Sidetracked Charley

I usually slide between seasons easily with no regret beyond being a bit unprepared when it comes to winter. But this year I have totally resisted it. I want to lay the blame on everything which was going beginning in October. My focus was definitely in a very different place. The first snow came as a shock. The whole fall into winter knocked me off balance. I overate. I binged on coffee to excess. I try to live in a delicate balance. I feel better when I do. But suddenly I was not feeling good. I had gotten dehydrated from not drinking enough water and drinking too much coffee. And my blood sugar was all over the place because I was not eating on my schedule but the holiday schedule of friends who wanted to do lunch, etc. And I had gained nine pounds. Since that rude awakening a couple weeks ago I have been trying to be better. Since healthy living was a previous habit it was not difficult to get back to it. But I did not get the immediate results I expected. But I have cut my

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world  the master calls a butterfly . - Richard Bach When it appeared, or I accepted, that we were going to be in this horrid shift in the paradigm for longer than was comfortable I just wanted to scream. No white knight was going to ride in and slay the dark lord and his minions.  There are games like Monopoly and Chess I came to loathe early on because the end was always so painfully long and torturous. Being burned at the stake has its appeal because it is said you lose consciousness when the fire gets to your knees and friends of the victim help out by bringing more firewood to the pyre. But we are living in the political model of the inquisition.  I could not turn away from the news because I figured I had the Watergate experience to do battle in this far worse situation. But I was going to have to figure out a way to survive it. The steps I took seemed so small at first. It began with watercolor note cards on left

Aero/hydro garden First let me say I am not even sure I like celery. At least not the celery you buy in stores. But I had the same reaction to beets and carrots. Then I discovered carrots are not necessarily orange. They are yellow and red and whitish and purple. Beets can be the same. I particularly like orange beets and they don't stain my clothes like beet red beets. Chard also comes in colors beyond green and white. I began my hoop house garden to raise lettuce in varieties the local market did not carry like red leaf. Summer is when I eat lettuce and winter I don't because it is all green, comes in plastic boxes, and sometimes with e.coli. This year I got the aero/hydro garden and have had two salads from it already. You will notice from the photo above it has red lettuce. Wishing I had bought the 9 cell version instead of 6 but spring is like only 78 days away. So time to begin planning for the garden. Yesterday I sat down with my packages of seeds and a chart on