What Have I Been Up To?

Most of the time I am fighting my weight or blood sugar. I mean, that is a daily battle, and really... Do you want to hear about it? If so, here's a little update. Finally, I think I have my insulin intake under control - for the most part. I mean, I still have minor bouts of high numbers, especially when I go off diet and binge at the Chinese "all-you-can-eat" buffets. Give me a break. Sushi? Fried fish? Fried shrimp? Fried... well, whatever? And rice? Of course my numbers are going to be out of bounds. DOH!!! Also, I've learned, if I turn just right, I can jolt my back out of place and that insipid continuous pain can sky-rocket my blood sugar, too. So, I deal with it, and on most day, I'm good.

Weight? I didn't gain this spacious 100 pounds overnight; I'm not going to lose it overnight. The faster it comes off, the faster it comes back and usually brings extra luggage and friends. I'm losing at a slow pace, a hair over three pounds over a three month period. That would mean, one pound per month. Maybe I "could" step it up a little, but, well, read the previous paragraph. Buffets? Doh?! If it ain't deep fried, it is coated in a heavy sugary syrup. Hence, when at home, I eat a lot of less carb meals, cutting corners on the carb count as I can. Sandwiches are now basically a wrap, but with lavash bread which is only 4 carbs for 1/4 section of bread which is more than enough to wrap a sandwich. Sure beats 20+ for a slice of bread.

So much for all that same-o, same-o crap about my diet, weight, and blood sugar. Big whoop! I'm controlling it for the most part. I'm happy.

So... What have I been doing? We decided to revamp the front porch. Okay, in full honesty, we decided to revamp the whole appearance around the house. First step was getting some of the weeds under control and to do that, we decided to get rid of some flower beds. We didn't get rid of flowers, just the beds. Flowers now reside in pots and they're doing real fine and I've discovered, so much easier to weed. As I wander around the yard, checking the posies, if I see a stray weed growing in the pot - well, out it comes!!

The garden was six feet by fifteen feet. Slightly raised. To be honest, barely eight inches off the ground. It did help keep the weeds somewhat controlled, but leaning down to get to them. Uh, that was a stretch.

A new raised bed this spring. Smaller. It is - inside dimensions - four feet by nine something feet. Note I said inside dimensions. I used concrete blocks, two blocks high. So the garden is now sixteen inches from the ground and quite reachable. Weeds? Yeah, a few at the start which I was able to remove in less than ten minutes. Now, that's what I call easy gardening. This image is when I first started to put it in. Uh, two trips to Menards to lug them back in the rear of a 2014 Ford Focus, 700+ pounds, just in blocks, each load. LOL.

Almost finished. Just a little more dirt. I've put in some dirt, some sand, and lots and lots of chicken crap. I cleaned out the chicken coop and well, what better place to put all that fertilizer? I let it sit for almost a month, watering it so it wouldn't be too strong.

And, now? Here's what it looks like today.

I have two struggling bell peppers on the extreme right with some nice looking bells. There are 2 rows of green beans and one row of wax beans. My "salad" lettuce is on the left. It is a mixture of different leaf lettuces. And, across the back, I have five (5) tomato plants. Starting from the left, it is a cherry tomato (in case you didn't notice, it is HUGE) for salads and munching, a Beef Steak for sandwiches, a New Jersey Devil which is a strange Roma-type for pastes and salsa, a Pink which will add a lighter color to the mix, and finally, on the far right, a Mortgage Maker which is a heavy bearer and great for sauces. Yeah, a lot of tomatoes going into pint and quart jars this season until the first winter frost kills them. Of course, I'll probably sneak out and grab a couple of green maters to fry up. Love them. Oh, and before I forget, I am proud to say, everything in the garden but the lettuce was grown by me from seed.

I've also been working on the front porch and side deck. Let's go with the front porch. It is "almost" done. I just need to get the LED post cap lights for the four small posts, and I also need to string rope between the posts. Since the porch is only two feet from the ground on the sides, and a couple of inches from the front flower beds, I don't need to have any railing. We love the look without. BUT, we discovered, a strong wind moves the furniture across the porch and well, in the past, the railings kept things contained to the front porch and not flipping all over the yard. Hence, we are placing a decorative rope around to at least keep the furniture on the porch during a storm. Here's the porch, as built in 2006 when the house was going up. The only thing missing is the slapped-up white roof with no trim.

This is what it looks like today, minus the cap post LED lights and ropes ... which are coming soon.

And, now, some close ups. They are: front porch left side, front porch right side, my fancy corner emblem so I didn't have to miter the corners when putting up the trim, and the newly painted furniture.

Now, a little about the furniture. Originally, the love seat was the same insipid "tan" color as the table next to it. The Adirondack chair was a lovely shade of dark army green. The other chairs were also a shade of dark moss green. I painted them all a dark blue. We put new blue and white cushions on the old rockers. And, in the near future, I will paint the tables white. Also, I plan to paint all the shutters on the house to match our new color scheme. Yup! It will be that dark blue.

I'm currently working on the side deck. It is a mere eight (8) to ten (10) feet above the ground on the east end of the house. I had some of that crappy plastic trellis screwed to some of the uprights. Not really all that safe. I have since put up welded fencing and will be covering it with wood strips. When I finish that project, I'll post. Hopefully, by then, I'll also have the rest of the front porch, and shutters completed. One neighbor asked if I was getting the house ready to sell. I informed him I was changing a lot of things around the house to make it easier for me, a seventy-two year old fart, to keep things up-to-date. I will be enlarging the "hillside" flower bed this fall. My son bought a new place and my DIL doesn't want to fiddle with all the myriad of flowers. Guess who is going to inherit them? And, in the manner of keeping it easier for me, I'll add a simple path through the new bed to make weeding easier when in the flower bed.

A Gardening Lesson

Here's a gardening tidbit. When is the best time to weed? Well, of course, when the weed first emerges from the ground and has very little root... but, well, we don't tend to catch them until they are larger than the flowers. LOL. So, now to answer the question. After it has rained. If you get a heavy deluge, or really good dousing of water that seeps deep into the ground. The next day... or later that day, grab your bucket and whatever weeding tools you use and get out there. PULL... yes, PULL those weeds out. If the ground is really wet, they will literally slip out, maybe even with all the hairy little roots still attached. I did that for a mulch area, pulling dandelions, Queen Anne's lace, thistle, creeping Jenny and all sorts of other weeds out - tap root and all the little roots, too. If you get the root out, they don't tend to grow back. LOL. I've got a little weeding to do and it has threatened to rain for the last couple of days. Even the weatherman believes it will rain. It hasn't. Each day it doesn't rain and I don't pull the weeds, they get stronger root systems and bigger. If it don't rain tonight, I will get the sprinkler out and let it run for about an hour in the morning, then again for about thirty minutes in the afternoon. Then, in the evening shade and cool, I'll sit on my little bench and pull those weeds out. BTW, if you know my luck, it will pour that night after I've watered so well.

Until next I ramble on...