Small box gardening

One of the things my family wanted to do in 2012, and well to be honest 2010 and 2011, was create a garden and grow vegetables for the dinner table. 

In between bouts of being too sick to get out of bed, I would sit on the couch or in my backyard and watch the arc of the sun along our backyard. In February I had a window of relative un-sick, so I build a 4x2 small box garden along the side of the house. Around the garden I put up a short chicken wire fence to keep out any animals that might sneak over the wall and  the posts allowed me to string up some light netting to keep out the birds that would try to eat the seeds before they took. Over all it went pretty easy thanks to some help from the local nursery on proper soil and gear. 

I surprised Mistress, and for those who haven't followed my blog very well, that is the alias I gave my wife, with the garden box when she came home from work. One of the things I handed her was a .pdf spreadsheet of when it was best to seed and harvest vegetables in our area for year round gardening. 

Mistress got right at it with fear that her efforts would produce nothing or she would kill everything off. The hardest part has been watering every morning, as I did not hook up an automatic system. 

The photo is about two months into the first harvest. There is pumpkin, corn, tomatoes, cilantro, lettuce, carrots, sunflowers, sage and bunch of beans. We have already snipped some of the herbs and a tomato for salads and little dishes.As you can see by the little pink tools our DD likes to help out too. 

It went so well that I decided to go a little bit bigger, in the next post, you'll see how that went. 

Down and out, now just out.

Since the last time I deigned this site I know I have never been so sick for so long from basic illnesses in my life. True Story. Late January a sinus infection. Script didn't help. Mid February, a secondary infection. Script didn't help. Mid February again, bronchitis. First of March, Influenza. The real McCoy, not the term used as hyperbole for telling people how bad you had it. I literally spent days in bed, no tv, no book, no lights, no radio. Just me, my hot and cold flashes, flop sweat, headaches, sinuses, coughing and fevers, sleeping for hours at a time. When was the last time you were so sick you couldn't even listen to a tv in the background. Ugh. 

I've been healthy for a couple weeks now, but its been hard to get any workouts going. I wish I could admit I feel too weak or whatever but truth is, I just don't feel like it. Something in me has snapped mentally and I need to get it back. I go for a run but I can't stay inside my head. I can't stand listening to the conversations going on up there. The questions I don't want to answer, the topics that throw me off my stride. 

It will all turn around. I can plan a workout, I can think about a workout. I can see myself working out. I just can't stand listening to my conversation in my head when I do it. Like the most annoying, worst workout partner in the world. 

I've always wished that I had the type of body that lost weight when I got sick or stopped working out. Sadly no and a pox on all my friends that lament they've lost ten pounds when they stopped working out. I've gained about seven pounds since the beginning of the year. 

I've been trying to catch up on some home projects, so over the next couple posts I will be typing those up rather than discussing my lack of race and training updates. 

I thinking getting back onto a schedule and writing regularly will help me recalibrate my focus. Lets see....