--in the nineties and has been hot for several days. We broke down and turned on the AC and it has been on for 2 days. So, when I got dressed today, I really didn't want to wear my usual long pants to Weight Watchers. So, I found some shorts, but to make sure, I weighed them on my WW scale, and then I weighed my usual weigh-in day pants. Fortunately, the shorts were several ounces lighter, so I wore them and enjoyed the coolness. Am I going nuts? Is this weight loss reducing brain cells, the ones that control good sense? The weigh in was successful and I am down .8 of a pound, and am at my lowest weight since I've boon on the program. I am now 4 pounds away from my goal.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Sucessful to the core

So, my few days on the core plan have been successful. Even with a dinner on Thursday and a wedding on Sat, I was down a little bit at my meeting today. I have hit a new low in my weight. I have 3.8 pounds left to go. I've set a mini goal for myself, I plan to make my goal weight for the Nordstrom sale in July. Now this may sound insane, but the Nordstrom sale has new fall clothes, and I don't want to buy anything that will be too big when I wear it. That is what happened last year, and I had to get rid of a few things that I barely wore.
The wedding was just lovely, great food, a beautiful setting and wonderful flowers and ceremony. It was as close to a fairy tale wedding as it could be. My friend really did a fantastic job organizing and pulling it off.
Now I am going to work on my garden and go the the gym.

Friday, June 08, 2007

Some changes

My mother fell last Sat and now has a hairline fracture in her pelvis. Now, there is not surgery for this, just taking it easy and recovering slowly. She spent Sunday in the ER, and Monday and part of Tuesday in Evanston Hospital. She is now in rehab at the Mather Pavilion. She is not very happy there and can't wait to get back to her apt. This event is taking a toll on her and on me. I don't know why, but I not as patient as I was recently. Oh well.
Tomorrow is Erin's wedding. This has been almost a year in the planning, and the weather promises to be wonderful. We are all going, but my mother won't be making an appearance, and is disappointed. Both the bride and groom are deaf. This is interesting to me, as I realized that deaf people understand hearing people much better than hearing folks understand them. They also seem to get a lot more enjoyment from communication than hearing people do. More animation, more facial expression and more body language than people who hear.
On the weight loss front, I switched to the core plan. This isn't a big change for me, as I was making a point to eat core foods for the past few weeks. When my group leader suggested mixing things up, I really didn't take her advice. Now I have. I have also been to the gym 3 times this week. Being somewhat flakey this week, I also realized that my personal training was an hour earlier than I thought it was. So I flew out of here, missed all the green lights, but still fit in about 30 minutes of my hour. I still got in 45 minutes on the elliptical.
Starting Sunday, I have no long term plans for the rest of the summer. No class to teach, no teachers to coach. No camp or botanic garden activities either. I just have a few weeks to do what ever I want to do. I do have some ideas--mainly in the gardening area. I can vegetate, I can read, I can go to the gym, I can do whatever I want to do in this house. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Buggy Days, Noisy Days


The 17 year cicadas are finally here. The hype has been going on for several weeks, with the arrival--hatching day of May 22. That day came and went, with very few cicadas. All we had to do is wait, the weather warmed up a bit and now there are here in force. Their shells are all around the trees, and the bugs are on every kind of vegetation. We can expect to see them for about 3 weeks, then they lay their eggs, die and the 17 year cycle begins again.
These bugs are harmless, about 2 inches long, and are supposed to be quite tasty to humans and animals. They cling to anything, trees, branches, plants and fences. They don't eat or drink, don't sting or bite. They don't fly much even though they have large wings. When they do fly, they are really slow. We should be seeing some fat birds soon, since cicadas are a delicious treat to them.
Their purpose is to meet cicadas of the opposite sex, mate and lay eggs. In order to attract a mate, they "sing." Now thousand, maybe more singing cicadas makes quite a din. which sounds slightly industrial. It goes on all day, and stops after dark. I have experienced this phenomenon several times before--1990, 1973, 1956, but I have the most vivid recollections of the 1956 brood, when I was still in elementary school. I don't remember the noise at all.