Tag Archives: garden

What’s blooming today!

I played hooky last night.  John and I spent the evening last night at one of these:

For his birthday, I had bought John tickets to the Philadelphia Orchestra, which spends a few weeks in residence up here at SPAC.

It was an all Russian program.  Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #2 (one of my favorites) and Prokofiev Symphony #5 (one of John’s favorites).  Very, very good!  Then we went out for coffee afterwards.  An official date night 😉

After a wonderfully cool night of sleep (we dipped into the 50s), I was up for brekkie.  This is the first time all week I missed grains because I wanted pumpkin oats today since it was so cool.  Oh well, soon enough.  Instead, I did a 1-minute muffle with blueberry sauce and coconut butter.

Such a nice day out today.  We do have really wonderful days here in the later summer.  I am sorry for all of you feeling the heat and drought 🙁

It did call for a porch lunch today.

I mixed up tuna (yes, 1 can made a reappearance) with mayo and lemon pepper.  Plus a whole cucumber, which was a bit on the bitter side.  Boooo.

Here is some of this week’s garden:

Black-eyed Susans:



Unwelcome ‘friends’:

Aphids!  Ewwwww!!!!  I got some organic insecticide to put on these tonight.

Browalia:

Galliarda

The marigolds – I know everyone loves these poms.

Four o’clocks. I grew these from seed.  They are really fragrant.  The blooms open up early in the morning and close during the day. Then they open again in the evening.

Allysum:

Another butterfly:

Such a gorgeous day today!  John made me up a latte while I was working.

My new headphones for work.  :mrgreen:  I love them!  They are USB and the sound is much better.

It was such a nice night we wanted to bike for dinner.  This usually means pizza, but I am no grains.  We went to East End Eatery because they do have other things on the menu:

Grilled chicken!  I did bend my local meat rule here, but having too many rules is not always a good thing.  Note John’s pizza in the background.  Surprisingly, I was not craving pizza – even seeing it.  It looked good, but I was fine with my meal.  The fries were excellent, too!

We had a nice 10 mile round trip for dinner.  Tomorrow should be a nice long ride day.  No cupcakes, but there will be some yogurt or ice cream in the mix. Yum.

I am so glad it is the weekend!  Now if you will all excuse me, I have a couple plums to eat :mrgreen:

What’s blooming today

So glad it is Friday!  Thank you all for John’s birthday wishes 😀

It’s also What’s Blooming Day!

Today is a pseudo rest day.  Now that I am done with big rides for the summer, I can relax and just enjoy how easy the shorter rides are.  We are planning a 45 mile ride tomorrow, so I took it easy today with just walking.

I made banana custard oats for breakfast.  Probably the last oats I will eat until September with the no-grain challenge starting next week! Eeek!

Topped with crunchy Teddy PB and jam.

Work was a slog today.  Yesterday was fast and productive.  Today, the dictators were problematic and slow.  It means I make less money, which is irritating.  And you know, if a doctor cannot pronounce a medication, they really should not be prescribing it. 😯

Lunch time!

The last of the mango and a whole cucumber with my sammie.  Cucumbers are like eating air.  They make me belch.   😳   Enjoyed on the porch, although picture taken inside.

Garden is doing good.  Colorful right now.  My scentimental rose bush keeps blooming and blooming.  I just love this bush!

It even looks pretty when the petals drop:

They are so fragrant, too.  I think I would love to have about 10 of these bushes in a large garden.  The scent would be intoxicating.

Here are a few things that decorate my garden.  I don’t have a lot of ‘things,’ but a few.  Here is my bowling ball.

I took this out of a flip house I did – the same house I got my ferns and sedum from.  John’s mom has a bowling ball in her garden and I found it amusing, so I plopped this one in mine.

My birdbath.

I would get closer to it, but it is dirty and I didn’t want to photograph my shame.

This is a metal butterfly that gets eaten by the clematis every year.  I keep thinking about moving it, but it is too hard to untangle.

Here is Buddha.

He is only about a foot tall.  This is part of the garden I am struggling with finding the perfect plants. Always a work in progress.

Potted geraniums:

My sedum is all broccoli-looking now.  That means summer is halfway over. 😥

My butterfly bush attracted a friend at lunch today – a black swallowtail.

Eat up little buddy – the bush is for you!

Here is a funny coneflower.

All cone and no flower.  Not sure why it is like that.

This afternoon I decided to really wage war on the battle of the flat tires.  I went to the bike shop and picked up some of these.  See, my tires are less than 1 year old and I really shouldn’t have to replace them, and the shop said the tires were in good condition.  I just couldn’t justify dropping 90 dollars on 2 new tires.  They told me these liners would work just as well and if I get a flat with the liners, the company will replace the liner and tube for free! For only $20 for 2 liners, how could I lose?

So, I spent a good part of an hour wrestling those in and got the tires all pumped up.  We shall put them to the test tomorrow, hopefully.

I was hot and ready for a snacky:

Ice cream left from the birthday last night.  Good stuff.  I ate too may calories today.

For dinner, I chopped up most of my basil plants and made some pesto.  I just threw some pine nuts that were in the freezer into the processor with some parmesan, basil leaves and macadamia nut oil.

I cooked up a serving of Barilla Plus pasta (it has 10 grams of protein) and added it to my sauteed broccoli and a dollop of pesto.

Tasty!  And it really bulked up the pasta adding the broccoli, too.  Yay!

I am trying to relax tonight, but might do a little work as I took some time off this afternoon.

Eating some of this:

Tomorrow we are hoping to catch some horse racing at the track!

What’s Blooming Today!

Garden Time!  Woo Hoo!  I am completely wiped out from this week.  I am not used to 10 and 12 hour days and am taking a break from taking photos of food.  Not that what I am eating is very exciting in the last couple of days.  Thankfully John is home now and life can get back to what passes as normal for us. So, let’s just behold the garden today.

White snapdragons.  These are super dwarf LOL!  Some of the snapdragons seeded taller, but this one is uber short.

The globe thistle in full bloom.  They actually do not have a good smell, but the bees love them.

It goes really well with cone flowers:

The razzmatazz gets fuller and fuller. I loved the ruffed coneflowers, don’t you? They remind me of a poodle.

I also note that I have some Japanese beetles right now.  I am hoping the toad I saw the other day will eat them.

Butterfly weed going strong.

This is  Armeria from a seed packet my sister gave me.  I wasn’t really sure how it would look and it was one of the very few plants from seed that worked for me this year.

This Snowberry Clear Wing Sphinx moth visited yesterday.  I get these every year.  They act just like hummingbirds, but have antennae.

The moth is on my butterfly bush.  This is the anchor bush in the main bed.  It is over 5 feet tall.

The flower stalks are called pannicles and can be 10 inches.

This bush will bloom until the fall, and it smells really nice.  It also droops over the surrounding plants and looks pretty:

I also have some black-eyed Susans.  I pulled most up these up, but I do have a few.  Hopefully they won’t get out of control like they did last year!

Hopefully we can get a nice ride in this weekend.  John is coming down with a cold, so that may change plans.  Have a great weekend!

What’s Blooming Today!

Friday already.  That was a fast week, don’t you think?  I am tired of this, though, aren’t you?:

Sunday should be a cooler day finally!

I went out for an early walk this morning at 7 am and I was soaked after 20 minutes. Yuck.

I made up a banana breakfast pudding and let it sit out to cool down while I got to work (and had the Tour on).  While I waited for that to cool off, I made up some iced coffee!

Yep, decaf.  Still going on the decaf.  I don’t notice it much now.  I think because I am still drinking coffee (yes, I do realize there is trace caffeine in decaf) and I get the psychological boost from it.

I mixed up some peanut flour with honey and water and topped my breakfast with that.  Then I saw the coconut in the fridge and decided for a Friday treat!

I like to live dangerously…

I was not super hungry for lunch because of the heat, so I just put some stuff on a plate and called it good.

Don’t you love meals like that? That was a very juicy nectarine, too!

Now time for this week’s garden blooms.  Half of the garden is all full of color right now.  Gotta wake up the other half!

Next week the butterfly bush will finally be in bloom.  Gheesh!

Sunsprite rose is full of blooms right now.  This year has been the best year so far for this bush.  It likes its home.

I can smell this when standing near the garden.  It’s lovely.

Bi-colored snap dragons by the butterfly weed.

My new Green Envy ecchinacea.  I am a little disappointed that it isn’t more green, but maybe that will come out as the blossoms mature?  Not to mention somebody was nibbling on these!

Galliarda. These pretty much bloom all summer long.

The daylilies are starting to wind down.

Even more blooms on the french marigolds.

I love the creamy poms on these.

Knockout rose.

White swan coneflowers.

I did not plant these here.  They just seeded themselves and I left them.   That’s why a garden is always evolving.  Plants always find the place they like the best to grow.

A couple new flowers will be open next week, too.  Can you wait? I can’t 😀

Another cool snack for today:

I was so productive with work that I finished up my day at 4 pm!  Yippee!  I could then get some guitar playing done before dinner.

Speaking of dinner, I grilled up some more chicken and had it with BBQ sauce, laughing cow and caramelized onions.

Yum, eh?

All chores are done, so I can relax tonight!  Too bad it is so hot or I would go out riding.  I will be having some chocolate, though. :mrgreen:  I will have that after I sit down and open up my Google reader for the first time today…

Question:  How are you surviving the heat wave?

What’s Blooming Today!

Garden day!  I always love putting this post together.  We had that really hot spell and the garden just popped today.  Our temps got low overnight. I think they were in the upper 50s 😯  It was about 60 degrees when I went out for a quick pre-breakfast bike ride.  I did 6.5 miles in 30 minutes and I needed to wear a little jacket.

It was cool enough to want a warmer breakfast, so I did banana custard oats today using 30 grams of oats instead of 40.

Topped with peanut flour and a drizzle of chocolate syrup.  I threw a few chocolate chips on there, too, because it is Friday.

Pixie is in cooler weather mode, too.  She is following me around and sticking to me like a burr.  A white furry burr.

She makes my laptop a kneetop…

Busy morning of work, then it was lunchtime and Tour time!

I do have to say that watching the Tour during the daytime is shooting my productivity all to hell.  Oh well, it’s only for 3 weeks. Go Thor!!

So on to the other tour – the tour of my garden! Lots of sleepy plants woke up this week.

3 of my 4 rose bushes are blooming again.  Scentimental:

One lone clematis bloom peeking through the porch:

White swan coneflowers and liatris:

I have been trying to get this combo of globe thistle and coneflowers working and it is starting to come together. I love the texture of this combo.  I touch my flowers a lot.

The knockout rose bush in the background:

This is looking down the little walkway.  The left actually has only foot high plants, but the burning bush makes it look full on that side from this shot.

A lot of times I just stand in the middle of this path and enjoy.

Sunsprite rose:

Marigolds are really starting to pop now.

These are next to my butterfly bush which is taking forever to bloom! I see other butterfly bushes in the neighborhood all blossomed out, but not mine.

The tiniest snapdragon in the world:

It’s about 3 inches tall LOL!

Hooray for color!

Time for a caffeine hit:

Had a hard time concentrating for the rest of the afternoon.  I had a case of the Friday’s today!  I really wanted to be done with work. I also thought about going out for dinner, but John had started cooking something before I finished up work, so we stayed home.

Little mini pizzas on Arnold thins.

Good, but not real pizza.

I am off for an evening bike ride tonight, then some dried pineapple for dessert later.

I will have a fun update for Sunday.  We are doing a Tour de Farm ride on Sunday, which is a 35 mile group ride through historical Saratoga and then we get a picnic sponsored by local farms afterwards.  It’s going to be fun!

Any good plans this weekend?

What’s Blooming Today!

Yay – it’s Friday!  That means garden time!

I was surprised at how many of you have sleep issues as well. I had a pretty good night’s sleep last night, other than waking up from a bad dream.  Hate that.  I did a morning walk around the block and took some pictures of my garden.  Want to see me pre coffee and with puffy morning face?  I took this to show how tall my lilies are (I am 5 feet 2).

Actually, the sleep mask keeps my hair in place, so that is an unexpected side benefit to that.  Normally I look like Medusa when I get up :mrgreen:

I made up the banana breakfast bread pudding this morning.  Topped with some peanut flour mixed up (nonsweetened) and strawberry jam.

Tasty!  It almost looks like caramel.  I wish it were caramel – that would be awesome!

Trying to get as much work done as early as possible.  It was a little irritating today.  There are some doctors that don’t dictate very well and they affect productivity.  Well, some MTs decide they can skip over those files and cherry pick the easy doctors out of the line up of files and leave all the tough ones behind.  That is  against company policy, but the management never does anything about it!  It’s really not fair.  So I waded through crap files today.

I was glad to break for lunch.  I cooked up a pork burger and had a pear.  Simple, grain free, and delicious!

Along with the Tour de France, it is time for the Tour de Jardin!

Echinacea Razzmatazz (which I keep calling Doppelganger, for some reason). This plant is actually very old.  I took it with me when we moved from Illinois.  It is about 6 or 7 years old now.

Closeup:

White Swan coneflower:

And I have a single bloom on my echinacea milkshake!  It is like the white swan, but the center is ruffed like the razzmatazz.

The garden is a little quiet right now.  Still behind compared to last year.  This is an annual called Browalia.  True blue flowers are not very common.

The liatris is finally starting to bloom.  This is also called gay feather.  They come in purple and white.  I just have the purple.

Next week that one out to be filled out nicely.

This is one of my few garden ornaments.  My mom gave him to me.  It is a Jim Shore (??)

He’s watching over my annual asters, which aren’t doing much of anything right now.

The remains of the clematis snow queen blooms, aka my truffula trees.

Since it is Friday – I made lattes today and jazzed them up with a little creme de menthe:

That perked the afternoon right up!

John went to the bike shop today and found out he has a broken spoke, which is why his wheel had a bulge in it.  Good news because he doesn’t need a new wheel, he just needs the spoke repaired.  Bad news is they won’t get it fixed until Sunday.  That means a solo ride for me tomorrow and an attempt is going to be made to do 100 miles.  I will miss my buddy, although he will meet me periodically during the ride on his scooter.  Since I will be solo, I am taking some precautions.  I will be looping my ride into 3 segments so that I am never more than 20 miles from home at any given point.  I am not riding anywhere new.  I will do a 40 mile loop north first, then pit stop at home, then down to Saratoga (cause you all know there will be cupcakes) and back (44 miles), then partway to the lake as far as I need to go to finish it out.  I will be in contact with John via text quite a bit to keep him updated.  He actually will be going to Saratoga as well and meet me there.

John doesn’t particularly want to do 100 miles anymore, so that is why I am not waiting to do the ride. Not to mention the temps this weekend are supposed to be low 80s, which is really good for July!  Gotta grab it when I can.

I wanted some carbs to get ready for the ride tomorrow, so we walked for some pizza for dinner:

Cheap and tasty. Can’t beat that :mrgreen:

Tonight is prepping the bike bag, doing a bike tuneup and hopefully a good night’s sleep before tomorrow.  If the weather cooperates I should have a good recap come Sunday night!

What’s Blooming and July Goals

Another new month and another set of goals!

I took a quick walk around the block this morning while coffee brewed before I came in to make breakfast.

Banana custard oats topped with peanut flour (a little runny…oops) and some strawberry jam.

It sure feels like Friday, doesn’t it?  Work was really busy, though, and I think that is because other MTs are on vacation now!

Had a nice porch lunch today.  1-minute muffin and the reddest plum ever!  It looks like a beet, don’t you think?

And now for everyone’s favorite part of the week. Here is this week’s garden blooms:

The clematis is starting now.

It is a monster that grows up the porch.  It will reach the roof of the porch by the end of the summer.

This is a pot of Black-eyed Susans waiting to go to my mother’s garden.  I pulled most of mine as they got totally out of control last year.

Allysum that is in a pot with my geraniums.

My first marigolds of the season!  I did not have marigolds last year and thought I would give them a whirl again.

These are the french marigolds that aren’t so orange.

The liatris is almost there.  I love the plant and how cool it always looks.

And day lilies!  Lots and lots of day lilies:

These are over 4 feet tall! 😯

And the butterfly weed is opening  up.

Come and get it butterflies!

I enjoyed a latte today while Pixie snored next to me.

Along with some Kashi GoLean that I was snacking on.

All enjoyed while planning my new monthly projects!

  • Stretching – Since this was one of my yearly goals and I have been quite the slacker in this department, I am going to focus on it.  3 times a week I will make sure I dedicate to a good stretching session.
  • 400 miles on my bike – I rode 362 miles on the bike in June.  I know I can cross the 400 mile mark, especially with gearing up for our 100-mile ride.
  • No caffeine for a week. Seriously? WTH am I thinking?  I will give it a try.  It doesn’t seem to affect my sleep, but I will just make sure.  John said he may take a vacation that week. :mrgreen:   I don’t know what week that will be, but I might try to get it over with early.
  • Walking 3 times during the day – Thinking more about moving during the day since it is just too hard to try to do while I am working.  I am going to do a 10 minute around-the-block walk in the mid morning, at lunch, and mid afternoon. That will give me an extra 30 minutes of exercise a day outside of what I normally do. That shouldn’t affect my productivity too much.

I won’t mention weight loss because that is ongoing, but I will update at the end of the month.

I baked up some brown rice, even though pizza was a thought to have…  And served with with sauteed broccoli and chicken sausage.

I managed to snack on cashews while dinner was cooking, too.  I am having some snack issues the last couple of days.  Sigh.

Well, I am off for a ride tonight, as I am working towards 400 miles LOL!  Better get a move on.

Question:  Any plans for the holiday weekend?

What’s Blooming Today!

Welcome to What’s Blooming this week!  I am off to my Becoming an Outdoors woman today. Hopefully a dry outdoors woman.

A wet and rainy blooming time this week.  Rain drops always make for some nice shots.

This is the giant clematis climbing up our porch. It’s called heliopsis and these will open into yellow lanterns.

My new annuals – dianthus:

Daylily.  Next week will be a daylily bonanza!

Here is the garden from sidewalk level.

Note John in the background.  This  is the extent of any gardening he does – just looking at it.

One of my new cone flowers has a bud on it. This is the milkshake  one.  I can’t wait for it to open!

This is some lobelia.  Very low growing, but such a pretty blue color.

My giant milkweeds.  I let these grow on the south side of the house hoping that monarchs will lay eggs on them.

Have a great weekend!

What’s Blooming Today!

Thank you Friday! I don’t know about all of you, but I am ready for it!  Thanks so much for your comments on my running dilemma.  It’s nice to know I am not alone with that.  I probably won’t run much anymore, but then again, I keep saying that and then I go do it again.  Guess that is why I am a Gemini :mrgreen:

I had a good night’s sleep last night for the most part other than being a little hot.  I told myself I could sleep in this morning and I did until 7:15!!  John still says that is early, but heck – it isn’t 6 am and it was almost 8 hours of sleep!

I did some work and then made breakfast.  I played around with the pumpkin breakfast cake and did it with banana instead.  I think I need to play with this a bit, but could be a keeper!

It’s kind of like banana bread pudding.  I topped it with coconut butter and a drizzle of chocolate sauce that John made.

The garden isn’t doing a ton right now.  Just a bit of rest before the long-haul perennials start blooming.  My astilbes are up and running:

This is the deutschland variety.  There are other colors of this and they do really well in shaded areas for some color.

Geranium with some fresh rain on it.  (Hello car).

More virginia spiderwort.

The back of the house on the side is something I am going to work on for the next couple years.  I have about 10 feet done, but the rest is a mess of these spiderwort by the shop:

There are some other bushes in there, too, and most of this will go and become garden bed.  See the nice dumpster my neighbor’s have just to the right? It is *enormous*!  And we look directly at it when working in the shop.  They just had it delivered. You can also see the repair done on our shop wall behind that greenery from where the snow plow guy ran into it this last winter.  Obviously still need to paint that.

Potted Argyranthemum with another flush of blooms:

They are so happy and colorful:

The bushes are blooming on the other side of the house.  They are the other neighbor’s bushes, but I get to enjoy the blooms.  I think they are boxwood, but they are soooo tall!

They really smell nice, too.  I just wish the neighbors would actually trim the hedges once in a while…

Next week should be day lilies and possibly some butterfly weed.

Even though it was drizzly, I still had lunch on the porch so I could oversee the garden. Shrimps!

You can see the heliopsis clematis starting to creep up in the background. That is a monster plant and has been slow this year.

John brought me my latte this afternoon while I worked feverishly.

I got a slice of dried crack pineapple. Love that stuff.

Did a quick smokehouse trip to pick up some ground beef and pork.  I have been missing meat for the last few days!  John grilled up some burgers for dinner.

So tasty.  I topped mine with the laughing cow and caramelized onions.  Need to make more of those.  Had a peach on the side.  I am going to make some jam this weekend with the rest, hopefully.

I will be doing some soapmaking tonight:

This is black cherry, which I actually cannot stand!  I have to make 25 pounds of it, too.  But, that is money that gets socked away towards our Disney trip – yay!

The rain should clear out by tomorrow morning and that means long ride day!

Have a great weekend!

What’s Blooming Today and Crepes!

Hooray it’s Friday!  Work has been swamped this week and if it turns out rainy, I might pick up some lines this weekend for extra $$ to put towards Disney World!

It was the most gorgeous of mornings today.  The heat wave has broken and I had to get out for a ride.  John was still sleeping at 6:30, so I just went on out.  I did a nice easy ride at an average of 12 mph for 10 miles.

Great pre breakfast ride!  Or I guess that could be my commute to work? 😉

John was still sleeping when I got home.  Unbelievable!  Usually he is up and has coffee brewing when I get back from a workout.  I had soaked some steel cut oats last night, so I got those cooking with a mashed banana.

Topped with peach jam.  I may go on a jam canning spree this weekend if it is rainy.

I worked for 2-1/2 hours on the stability ball this morning.  Remember how I said I don’t think it did much?  I was wrong.  I just needed to sit on it for longer.  My legs were definitely a bit tired and I could feel it in my glutes a little when I transferred to a chair later.  Good deal!  The ball is much easier than standing while transcribing.

Lunch time!  I have been bringing potatoes back into my life more.  Starch without the wheat.  Point to note.  This is a serving of a potato.  A regular serving is about a 5.3 ounce potato for 110 calories.  It looks this size.

Do you know how hard it is to find potatoes this size?  Normally they are like footballs, but the Yukon Gold seem to normally be much smaller. Score!

Lunch on the porch. The potato was topped with laughing cow, sauteed broccoli and a couple ounces of cooked chicken.

Shall we take a tour of what’s blooming this week?  My roses are all flushed out now.

The scentimental bush has wonderful fragrant blooms on it.

Wouldn’t it be cool if this one smelled like peppermint?


Gaillardas blooming.  They are so cheery!

This is a volunteer snapdragon. I just let it grow where it was, which is in a cluster of mums. It’s a bit taller than the normal dwarf size I buy, but that is common for the seed offspring to be different than the parents.

Zinnia from my sister’s family.

This is the saddest basil ever.  I started these from seeds in March!  I think I mentioned about how our new windows blocked the UV light and the seedlings were all stunted.  These are now just starting to grow being outside.  Hurry up – I want pesto and pizza with you!

This is my liatris.  It isn’t blooming, but getting close.  I just thought it looked really cool at this stage.

Next week the astilbes will be in bloom!

John made lattes today. You know the drill.

I was really spot on with no extra snacking today!  I had about 1/2 an ounce of peanut and a date just before we left for dinner.  Double dip ride today.  It was too nice not to bike!  This is my belated birthday dinner.

We biked to Wholy Crepe.

My bestest biking bud:

Obviously we sat outside.  I had a crepe that was stuffed with eggs, feta and bacon.

Tres delicious!  One nice thing about crepes is that they aren’t super filling so you can save room for dessert:

This was a crepe filled with lemon curd, topped with fresh blueberries and a dollop of whipped cream on the side.  This was outstanding!  I must try to make some lemon curd.  I don’t know what it is about the blueberry lemon combo.  Is there another fruit other than citrus that goes so well with lemon?

Then it was biking home.  The dinner round trip was 13 miles plus a tiny bit.  Total miles for the day – 23.  I will take it!  That burned off my dessert crepe at any rate. :mrgreen:

Have a great night!