Author Archives: Lori

What’s Blooming!

Welcome to the lush green that is the Northeast right now with all the wet weather! Lots of plants are very happy with all the rain.

Some plants got a little battered, like my peonies:

You can see the cage peeking through the plant. The whole thing would have flopped to the ground if I didn’t have the cage in there.

Foxgloves. Candy Mountain

The snapdragons are proliferating like crazy. I’ve said in the past that I buy snapdragons once and then I have them forever because I deadhead them right into the garden. I will toss some seed heads all around, too.

These are all from the plants I bought back in 2015.

I may actually have to thin some out. They are one of my favorite flowers.

This is the Calycanthus bush, Aphrodite:

When you get a baby plant, the saying is the first year they sleep, the second year they creep and the third year they leap. Here was 2015 when this was just a baby plant:

Look how dark all that mulch is, too.  The Caly will grow all summer and I will be pruning it more than I did last year to keep it under control.  The blooms are fragrant and kind of smell like apples.

The roses are all starting to show off now.  I have 2 David Austin roses. One is Othello, which I bought last year. The blooms are very short lived. Here is a bloom open:

Two days later:

They still look pretty, though.

Also Fair Bianca, my white beauty:

I *love* this rose. It has 2 dozen buds on it right now, so you will see a lot more of it.

This is my climbing rose, Zephirine drouhin:

There is another one on the other side and they really aren’t climbing all that much. Maybe this year they will grow more? They are supposed to tolerate some shade, but this spot might have a bit too much maybe.

The Othello lives in the bed we created last year, which is starting to fill in pretty well.

In the back is the other section that has been tough to grow stuff. It’s dry shade with morning sun. I have a baby hydrangea back there and 2 Diervilla, which are native plants that are supposed to tolerate that condition. I just put those in this spring and they haven’t died yet LOL!

The tall white flower is Campanula alba. It has a low mounding habit, but sends up tall flower spikes.

This is one that I brought from our old house and for 2 years it did nothing but sit there and this year went crazy.

In the back bed is the rose that makes me break out in song – Enchanted Evening:

The color is just fabulous on this one.

Here is a long shot of the back bed, which was an overgrown nightmare when we moved in. I’ll have to find pictures of that.

It’s actually beginning to fill in quite nicely. Now it gets even more sun since the fence was taken down. I wish this were closer to the house, but it gives me an excuse to walk out back every day.

Lupines:

It keeps getting more blooms – yay!

I do have some potted plants on the patio and this year I got something different. This is heliotrope:

It’s gorgeous and smells like vanilla.

One last survivor. Remember how I thought my 100-pound rose was dead? Check it out!

It didn’t even send a sprout up until a couple weeks ago. You can see all that woody dead cane at the bottom. I had plans to dig it up and then I hurt my shoulder. That weekend I asked John to dig it up for me. He put the shovel in the ground and started lifting when I noticed a baby sprout on it! So, we pushed it back into the ground and now here it is. Better late than never!

 

 

Diet To Go – last day of samples

How can it be Thursday night already? I have been neglecting my blog. You might see some changes in the appearance of the blog. I handed John the reins to fiddle with stuff. I just don’t have the time to make sure the layout and links are up to snuff.

I’ve come to the realization that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you have to do it because time is just as valuable – or more – as the money you would spend to have someone else do it for you.

I guess that’s a good segue into the last of the Diet To Go meals LOL!  You can review Day 1 and Day 2 with those links. I was shipped the meals last week. The literature says they are good for 7 days or you can freeze. Since I wasn’t going to eat the last day until Monday, I decided to freeze the last 3 meals and let them thaw in the fridge the day before.

Breakfast was a cheese omelet topped with roasted tomatoes and vegetables:

The cheese kind of melted out into the tray when I was heating it, so I poured it on top of the omelet. This was pretty good. The eggs didn’t taste fake or anything and I really liked the roasted tomato topping. It added a nice punch of flavor to the omelet. I have to try doing that.  The side veggies were standard. I was fine with all of them except for the bell peppers. Not sure why, but those just were not for breakfast. Too strong a flavor maybe.

I swapped out lunch and dinner because the burrito seemed more “lunchy” to me.  This took a while to heat up as it was pretty cold still from being frozen. Now this was called chicken fajitas, but to me it was a burrito.

That little white cup was sour cream. I should have checked the package because I didn’t notice it before the tray went into the freezer. In case any of you don’t know, you can’t freeze sour cream. It curdles on thawing. I was kind of bummed because it would have gone great with the burrito.  I should have taken a picture of the inside as it was stuffed with a spicy chicken mixture. Man, this was tasty.  And I even ate the refried beans! I have a thing about beans. They usually seem so grainy to me, but these were super smooth. Go me!  The carrots were cooked. They look raw in the picture, but they were cooked. I’m still undecided as to whether I would have liked them to be raw or not.

Dinner was a basil parmesan chicken.  Holy green Batman!

The chicken was covered with the pesto on a bed of spinach (which I moved out for picture purposes).  I think this is the same pesto that was on the pita from the other day. It has a really good flavor. The veggies were maybe over cooked. Broccoli is just one of those veggies that doesn’t do well the next day after being steamed. It was okay, but you guys know how much I love broccoli. The spinach was spinach LOL. Pretty much what a frozen spinach mixture tastes like. The chicken was a large portion and quite tender and moist. Again, they seem to have the chicken down pretty well.

So, my overall opinion over the few days? I would give a thumb’s up to pretty much all of them. They seem quite balanced and you certainly get in your vegetables! Again, my biggest beef is all the packaging. If they could use biodegradable plastic wrap around the trays, that would be great.  Each day was around 1200 calories and the lunches and dinners were really filling. Surprisingly so.  Note – I did supplement with snacks. I did Nutrisystem for a while probably 7 years ago?? This is leagues better than that LOL!  I think this would be an option not just dieters, but for people who either don’t have the time or desire to cook, but want something fresher than a Lean Cuisine or takeout all the time. Like I mentioned above, sometimes it is worth it to pay for a service.

Tomorrow is What’s Blooming and here is a preview of one of my favorite types of flowers in the garden!

 

****Disclaimer: I was sent this product free for review. Opinions are mine. I am not compensated in any way if you click on the links in the post or if you order from them.

Diet To Go Sample day 2

Here is day 2 of the Diet to Go meals that I was sent for review.  You can read about day 1 and the company here.

Breakfast was called Whole Wheat Monte Cristo. If you’ve never had one, it’s basically a ham and cheese sandwich dipped in egg batter and cooked like French toast. Or sometimes it is deep fried.  Usually served with raspberry jam. This was an open face one:

It’s cold in that picture. The side dish is plantains. I don’t know if they were roasted or what, but I did like it.  For this one, I chose to toast the sandwich rather than microwave it.  I heated the plantains in the microwave.

Looks better plated up!

This was surprisingly good. I wasn’t sold all together on the cheese, but the French toast slice was good and I loved the raspberry maple sauce.  The plantains also were tasty as I noted above. I need to try more plantains.  This breakfast was 280 calories. Seems like all the breakfasts were right around that.

Lunch:

This one I heated up in the toaster oven since it was on a pita and had cheese on top. I heated the apples in the microwave.

I honestly was going into this think I would not like it since I am not a big raw tomato fan. I think the pesto is what made this.  It was really flavorful. Plus the tomatoes were sliced thin, which helped. Again, not sold on the cheese. Maybe it is low fat? I definitely would not heat this in the microwave. The apples were a cooked spiced apple. Kind of like pie filling, only drier. Nice side.

Dinner was roasted turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy, side of green beans with almonds:

Again, the dinner was huge! That was not even all the green beans. I gave some to John LOL.  The instructions were to heat this in the microwave for 90 seconds, but I had to heat it up for several minutes and remove the green beans.

The turkey slices were really thick and like real turkey, not a rolled and pressed meat (if you know what I mean). It was surprisingly moist. I would have liked a little more gravy, but I am a gravy lover 😀 .   The green beans were not seasoned, just steamed. I added some salt to them since they were a little plain. They were fresh tasting. I’m not a big fan of green beans so I will just note that they seemed fresh and crisp/tender. This meal was really filling and calories were around 480 if I remember right.

 

Day 2 down. There hasn’t been anything so far that I really haven’t liked. Some not so much as other and some I really did like.  Day 3 coming soon!

 

**Disclaimer: I was sent this product free for review. Opinions are mine

What’s Blooming!

It’s time! Yay!  Can you tell I love doing these posts? I never get many comments on them, which is weird because 300-400 people visit my blog daily. Lots of lurkers.

Anyway, it’s time to say farewell to the irises.

.

Brindled beauty actually might have a couple more buds on it. We’ll see.

New alliums opened up. These are Star of Persia:

You may remember these from last year and how I fell in love with them. I proceeded to buy a bunch of the bulbs for other places in the garden.

In my non-thinking, I  put some behind the irises, which block their view from the front since they are short.

Not sure what was going through my head when I put these in there.

The other allium have lost the petals and leave behind a cool seed head:

I love how these look, so I will just leave them up until they completely dry out. Those 3-balled things are the seed pods. I’m not really sure if these will self-sow or not since I always get them as bulbs. Guess I’ll find out.

Last of the rhododendron:

I have not seen as many bees as I had hoped this year. There are definitely less. 🙁

The wave petunias in my tippy pot have started growing.

The color on these is very cool. John’s favorite color is purple, so I got these for him.

The peonies that flank the front walk are opening up. They are Karl Rosenfeld.

This is about as big as they will get, which is okay for the front walk. I can’t even begin to imagine how many times a dog has peed on these…

These got horrible powdery mildew last year, so I have been spraying them with neem oil, which is supposed to help. You do have to apply it again after rain.

Baptisia with more flowers on it.

It’s getting nice and bushy. I think it will end up a foot taller or so at maturity.

Foxgloves:

I think that is some kind of viburnum behind them. Last year I really cut it back and the foxgloves had room. I forgot this year and it already is crowding them out. Oopsie.

 

And lastly the lupine:

I have not had the best of luck with these. I think I have planted 10 baby plants over the last couple years and this is the sole survivor. I don’t always have a green thumb.  I wish they would take because I love them.

Those plants in the background are my neighbors. I really want to put up at least a decorative fence between our properties just for some kind of separation. We use different kinds of mulch, so that pretty much divides the beds LOL!

Diet To Go Sample #1

A few years ago I was contacted by Diet To Go about reviewing their products, but then they didn’t have delivery to my area. Now they do, so I agreed to try a few sample days.

Diet To Go is a home meal delivery service. It’s fresh cooked food, vacuum packed and shipped in a cold pack box.

They have pick-up locations in several major cities across the US, so that is an option if you live near one. You can find distribution sites on their website.  If you have it shipped, it is about $20 for shipping.

The 21-day meal plan costs $142 for 21 meals, although I think that can change depending on your menu.  There are several meal plans to choose from such as balanced, carb controlled, and vegetarian.  I chose the balanced meals.

I’ll be reviewing the 3 days separately as it’s just too much for one post.  My initial thought on this program is the packaging. The environmentalist in me cringes at all the packaging. Now the trays are recyclable, but the wrap isn’t and then there are the cold packs. You can only keep so many.  But on to the food.  Here are my menus:

The balance meals alone are 1200 ish calories. I had to add more food since we are in biking season and after a 17-mile ride today, 1200 calories isn’t enough LOL!  My choice for breakfast today was the apple pancakes.  It came with 2 rolled pancakes with apple filling, 2 turkey sausages and a little pack of imitation maple syrup:

Calories for this meal were 280 and I supplemented with some apple compote and my coffee.  This tasted pretty good. The directions were to microwave for 60-90 seconds. I think in the future I would actually  pan cook the sausage rather than microwave it to brown it a bit. The pancakes were soft and I liked them. Not a fan of the imitation syrup, though. Real maple gal here.

Of note, the literature that came with it stated to plate the food nicely for yourself, so I did. I would have anyway. 🙂

Lunch was Waldorf salad. Calories around 450.

The stuff in the bowl is a crispy snack mix:

I did not drink the V8 as I hate tomato juice. I’ll save that for someone who likes it.  This was my favorite meal of the day. The chicken salad was really good! Tasted very fresh. It was real chunks of chicken and not what you might find in, say, a Lean Cuisine. There were bits of celery and dried cranberries (?) . I actually ended up dumping the snack mix on top and eating it together which gave a great combination of soft and crunch, sweeter and saltier.  If I did this program, I would definitely keep this one on the menu.

For dinner I had the blackened salmon:

The instructions were to heat for 2-3 minutes. I found that the sides were really hot after that, but not the salmon, so I removed the vegetables and continued heating the salmon for another couple minutes. The filets were thick.  Plated nicely:

This was a *lot* of food. I seasoned the brussels as they were just steamed. They were small and tender. Maybe a bit on the bitter side. I really enjoyed the spinach and cauliflower souffle. That was tasty and very fluffy. The salmon was pretty good. You all know I have that love/hate thing with fish and I was concerned this would taste really fishy. It didn’t. Not as good as freshly cooked salmon, but way better than frozen. It was quite moist, too. That surprised me. Very lightly seasoned – I could have used more blackening seasoning. I was stuffed after eating all of this meal! It was so filling, probably because of the fatty salmon. Lots of veggies with that meal, too. Go me!

I burned about 600 calories on my ride today, so on this day, I supplemented with the apple compote in the first picture, a protein bar split before and after my workout, my afternoon latte and (being honest) some pretzels while heating dinner. Plus a couple peppermint patties for my snack.

I’ll recap the other 2 days next week. Overall first impression is pretty good.

 

**Disclaimer: I was sent this product free for review. Opinions are mine

Wednesday

What a post title, right? Better than “untitled” I guess 😀

It finally stopped raining and the sun came out today. I had my first ride since the 49 miles done on Sunday.  I got to test out my birthday gift of new riding shades. My old one were falling apart. The ear comfort pads were gone and the nose pads were coming off. Now I am styling:

I had a pretty low-key actual birthday. Working and going out for dinner as we had all gathered on Sunday.  Here are a few of my gifts.

Garden flower:

Lularoe leggings:

Those are bees and roses on these. They are quite comfy.

Outdoor solar lights for my planned little project that will hopefully work out LOL!

Plus some gift cards to Lowe’s and a local garden shop.

A gift of another sort arrived today.  I am doing a review of a product called Diet to Go, which is a fresh meal delivery service with different meal plans. The box came packed with ice:

There are 3 days worth here and I’ll be reviewing these on separate days starting with tomorrow. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. They look pretty good!

49 miles and dobos torte

It’s been an annual tradition for a while now where I bike my age in miles. I turn 49 on Monday, so I needed 49 miles 😀

Monday weather looked iffy, so I chose to do the ride on Sunday. My longest ride this season has been 41 miles, so I was ready for the ride.

One more year of miles and then I am going to switch over to kilometers LOL!  It’s getting to be a long ride.  That was like a 19 mile run.

I have to say that I am in really great bike shape for the season. I’ve got good endurance and my hill legs are much better than last year. Not sure why, but I’ll take it.

It was family cake time after that. I was ready to refill those calories 😀  Yesterday John spent hours making a cake for me.  We’ve gotten into watching the Great British Baking Show on Netflix, which makes us want to bake all the things. Anyway, there was a master class on the recipes and a dobos torte was on the show. Normally chocolate, but Mary Berry made it all about caramel and John said he would make it for me. I loves me some caramel. Here is the recipe.

The cake ended up with 10 layers. Here was assembly:

I came out to peek occasionally, but tried to stay out of the kitchen while he was baking.  It turned out very impressive!

Instead of brittle, I requested candied pecans around the outside.  The top is so pretty!

That is a layer of the cake topped with some caramel and cut into triangles.

This cake was the star of the show. John did an amazing job.  The inside:

For as rich as the cake is, it is actually very light.  I don’t think I will ever get John to make this cake again, but it was worth it 😀  I could probably use another 49 miles to have another slice!

 

What’s Blooming!

Welcome to June! This is the month of roses and mine will be blooming soon. Yay!

This is the third year for some of the garden beds and this will be the year of real growth in those sections. Our Calycanthus shrub has blooms:

This shrub was a bit wild and wooly last year, so I’ll be pruning it harder during  the season to keep it in line. 😀

I have some short perennials in the front of the main bed. These are a variety of Penstemon:

Just starting to bloom. These are attractive to hummingbirds and as you know, I’m trying to establish a pollinator garden.

Kneeling by the Penstemon and looking up into the irises:

I think I’m going to have to divide these. This all started from one clump in the summer of 2014. That was split into 4 clumps in 2015 and I probably will do it again this year. If anyone wants a rhizome, let me know.

Candy Mountain foxglove:

This made a ton of babies, too. I’m letting them grow for a while before I thin them out and move them around. I loves me some free plants!

Around to the back. You can see how the back corner garden is starting to mature.

In the shade garden, Lady’s Mantle.

These will have a foamy looking yellow flower later, but I just love the way rain looks on the leaves.

My sad columbines.

Something eats the leaves off of these, but nothing else. I am not going to put more back here. Maybe somewhere else.

In the corner bed I’m getting some action on my baptisia:

This is year 3 for this plant and it was just green until this year and now I have flowers!

It’s just starting and will be much showier soon. It’s a fairly large plant and once you plant it, it does not like to be moved. So – this will be its forever home.

My last iris is now showing off. This is Brindled Beauty:

.

So pretty. It’s shorter than the boysenberry. I’d say maybe 2-1/2 feet tall. I’m going to buy a couple more irises (irides?) I’m kind of hooked on them now.

Have a great weekend!

 

 

May Goal Review

Last day of May!  This month flew by. It seems like the early part of the year went slower. I guess once nice weather comes it seems to be back to winter before you know it.

Anyhoo, this was my list of goals for May:

  1. I am moving closet cleaning to this month. Darn it. I’m going to do it
  2. Work on my desk. I have the wood parts patched, but the desk is just sitting like that. I need to paint the bottom and try to refinish the top.
  3. Count my calories more closely. I have been semi journaling my food. I need to be tracking it all to see if that curbs the snacking.
  4. Get back on track with our master cleaning list. It works when we stick with it, but it’s easy to get side tracked.

Closet cleaning – success! Finally. And I have to be honest, it happened last night LOL!  And pics or it didn’t happen – here is the before closet:

Our house has nice closets especially considering that it is almost 100 years old. Usually old houses have tiny closets. Of course, John’s is smaller than mine, about half the size, but we actually have 2 closets in our master.

Seriously people, it took me 50 minutes to do the closet. 50 minutes. Such a procrastinator! I pulled out all the stuff that was on the floor and the rolling shelving unit. Then I quickly went through hangers and purged.  Then all the other stuff. How do I end up with plastic bags in my closet? And receipts. Ugh. Anyway, clean and organized:

I’ve also decided that I do not need any more clothes. I have plenty and have to get rid of something if I’m going to buy something. Except shorts. I do need shorts. 😀

Next up: Work on my desk. Finished! That was a fun project.

Next – Count calories more closely. Ummmm, kind of a fail here. With the increase in biking, my appetite has been all over the map and I’ve been eating accordingly. I think things will settle down, but I’ve got to do a better job.

Next: Back on track with the master cleaning list. Ooopsie! I forgot about this one and we have just been doing catch-up cleaning and not any purposeful cleaning. I miss the master system.

So, about 50/50 this month. At least I don’t have to push the closet into a third month! 😀

Pilot Knob Hike

This is Pilot Knob take 2. We did this hike in 2015. It was in the fall and the waterfall was dry so we wanted to go in the spring when it would have water in it.  My sister and BIL joined us for the hike on Sunday.

The trail head is 15-20 minutes from our house. It was pretty crowded on Sunday, too. We were really lucky to get a parking spot as someone was just leaving when we got there.

My hiking boots are working out really well for me.

The trail was a little muddy in spots, which wasn’t surprising since we have had a lot of rain lately. It wasn’t as bad as I was thinking it would be, though.  This is fairly rocky terrain.

One thing that was annoying was loose dogs. I have no problem with dogs on the trails, but they shouldn’t be going free IMHO. That dog in the picture didn’t belong to the people behind it, but way back not even in the picture.  I’d be afraid of losing my dog. Anyway, there was other wildlife to be seen as well.

Does a millipede count as wildlife? 😀  The weather was just about perfect for hiking. It wasn’t hot and clouds were around, but it was still sunny.  I’m glad we went Sunday because Monday would have been a washout.

If you look really hard, you can see the orange trail marker on the trees about halfway up.

I guess they are up that high because of snow in the winter, but when you are looking down a lot to make sure you don’t trip, it’s easy to miss a marker.

There were some challenging bits:

It’s nice to actually see scale in a picture for a change LOL! Usually when I take incline pictures it just looks flat.

Centipede:

Just about at the top:

Then you hit open field and the gazebo:

We sat and relaxed in the gazebo with some snacks.

The gazebo provides a great view of Lake George.

After a rest, we pushed on to the blue waterfall trail.

This year we were finally rewarded with water! It’s so pretty. This goes on for quite a while downwards behind me as well.

.

.

A couple large groups of people got there after us. Definitely many people had the same idea of it being great weather for a hike!  We headed back to the gazebo and went down the other side.

When we did this hike before, we came up this side and down the other. It’s definitely shorter on this  side and greener.

This is that time of year where the green is so fresh and vibrant.

It felt like going through the Emerald Forest.

It makes the crappy winters worth it to have this stuff so accessible for us.

We finally got to the connecting part of the loop:

The hike was 4.2 miles (ish). It took us 1-1/2 hours of hike time not including our snack break. This was a good start to the year. My sister has started doing the High Peaks hikes. She wants to be a 46er (there are 46 high peaks). We might do a few, but I’m not sure I want to do 46 of them LOL!

This is a highly recommended hike. Some challenging spots, but it’s very doable. There were lots of kids on the trail, too. And dogs…