It probably would come as no surprise to anyone who has read this blog for long that when it comes to nature and the environment, I’m pretty passionate. Climate change is real and should not be a political issue. That’s not what this is about. Period. We all breathe the same air.  There hasn’t been an administration yet that has really addressed the environment. The last administration did some things, but they really were just band-aids. It truly is up to the individual to be a good steward for our planet.

Instead of trying to revive a dying fossil fuel industry for jobs, why don’t we invest in training those workers for jobs in alternative fuels? The growth there is huge and is where the jobs are. This is why politics shouldn’t enter in to it. It just messes stuff up and prevents real and true solutions.

Anyway, there were a little over 500 people at our town march. It was a nice turnout. We gathered in the park downtown before starting.

This man was walking around on stilts:

I don’t know if he walked the mile that we did or not as I didn’t see him afterwards. He was booking around the waiting area, though. It was pretty amazing. I wonder how one gets down from the stilts?

I had my shirt on:

Here are some of the signs.

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This one was my favorite:

It was a very orderly march. We snaked along in a big line, stopped at traffic lights and stayed on the sidewalks. The route was about a mile long. Once we got to the park, I took a picture of the line stretched out behind:

One in the park, there were speakers and music. It went on for a few hours, although John and I left shortly after the first speech.

We walked home from there. Our total ended up around 3.5 miles of walking for that including our walk to and from home. We spent time doing yard work and then took a shorter bike ride since we already did a lot. That meant heading up to Lake George!

It was an overcast day. The weather really changed this weekend back to cold and windy. Yuck. We picked up treats and sat by the lake to eat:

Black and white cookie!!

With the cooler weather, it was nice to sit out by our fire pit.

This was when it first started, so the flames were a little high at first LOL!  We have a lot of branches and wood to burn in the fire pit this summer.

On a happy note, this year our magnolia tree bloomed! Last year a frost came and killed all the buds before they opened. This year it didn’t get cold enough at night and the pretty flowers arrived:

Nature is a beautiful thing.

Happy Hump Day!  Or it will probably already be Thursday by the time most of you read this, so happy Thursday 😀

The city came out to do the work on the water access to our house. They had to cut into the driveway at the end. It was pretty noisy:

They got to the valve and now we have a traffic cone at the end of the driveway covering this:

We’re not exactly sure what is going to be happening from here. I assume they will either raise this to the level of the driveway or put a cover over it. We can get in and out of the driveway without a problem thank goodness.

We had some good rain and some of my tulips popped open – finally!  Here is one of the fringed tulips:

Friday’s blooming post will have more, too! I get to go out with my good camera this week and take some pictures.

We did a lot of walking today, 5 miles of walking, and part of that was to dinner tonight. Dizzy Chicken for an inexpensive meal. We had a coupon, too. Always trying to find a deal LOL!  I had the shepherd’s mac and cheese, which was mac and cheese (duh) with seasoned ground beef, peas, carrots, corn and crispy shoestring potatoes.

It’s a fun take on real shepherd’s pie. And tasty. They do a different specialty mac and cheese each week.

Warm dry weather is back, so it will be back on the bike again for the rest of the week!

Ms. Pixie wanted to say hello from her queenly perch:

This is one of her favorite spots, especially if someone is sitting in the chaise. Now I leave the pillows there for her to lay on because – owned by cat.

Okay, just kidding. Nothing is blooming yet 😀  It’s getting close, though!

The green is now popping out all over.

Our front lawn is still pretty crappy, but at least we don’t have moles in the front.

Those plants I measured that were 6 inches high about a week ago are now about twice that and the flower buds are forming on the tulips!

So.close.to.blooming.  See that bit of sun there? It peeked out yesterday for about 20 minutes, but it’s been rain ever since.

I tried planting a couple fritillaria, which are expensive and I have mixed luck with, and one came up.  My rhododendron that I completely hacked up last year with a rejuvenation pruning didn’t die from it and is showing signs of life. Yay!

Depending on how big it gets, I will start doing some pruning to shape it after it blooms.  My tippy pots are not up, obviously, but one of the pots broke and I need to get a replacement. It’s still too early to plant those anyway.

I only lost a few plants over the winter it seems. Some I won’t know for another few weeks because they are late starters. All of my Lady’s mantle made it. They look so pretty in the rain.

These are great shade plants and will have yellow airy flowers on them at some point.

For some reason, none of my bleeding hearts came back. I had 3 of them. I think it had to do with the moles because that part of the garden bed is really squishy.  Last fall I bought some Dutchman’s breeches, which are a relative of the bleeding heart. They can be finicky and i really wanted them to succeed, so I protected the bulbs from rodents with some screening laid over the soil for the fall and winter.

After they started sprouting (YAY!!), I lifted the screen and now have it as rabbit protection. I will say that there has been no damage to any of my plants since we put down the mole repellent. It’s supposed to work on rabbits, too, and maybe it actually does.

Only one lupine came back this year. I guess they are just too picky and I can’t quite seem to please them, so I don’t think I will put any more in for a while.

I love how the leaves catch the rain.  The flowers are so pretty, but I have a survival rate of 1 plant out of 8 over 2 years, which doesn’t make me want to keep getting them.  I don’t always have a green thumb.

I have been going out each day to see the changes and it has been speeding up lately. Soon there will be flowers and we’ll have to start mowing the grass! What there is of it anyway 🙂

Tomorrow I’m going to do something I haven’t done in a loooong time, which is fishing. I used to go a lot when I was younger. Striped bass have appeared and my sister and I are going to head out. I needed to get my license and a marine registry for the bass:

I won’t be keeping any fish, but the fun is always in the catching and the company!

We’ve been biking fiends for a number of days now.  It’s just so nice to have the weather acting like spring!  When I was out riding on Monday, I passed close to a tiny thing that at first I thought was a leaf, but it didn’t blow away. Then I thought, “Was that a turtle? It can’t be a turtle”. Of course, the softie in me turned around and rode back to see if I could find it again, which I did:

He was just sunning himself, only in a dangerous spot. I was kind of surprised he wasn’t squished because the path was pretty active since it is spring break around here. Isn’t he the cutest thing? It’s a painted turtle baby.  He’s just a bit bigger than a quarter. I tried to take a picture of him in my hand, but he was squirming too much. I moved him off the path but still in the sun.

So cute! Hopefully he will stay out of trouble.

The bike riding streak ended today. It was cold and blustery, so we walked to breakfast.

Noms!  It rained today, too, but we could use the rain.

I did an upper body workout for more exercise. Normally I like to do full body workouts, but with all the riding I wanted to give my legs a break.

• Chest press  3 sets 10 reps
• Dumbbell row 3 sets of 10 reps
• Shoulder press 3 sets of 10 reps
• triceps extension 3 sets of 10 reps
• Low back extension 3 sets of 10 reps
• Biceps curl 3 sets of 10 reps

We have the Bowflex, so I need to make use of it on the regular.

I have to share this picture of Pixie. She was sitting in the piano and looked cute, so I pulled out my phone to take her picture just as the doorbell rang:

She is so annoyed LOL!  The person at the door was a plumber. We have a small leak at the main pipe into the house that needs fixing. Because of where it is, the city has to come out to shut the water off at the street so the work can be done. Well, whomever built the cement part at the end of the driveway and sidewalk managed to cover up the valve. Idiots. Now the city is going to have to drill into the end of our driveway to get to it. Thank goodness it is on that part and not our newly done asphalt. I probably would have cried over that.  That will get done some time next week. Yay home ownership!

Here it is Sunday night already! The weekend kind of passed in a blur. With the nice weather out in full force, we actually were enjoying coffee outside downtown at night:

Spring is feeling pretty good right now. There was also much biking to be had. Not really picture worthy since it is just building endurance riding local routes, but Sunday morning at 7:00 a.m.  and I had bikey face!

I put in 61 miles from Friday through Sunday. I probably overdid it just a bit, but it’s so hard to stop riding!

Lots of outdoor projects to do now that we can get outside. My project is mole removal. We have moles. Not sure how many as only a couple can do a lot of damage and we have a lot of lawn damage and tunnels in my garden beds. No bueno.  I don’t want to kill the moles or trap them, so I went with a repellent.

It’s castor oil based, which apparently either smells or tastes bad to them – or both.  It’s nontoxic, which is what I want. The moles just need to go away (sorry neighbors!). This is the stuff:

It smells like castor oil, which makes sense since that is a large component. It’s a bit of a pain to apply because you have to do it in stages to sort of herd the moles out. It took 4 days to get the stuff spread. Now here’s hoping it works.

I also did some milky spore to combat all the lawn grubs we have, which led to the mole problem. The milky spore is organic and will only control grubs and won’t harm the earthworms.  Plus I have some neem oil to keep the bunnies away from my new plant growth.  Whew! Doing things the organic or natural way takes a lot more time than scorched earth pesticide, but it’s much better for the planet.  I’ll update in a couple months with any progress.

We were talking about what other outdoor projects to do and John wanted to work on our back porch landing. It’s concrete and cracked and loose in spots. He said that would be his project this summer. Then I heard big bangs outside and John decided to start right away! He was using a sledge hammer to break up the cement:

Eeek! No going back now. It’s actually a layer of cement over cement. Not quite sure what we are going to do with it. Maybe tile if there is enough depth to put it in without going above the door threshold. John owns this project, though 😀

We are not quite up to cupcake riding yet. Another few weeks and we will have our 40 mile legs. We had to “settle” for a sundae after our 23 mile ride on Saturday from Martha’s.

Their ice cream is just so good.  They don’t do any frozen yogurt, just ice cream, and they do it very well.

Sunday was family time. We had dinner at my parents’ house. My sister supplied the mimosas!

It was a nice afternoon and I even got some work done in their garden bed with dividing hostas. 😀  And somehow Sunday night is here in the blink of an eye!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Here’s another day in the food life!

Breakfast was the bananas Foster Kodiak cake, which has been in rotation a couple times a week for a while now.

Topped with some maple syrup. I’m really liking this a lot.

Normally I eat breakfast around 7:00 and start work at 8:00. I almost always need some kind of morning snack unless I’ve had a bagel.  Around 10:30 or so I had this protein bar:

The NuGo are pretty good. Not my favorite (Zone is), but this particular one is quite good. First time trying it.

Lunch time! I’ve been in the mood for egg salad lately, probably because it’s getting warmer out.

I like my egg salad a little on the drier side. Not a big fan of mayo and this is pretty much the only thing I will eat with mayo at all. Never on a sandwich.

Midday it was time for exercise. I did 14 miles of more hill training. It was fairly breezy and, of course, the headwind had to be in my face while climbing uphill. It was 70 degrees when I went out, so I had bike shorts on for the first time in many months. I have to say, I was feeling pretty chunky with the shorts on. They just never are flattering, but then the first time you’ve shed a lot of clothes for the season and it just feels strange. Oh well.

The ride burned about 500 calories. My post ride snack was the usual latte.

Something else I start craving when it gets warm is a big salad. I used to eat this combo a lot a few years ago and then it fell out of favor for some reason. This was dinner:

It’s chicken with BBQ sauce (which is the dressing, basically) topped with feta cheese. It’s kind of a sweet/savory combo. This bowl looks small in the picture, but it’s actually pretty big and I used half a bag of salad mix!

Cashews are in the house and I’m trying to not go overboard on them. They are my favorite nut.

One ounce of nuts isn’t really much and it’s so easy to eat several ounces and then you’ve had 500 calories just in nuts!

Later will be some decaf and probably another York patty when I sit down to relax. 😀

Do you like mayo?

It finally feels like we turned a corner around here as far as spring weather goes. Saturday was a little cold, but the sun finally came out.  I did a retail craft show for most of the day. It was a small one and was pretty slow at first, but then I made the majority of sales in the last couple hours, which is kind of weird, but I’ll take it!

Sunday started off at 27 degrees when we woke up. Can you believe that? It ended up warming to 67 degrees by the late afternoon, though.  I measured my plants this morning to see how much they grow in the next couple of days where we are going to get into the 70s. They are about 5 inches or so now:

I think these are allium, but now I don’t remember what I planted. Yet again, I can’t read my chicken scratch from the fall. Did I learn from previous years? Obviously not…

After some chores, it was time to ride. We wanted to get some hill training in and took the bike path to the lake. We weren’t sure if the path would be clear as late last week there was still snow on it. It was about 98% clear all the way to the lake with a couple slushy spots.

We made the first goal of what we call the bitch hill:

Yay!  Then we figured we would keep going and see how much further the path was open.  We ended up at Lake George!

How beautiful is that? It was so blue and clear. A little windy as you can see on the water surface, but so nice to see the lake again! Considering snow runoff and rain, the water was very clear:

You could almost go in, but while it looks inviting, the water is only about 46 degrees. No thank you.

Empty beach.

Tourists will be here soon enough.

After getting to the lake, we had to get home! It’s just as much a climb going back, but we made it. Not super fast, but it’s early in the season.

The snow melt runoff made some little waterfalls:

Not a great picture, but you get the idea. This normally doesn’t look like that in the summer.

Bike path:

Does anyone else see the sasquatch in this picture? The stone outcrop and tree line gave an interesting image LOL! Of course, we’re more likely to run into a bear than Big Foot.

We ended up with 18 miles and some good hill training today! Woooo!!! It really felt great to get out and really ride. Time to start amping up the mileage to get ready for a Saratoga ride!