13 September 2009

Our New Hydroponic Garden


What a busy day! I helped John replace the weather stripping on the French doors that open to the deck. We had some rain water coming in from time to time and hopefully this will fix it. Then we setup a new hydroponic garden in the kitchen breakfast nook.

This summer has been brutally hot, with very little rain. My herbs have really suffered and I'd really like the keep them growing throughout the year. Yesterday, John had the brilliant idea to setup a hydroponic garden. So off we went to buy all the supplies we needed.

Today we setup the garden and cleaned all the soil of the plants to be transplanted. Everything has now been re-planted and we have Sweet Basil, Mint, Greek Oregano and Italian Flat Leaf Parsley all getting used to their new hydroponic home indoors. I really hope I do better with my hydroponic herb garden than I've done in the past with my outdoor gardens. It's so much tastier to cook with fresh herbs.

John also planted a Mother-in-law's Tongue in a 5 gallon hydroponic container similar to one he had several years ago. Mother-In-Law's Tongue (also called Sanseveria or Snakeplant) is known for it's ability to purify the air. I'm not sure how many you have to have planted to enjoy these benefits. In any case, it is a very forgiving plant, it is very low maintenance and it doesn't even care if it's root bound. Sounds like the perfect indoor plant for my black thumb.

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12 September 2009

Random musings late on a Saturday night

I bit the bullet and finally committed to daily exercise of some type at least 3 days a week. In the past 2 weeks I've averaged 5-6 mile bike rides. I rode 4 days last week and 5 days this week. I even talked John into riding with me today.

Last weekend we did a little Geocaching on our way home from grandson's birthday party. Found 2 out of the 4 we went after. Today we went back to one of the caches we found on our first Geocaching adventure to replace a foreign coin we lost by accident (a coin fell out of the cache when we opened the container and disappeared in a pile of rocks.) Rule number one about Geocaching: Take what you want, but replace it with something of equal or greater value.

I must say, I'm becoming a pretty creative cook throughout this process. Last night we had chicken and veggies with a marinara sauce over penne pasta and a salad on the side. Tonight it was grilled pork brisket and grilled zucchini with herb roasted onion and potato wedges.... Total calories: 393, including the cup of 1% milk. Tomorrow night... Scallops in a white wine sauce over whole wheat linguini. If I had the money, I'd open a restaurant for folks wanting to eat really great food and still stay on a healthy nutrition plan.

We are planning our next trip to Costa Rica the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and we'll be returning on December 6th. We can't wait for our Tico family to see how much weight we've lost since our April trip.

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