Garden update 8/1

Happy August 1st!!!!

Traffic was not horrendous today which was nice. Got home, a quick snack and changed into partial workout gear hahaha.

She is impatiently waiting for us to go do out watering in the yard.

Raspberries!!!! Well raspberry plants, they are still growing but not really producing anymore.

One of Brandon’s newly panted areas. The front yard is mostly his domain and he wants it to look presentable.

More newly planted flowers…..that i got free from someone at work woohoo!!!

broccoli!!!!!!

mixture of lettuce, flowers and my herb garden. we have basil, sage, thyme, rosemary, and oregano along with my little fig plant that is very SLOWLY growing.

My pear tree is having a growth spurt

Another area that Brandon has created. He has a good eye for yards actually.

Pea season has definitely come to an end. I am slowly getting one or two peas here and there that are no where near as sweet and wonderful as the ones at the beginning of the season. I have a bag in the freezer that i am slowly adding to, it will be good to throw in soups over the winter.

These tomatoes are finally starting produce a bit. The artichoke plant is still just there lol. The cucumber plant is hanging on, i have gotten one cucumber off it so far. The bell pepper plant is just starting to get its first pepper. and the chive are new and doing pretty well.

She LOVES to roll around in the grass. She never did this before we moved here. I think she likes it a lot.

2nd batch of onions, they are surviving!!!!

Pepper plants!

Summer squash…….do you see it?

My 2 lone pumpkins. I have cut them from the stalks and they are starting their curing process. I don’t need them to last months though, just until classes are over then i will cook with them.

This is our neighbors plum tree, i would say 1/3 is hanging over into our yard and i am watching like a hawk for ripe plumbs i can take from out side!!!!!!

Zucchini is still producing like crazy!!!!

Look how many are starting to turn colors!!!! Just a few more days!!!!

That is a cucumber plant growing in among the tomatoes, snaking its vines wherever it can find space.

The last bit of lettuce is holding on in the heat and letting us get a few leaves here and there as we need them.

That is the garden currently.

Today i made zucchini bread and zucchini pasta salad for lunch tomorrow.

Ran some sprints for run training……..my fastest sprints were in the 8 min mile time frame hahahahahaha this is hilarious because that is a lot of runners normal or slightly pushing it pace……there are people who run marathons doing 5 min miles and i am dying doing 8 min for 45 secs. But you know what………I AM DOING IT!!!! And i am proud of that no matter how slow I am.

I am about 1/2 of the way done with my essay that is due tomorrow at midnight but it is 10pm and that is my bedtime if i don’t want to be a zombie tomorrow. Plus the due date is tomorrow so i can afford to go to sleep.

Thank you for following along!!!

Hope you had a wonderful day!!!!

July 29, 2018

I feel like I did so much and yet so little this weekend. Got two great workouts done and spent hours out of the house exploring and also spent a full afternoon/evening doing HW. But I got NO housework done, no meal prep, no canning/food saving. It was a successful and unsuccessful weekend hahaha.

We have been hot here this week, mid to high 90’s the whole time. Today we are supposed to get close to 100 then we start swinging down and are supposed to be in the low 80’s by Thursday.

My drive to work.

Every day a few more tomatoes are starting to turn a light orange-y, pink meaning in just a few more days they will be ready to pick. Zucchini are still going strong, I just pulled 3 HUGE ones from the bottom of the bush that had been forgotten. I need to pick a few peppers and oh man, our cucumber plants are just really starting, i have 5 pint jars of refrigerator pickles in the freezer and 4 cucumbers on the counter i need to can.

Chili for dinner!!

I have 3 weeks left of school, the next 2 are going to be a bit crazy because i have something due every day except Saturdays. With that i can feel the garden gearing up to explode more zucchini and tomato on me and i am just praying it can hold out for 2-3 more weeks when I will be able to devote a lot more time to canning and dehydrating and preserving.

And now i need to get back to school work. I currently have A’s in both my classes and i am keeping it that way!!!!!

When you should do more HW and workout but you are tired so you stop in the middle to watch Chuck, be a dork and go to sleep early.

Good night.

July 26, 2018

Hello!!! So happy it is my Friday!

I have HW to do tomorrow then I think Saturday we are going to go visit his grandparents on their farm. I LOVE where they live. I think they are on about 10 acres and have like 10 cows. I think they got 2 calves this year, I can’t wait to see the baby cows!!!! They also have a million blackberry bushes so i will be bringing homes like 20lbs of blackberries. But i’ll stop before I get carried away, you can see it all when I blog about it hahaha.

Today’s plan:

Try and get some more HW done at work to make tomorrow go a little easier.

1.5 mile run with sprints…….in the 98 degree heat (date night!!! lol)

Taco salad was the plan but instead I ate some cookie dough and homemade guacamole and was way too full. I wanted to puke a little during my run. But I got through it.

Now a movie at home to complete the date night.

And babe made some fried zucchini that was to die for!

July 25, 2018

Our first handful of tomatoes have arrived!!! Pictures to come.

I have also given away 4 zucchini this week, we still have 1 in the fridge, 3 on the counter and at least 2 more ready to pick. 3 cucumber on the counter. Time to make more pickles!

Our lettuce is also getting ready to flower and we didn’t make salad last night so i cut the tops and brought them to a coworker.

Tried to find motivation to do some HW at work today, I have a relatively easy but time consuming project due on Friday for my writing class.

I had planned to go home last night and do some HW and workout and basically just be productive, but I got hit with a wave of sadness.

10 years ago this last Monday they found a tumor on my dad’s spine and less than 2 months later he was dead. We are rapidly approaching the decade anniversary of his death and that is really hard. My family is also currently planning a memorial for my brother who died in January to have in our home town in September so emotions are running high all around.

Sometimes you just need a night cry and let it all out. I took that last night now its time to get back to it.

July 24, 2018

I know we are still smack dab in the middle of summer but since I am out watering every day and plodding away in the garden and watching my food grow; I can already see and feel fall coming in the mornings and evenings. Which I am super excited about because Autumn is my favorite month but for the first time I am thinking, “Summer, don’t go too fast…..I want more food hahahaha.”

Here in the pacific northwest by the time the summer solstice hits we have sun from like 4:15am to 10-10:15pm. Now just over a month past the solstice the sun is behind the last houses by 9pm and it is just starting to peak over the horizon when I get a quick morning water in at 5:40am to stave off the 98 degree weather. A quick hit of the hose in the AM means I don’t come home to wilted plants at 5pm. I do the major watering after i get home from work.

Today is a medium busy day for me, I am working until mid-afternoon then meeting my friend for a coffee and a chat

then heading home to get in a quick 1.5 mile run

then making some delicious stuffed zucchini.

We opened our first batch of homemade refrigerator pickles and they are DELICIOUS!!!! I wanted to eat the entire pint jar in one sitting……and no I have not been a major pickle lover my whole life.

Got tomorrows HW done today for the win! Staying ahead is game changing.

July 23, 2018

Had a quiz tonight for my writing class, though I think quiz was a reach, it had no time limit and was about academic honesty. I think classes just have to follow stupid rules about having a certain amount of test/quizzes……and yet somehow I only got an 80 on it. It asked about citation formatting, need I say more?

Neither of us felt great so we got del taco for dinner and watched the 2nd half of Black Panther, we started it last night but didn’t finish it. Now it is early to bed for us and hopefully we

My Garden is Growing

Today’s post will be a series of videos

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The garden is doing amazing!!! Now when dinner time comes it is like ok, what do we have from the garden that we need to use!

Weeds and the organic garden

This isn’t about weeds or a garden but I finally hung up a wind chime that I bought at some swap meet on a family camping trip…..14 years ago!!!! I kid you not, it was wrapped in a newspaper from 2004.

Peas !!!!! So excited to start eating some sugar snap peas!

Hanging basket from Costco, I’m pretty happy with it. It’s really pretty.

Ok so weeds, I let Brandon spray some of the yard when we started on the yard but not the majority of it. I didn’t want a bunch of pesticides in the ground right before we planted crops. And of course we aren’t spraying the plants now so we inevitably get weeds.

I let them get a little ahead of me in the beginning which i won’t do next year but now everyday when I water i spend about 15-20 minutes weeding one area of the garden. It’s not much time and I just pick out what I can see or easily get to. There are always still weeds left and sometimes I look back where I was just weeding and swear there is a weed in the exact spot I already pulled one but i also love those few quiet moments in the garden.

Basically if you dont use anything to kill the weeds there will always be weeds, don’t stress too much about it. Make sure your plants have room to grow and their roots have room to grow and don’t worry too much about the rest. Just do what you can.

Do you have a garden?

What are you growing?

Food, workouts and plants

Joined Beach Body!!! Pretty stoked about it! I got all the workouts on demand for a year, all the accessories for the 2B mindset nutrition program and signed up for the monthly shakes.

Date night!!!! We saw avengers infinity war. It was really good in my opinion.

Another delicious breakfast curtosy of the BF

Upping my veggie intake

Taco salads were a major thing last week

As well as sandwiches.

More veggies!!!

I am obsessed with these lately!!!

I love Bulgogi!!!

Beach bodies energize is awesome!!! I don’t feel jittery or crazy or anything, I just have more energy

Fully on the shakology bandwagon

Been working out pretty consistently. Except for camping this weekend of course.

Love my sweet little girl

Our weights

My gardening partner

My fig bush is growing!!!

The peas are staring to climb super fast!

Still working on the yard little by little

It’s almost salad time!

Our first tomatoes!!!

My workout setup, 1 device to stream my workout, 1 device to watch amazing race hahahaha and my weights. And of course Artemis in the background

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School+update

School is done and I couldn’t be happier. I ended with a C meaning I will have to retake the class to get at least a B which is what I need for nursing but I am ok with this. The last month of class I was sick and stressed and moving and so I let myself off the hook. I also have to remember that it hasn’t even been 3 full months since my brother died, my emotions are all out of wack. I am taking next quarter off school and feel great about it. This last quarter just exhausted me, I should have taken it off after my brother died but I didn’t and I know for sure that my health and well-being suffered for it. So I am putting me first and taking next quarter off. It will give me time to settle into the new house, which is currently still a mess, and settle into a new routine living with someone and commuting and all that. So that is that for school and here are more house and life updates:

The bathroom is finally starting to really come together! we have about 1/3 of the walls tiled now and even managed a bath yesterday which was AMAZING!! We couldn’t adjust the temp of the water because the spigot isn’t on yet so it was luke warm water coming out which we combined with boiled water hahahahaha, but it worked and being clean felt amazing!

We went for a short walk around the block on Friday morning, Artemis was very happy to get out of the house, though she is starting to settle in and spend longer amounts of time exploring the back yard.

Seed starts!!!! I am so excited about these!!! And I will probably have about 3-4 more trays before I am done! If even half of these survive we will have a GREAT garden and a good amount of food. I can’t wait to see how it all grows.

That is just a quickie update since I didn’t post on Friday. More to come tomorrow on Monday Motivation!!!!