Category: Gardening

Finding the Sunshine

On By DGThomaIn Exercise, Food, Gardening, Humor/Light Hearted, WritingLeave a comment

I’ve been so busy and absentminded lately!  Today I was particularly scattered.  I began the day with my supervisor standing in the door of my office with a major problem.  I spent the first half hour of my day researching the details of his issue only to find out everything was fine and there really wasn’t a problem after all.

When I finally got to my computer, I checked my calendar for meetings.  The first one was scheduled for 10:00 AM with another one scheduled immediately afterward.  I had just enough time to get a few things out-of-the-way first.

At 10:00 AM I headed off to the meeting, stopping by to grab my staff.  They informed me I had been looking at tomorrow’s calendar.  The rest of the morning, I kept forgetting it was Wednesday and tackling Thursday’s tasks.

I was sure I was going to forget to pick up my vegetables from the Farm to Work program which is delivered on Wednesday afternoon.  The pickup time had changed from 2:30 PM to 1:45 PM.  Finally I set my alarm for 1:45 PM and got back to work.  I kept thinking about the pickup time and watching the clock until finally the alarm went off.  I realized I had forgotten to bring a bag for the vegetables!20150902_205124

Digging through my office, I finally found a bag with some books in it.  Dumping the books out, I rushed down three flights of stairs and hurried to the courtyard to pick up my vegetables. I had been so busy I had only left my desk one time to get a glass of water.  Walking through the fresh air and sunshine was revitalizing!  When I rounded the corner of the building at 1:46 PM, no one was waiting, no vegetables were lined up for collecting and I didn’t see the farm truck parked in its spot.  I took a seat at the picnic table and enjoyed the sunshine.  After five minutes or so I began to wonder if maybe I was confused about what day it was, although I was pretty sure I had already established it was really Wednesday.

Reluctantly I left the warm sunshine and headed back up the stairs to re-check my email.  When I opened my email, I saw that at 1:15 PM I had received a message about the vegetables arriving early.  The vegetables were in the Wellness office. I headed back down the stairs, back into the sunshine in search of vegetables.

As I filled my bag with the lovely fresh smell of cucumbers, sweet potatoes, jalapeno, squash and more I was smiling.

I didn’t forget my vegetables, I got more exercise by doing the stairs twice and I had some delicious vegetables to use as weights on the way back to my office.

Even the view outside my window looking at downtown Austin, TX looked just a little bit brighter.

Under the Peach Tree

On By DGThomaIn Family, Food, Gardening, Humor/Light Hearted, Writing1 Comment

It might be an aroma or a quick glimpse of something that triggers a memory snippet.  For me, it is often a smell.  Fresh bread baking immediately finds me standing in the school cafeteria with a tray in my hand waiting for a delicious hot yeast roll to land beside my mashed potatoes.

Last night, I was in the kitchen putting away groceries, when my husband placed a bag on the counter.  It was a bag of fresh Fredericksburg peaches.  They had been picked three days earlier.  Without moving closer to the bag I began to smell the peaches.  Not the ones on the counter, but the fresh ripe peaches hanging from the limbs of the two peach trees which grew in my childhood backyard.   20150629_183049

The smell of those peaches brought a kaleidoscope of memories.  In the heat of the day, my mother would send me out to pick a few peaches.  She sliced the warm peach in half, removed the pit and poured cold evaporated milk over the peach before sprinkling it liberally with granulated sugar.  I think she invented sweetened condensed milk long before Eagle Brand marketed it!

I can’t even remember how it tasted, but I remember the anticipation and the contrast of the warm peach against the cold milk.  Yum!   I haven’t thought of eating those cream soaked peaches in years.  My husband has brought in peaches countless times and laid them on the counter.  I’m not sure why yesterday triggered the memory, but I’m glad it did.

It made me think of my Mom and smile.  A momentary sadness tugged at my heart as I miss those days with my mother but it was soon replaced by happy memories.

My thoughts followed the path to other memories of time spent around and under the peach tree.  My friends from next door would stop by and we would sit under those two trees.  We invented fairy tale worlds and planned our future.  You know important stuff, like who would we sit by next year in school and how would we fill our days next week.

I also thought about my mother telling me to behave or she would switch my legs with a peach tree limb.  Now those trees had thin pliable limbs that could sting like fire.  Not that I would know!  The threat of having to go cut a peach tree limb and bring it back to my mom was enough to keep me on the straight and narrow.  I’m pretty sure I was never spanked with one, but I remember the dread well.

 

Peach Tree

After dinner last night, I pulled a peach from the bag on the counter.  I rinsed the peach and bit into the crisp fruit.  As juice dribbled down my chin, I closed my eyes.  For the moment I was ten years old, sitting beneath the peach tree, playing make believe with my siblings.

 

Relaxing! June 7th, 2015

On By DGThomaIn Exercise, Food, Gardening, Humor/Light Hearted, Musings, WritingLeave a comment

Today, Sunday June 7th, 2015; I have been given the gift of relaxation. I’ve decided not to work at my day job this weekend.  We are in the process of a major software implementation.   I am woefully behind and next week promises to be jam packed with tasks.  But I need some recovery time.  This is the last weekend before training begins for our fall marathons and soon we will begin summer hours at work.  10 hour days, four days a week.

Yesterday I cleaned house.  I mean actually cleaned!  I scrubbed, mopped, dusted organized and polished.  This morning, I made pancakes, hash browns and scrambled eggs for breakfast.    With the help of my family, the leftovers are put away, the dishwasher loaded and I find myself sitting at the computer with a full day to write.

I fiddled through my email, opened my current novel in progress, and reviewed and edited some short stories.  I recently rescued the stories from an old computer I am going to retire.  Making a mental list of writing tasks on my plate, I contemplated what I should do first.

I decided to move outside to the deck to write.  Moving outside required digging up an extension cord for the laptop and my phone charger.  Check, I’m hooked up to power and ready to work.

It’s already hot outside, but the deck is still shaded by the overhead oak and pine trees surrounding it.  Just as I’m thinking how cool it is, I realize I should be preemptive and put up the umbrella before the sun shifts and I start to sweat.  Now if I could just remember where I stored it last summer.  Maybe it is in the front hall closet.  I pull coats and bags aside to search and I am not having much luck.  Pushing the door closed, I couldn’t think where else to look, so I give it one more try.  I found it!  It was tucked in the back corner, shorter than I remembered, so it had been overlooked on my first try.cropped

Now, I’m golden.  The breeze is cool, I have power and a wonderfully cold bottle of water.  I’m watching the cats play while my husband is digging weeds and adding another raised bed.  Our garden rarely produces much, but we are quite successful at feeding the deer and the rabbits.

I think I should go help him for a while.  We need to decide what to put into the new garden space.  Perhaps today is a day to enjoy small victories and random tasks.  Maybe I’ll catch up with writing later…..  I’m off to the garden center.

 

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On a Mission

On By DGThomaIn Exercise, Family, Food, Gardening, Musings, WritingLeave a comment

Saturday morning I was up at 6:00 am and on a mission.  I was determined to find a recipe for the perfect soap. I was planning to make the soap as a gift for someone special.

I decided to take a few days off from training and running this weekend.  I will get serious next week (I promise :p). So, I joined a studio this week, which offers yoga classes, Pilates, boot camps and more.   Next week, I am going to take a few classes and increase my mileage.  Hopefully, I can get myself ready for a half marathon in November.

But Saturday was a day for creativity.  I began by catching up on some writing projects.  I spent a few minutes on Pinterest and found some perfect recipes.  One for the soap and also one for some lotion I thought might be fun to try. I checked the ingredients and found I needed rosemary essential oil.

No problem.  There is a small rosemary plant out in my garden.  I love my little garden…… and it is little.  I have two tomato plants and a couple of pepper plants along with my herbs.  I clipped some fresh rosemary from my garden to blend my essential oil.

I researched and found two different methods for infusing essential oil.  One method required drying the rosemary for a few days, dropping it into a bottle and covering with oil to infuse over time.  The second method called for warming fresh rosemary and oil in a crock pot for about 6 hours to infuse.  I chose the latter for several reasons.  The main reason?   I wanted to enjoy the aroma of the oil while it infused.

Mixing the oils together for the lotion was relatively easy, but I was disappointed in the consistency of the lotion.  Nonetheless, I now have a lovely jar of rosemary essential oil in my cabinet.  It has already been used to sauté a handful of mushrooms which were tossed into a skillet of quinoa for a delicious meal.

But now it is dinner time, and I think I will go out and pick some fresh tomatoes for my salad.