Flower Tragedy

Today was the first time in a long while that I felt compelled to bust out my sunglasses. A lovely sunny day in good ol' Spokane. Out in my garden, I found some long-buried green shoots on some of the more robust of my perennials (so robust, in fact, that these babies aren't even planted in the ground and are still revving to go).

Mystery Perennial

To celebrate this beautiful spring-like day, I decided to treat myself with a flower. While at the market I spied a bucket full of gorgeous orangey-pink roses and just couldn't resist.

Rose and Winter Grass

Rose in the Sunshine

While basking in the rare rays of sunlight, I leaned over to inspect a tenacious pansy, and...Disaster!

Tragic

My poor rose broke off just below the bloom. So much for my visions of the flower's long stem gracefully arcing along the curve of my favorite vase. A bit broken hearted I trudged into the house to see if I could salvage the situation. I knew no amount of crazy glue could undo the damage I had wrought to the poor vascular system of my rose, but I still had my bloom and was determined to display it!

Rose in Glass Teapot

It is not exactly what I had in mind when I bought it, but this little pop of orange in my living room still makes me smile.


 **********************************************************************

PS. I have also found that the discarded stem makes a great cat toy! yay for looking on the bright side. Don't worry, there are no thorns.

Monty with Stem

Dreaming in Color

Just when we thought winter's deep freeze was settling in, we got a glorious reprieve in the form of a warm front. This last week we had temps consistently over freezing, and even enjoyed a beautiful cloudless day around 50 degrees. Dr. H and I used this warm spell to begin running together. To be honest, I do a lot of walking on my "runs". But that's okay! I've got over 3 months to get up to 12K to be ready to run in the annual "Bloomsday" race. And even then, if I feel like walking a bit, that's fine. I'm not competing after all...
Now the cold weather has returned, and we have a fresh dusting of snow on the ground. It is beautiful, but I am missing the greenery. I have an amaryllis bulb just beginning to sprout some leaves. With any luck I will have a beautiful flower up and blooming long before spring thaw.

Beer Making and Butt Kicking

Dr. H is already making his second batch of home-brew, and the house smells sweet and yeasty. Part of the brewing process requires cooling the wort (basically beer tea) down really quickly before you can pitch the yeast. Luckily, we have an abundance of snow outside our door to aid in this cooling process. Here is a picture of me in my super-cool snow gathering outfit.

note the cool rain boots

In other news, I'm continuing on my campaign-to-make-muscles-sore, and have been snowshoeing and running in the past two days. I'm feeling pretty good about myself, I must say. On the agenda for the rest of the day: reading. I have about a hundred books checked out from the library, and they are saying they want them back. So I better crack some pages and get to work.

Thanks a lot New Years resolutions!

Yesterday I decided to kill two resolutions with one stone, and join a meet-up group for some outdoor fun. This outdoor fun was snowshoeing, and boy was I not ready for the intensity of this casual "little hike". Did you know that snowshoeing in powder, in hilly terrain while using poles can burn as much as 680 calories an hour for a person my size? Well, I hiked for four hours yesterday. So now I am officially skinny :) And SORE! Honestly, I am finding it very difficult to do simple activities: like walking. Unfortunately, I can still manage to eat, so this skinny feeling will not last too long. This soreness is also making it difficult for me to keep another of my resolutions: getting good at snowboarding. Ah well...it is raining and above freezing outside, so snowboarding probably wasn't going to happen today anyway. There is always tomorrow though!

Resolutions

How unique of me to decide to kick of this year with some resolutions. Truly a novel idea. My only claim to originality is that I am not making resolutions for the whole year. History shows us that most resolutions end up being very short lived- so, I am only going to make short term resolutions. I am hoping that by putting these up on here, I will give myself some accountability. It is easy enough to blow off a promise made to myself, but it is bit more difficult to blow off a promise made with other people's knowledge. So here goes:

Short-term resolutions 2011

1. Renew my yoga practice (or...since yoga is expensive, renew working out to pilates video)
2. Get better at snowboarding
3. Make it out of the house at least once a day. Harder than you may think when I don't have anywhere that I HAVE to be, it is freaking freezing, and the roads are crap.
4. Start a worm bin :)
5. Do one thing out of my comfort zone.
6. Learn one song on the banjo
7. Go to at least 1 meet-up group.
8. Go to the winter farmers market more often

 Longer term goals

1. Get our finances in order (ie pay off all credit card debt. Shouldn't be too hard once I get a freaking pay check.)
2. Grow a huge veggie garden
3. Create a great composting system

That's all I can think of for now. It is only January, and I am already itching to get back outside and work in my garden. The kitchen and my taste buds having been missing fresh veggies. Ah well... I'll console myself by making some delicious winter stew.