Starting our seedlings.

I learned so much from my gram growing up, like how to whip together a fast and filling meal, how to can in-season food, and how to do a job right the first time. Unfortunately (and fortunately) with gardening, it's a learning experience that is impossible to do right the first time! So in a way it is freeing to just try things out and see how it ends up.

We are starting our seeds way late this year, but hopefully it'll work out anyways. Last year the growing season went way longer than usual (thanks global warming!) so maybe that will happen again this year?

I was hoping to incorporate Devin into helping me, but as expected, her almost 15 month old brain was way more interested in eating dirt and crushing egg shells! So I let her do that while I planted everything.

I couldn't find some of my supplies so I'll be doing more starters in a few days, but we have about 60 for now. We have a really large garden area and I'm not expecting all the starters to survive so I'm doing a lot! Always the pessimist.

As part of my "learning experience", I'm trying some seeds in eggshells and cartons this year. They can be put directly into the soil when it's time to plant so the roots aren't disrupted. I was supposed to poke a hole in the bottom and forgot though, so we'll see how it ends up. I'll be doing another couple dozen in eggs, so hopefully I remember to do those right.

So far the starts are acorn squash, mini cantaloupe, sage, leeks, basil, hot peppers, and celery. I totally forgot about the cherry tomatoes, so I think I'll just buy the starters from the local nursery because there definitely won't be enough time. I can also just plant those now with some walls-o-water. I decided to be smart and kept a record of the planting order that I can now make into labels!

The rest I plan on planting directly into the ground soon include carrots, radishes, potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, gold + green beans, kale, cilantro, cucumber, dill, and rosemary. I really want to can and dehydrate a bunch of stuff at the end of the season and dry a lot of herbs to use through winter because they are so easy to grow.

So that's it! Are you growing anything this summer?

Crassssshhhhhhh.

Today was my first real crash on my mountain bike! I've crashed before when I used to do some downhilling with Vince, but I always had full pads on and rarely actually felt anything. Since I am stuck on my couch at the moment with my leg unable to move itself, I'm going to tell you all about it over a million paragraphs, though it was like a three second crash.

Vince and I have planned a shiftaroo type of ride where I drive him to the top of Snowbowl with Roxi, drive back to the bottom and leave the truck for him to pick up and take Roxi home, then I ride from the bottom of Snowbowl to home. The first part went well and I parked the truck and started riding the AZ Trail. I didn't get any warmup in because the place I originally wanted to park that would have given me a warmup was not in an ideal spot for Vince because it would have made him late to work. So I started riding mostly at a decline until I get to the trail I was looking for, which started ascending right away. I had never ridden this part of the trail on Rocky Moto, but right away there were some technical spots. I wasn't able to clear some of them, especially since my legs weren't really ready to do the riding I was doing, so I ended up getting off my bike to walk a section. In my head I thought, 'Walking fucking sucks! I need to at least try riding this stuff. What's the worst that can happen, I fall? So what!' When I got back on my bike I just started crushing it. I was pedaling hard, clearing some stuff I wasn't sure I was going to clear, and then one mile later BOOM. I crash.

It was a pretty steep uphill with the trail leaning off to the right. As soon as I hit the big rock I was trying to clear, I felt myself leaning too far to the right, so I tried to unclip my shoes so that I could place my foot on the ground to balance myself. Unfortunately, my foot was stuck between my bike and a rock and I couldn't get it off! My knee and elbow quickly slammed into a pile of big rocks with my left leg getting caught up in the bike. I sat on the ground for a few seconds doing this:
(and no, you don't need to watch the whole video, it's just the first 15 seconds on repeat)

I stood up to try and shake it off but my right leg wouldn't work! Immediately upon impact under my right knee I felt something shoot up my quad to my hip and down my calf to my toes and knew I hit a nerve or something. I figured I'd walk for a minute to try and see how I felt and quickly realized I wasn't going to be able to finish my ride. I called Vince to make sure he hadn't already left with the truck yet, and luckily he hadn't.

I didn't want to make him late for work so I decided to hop back on my bike and just ride through the pain, and it felt better! I was able to get down the difficult parts of the trail with just a little pain in my leg. After a couple minutes I stopped for a second thinking I might just call Vince to tell him I'd finish my ride and that maybe my pain before was just because I was scared, but as soon as my foot touched the ground it hurt so bad. Last year Vince hurt his leg (he didn't work for many weeks!) and I think it was so bad because he kept riding after he hurt it, thinking it wasn't terrible. I wanted to avoid that, so I sadly headed back to the truck.

As soon as I got to the truck and off my bike, the pain quickly set in and spread. Instead of just being localized around where I hit it and the area in my quad and calf I originally felt the pain, I felt it spread to my groin, hips and butt, down to my toes and around my ankle, and all around my kneecap and the back of my knee. So painful! Vince drove us home and I kept trying to lift my leg to readjust it and it hurt too much to even move it.

So now I am at home hoping that rest will let it heal quickly. It's not like I have an open wound or a torn muscle, so I have no idea how to let it properly heal other than resting it. I'm looking forward to a lot of riding this year, so I'm wanting to let it fully heal before I get crazy again. And you can bet that the next time I ride that new trail, I'm wearing kneepads!

My right knee (left in the picture) is clearly swelling some in various places, and I'd only been home about 5 minutes! Also, knees are so gross, I hate them.

And to end this post, here are some recent pictures: 

And one from the other day when Vince and I rode:

Lovely Day

Today has been one of those perfect spring days, and it's only halfway over! This is my only day off this week with a 35 hour work weekend staring me in the eye, and the weather decided to provide some happiness. I picked up my DSLR for the first time in a long while and snapped some various lovelies around my backyard as I did some yard work. I'm about to go for a run, take a nap/rest time on the couch, then go mountain bike with some sweet ladies!

 

 Some of my pretty ceramic pots broke over winter!

A bee!

Our screen door doesn't close because the door is too small for the frame, so we use a paintbrush to keep it closed!