Shepard Lane Garden

  For posterity - I crave odd foods often, and I think it is the only way my body can communicate some of the things I don't know that it needs. Looked up tonight the chemistry of cooking onions in butter - cooking destroys some antioxidants but keeps some of the vitamin B6 and the vitamin K. More importantly, it also helps combine the copper and magnesium into more fat-soluble versions that can be used by the body better. The same copper / lysine combination is present in olives and avocados (without cooking), which are also cravings. Explains a lot of why I freak Mark out with the 'lethal doses' of garlic and onions I put into the foods I eat - so much that he takes one look and says 'Err.. I'm going away now, tell me if you survive.' I dump on black pepper and even cayenne pepper so thick sometimes he has just gotten used to that and even cooks my hamburger meat with about a 1/4 inch of black pepper on top. Last year I found out about curry, turmeri

  It's like that training montage from Rocky - I carry water and dirt in five gallon buckets - one of each, uphill... I hack at the ground with a hoe-axe to make holes to fill with potting soil. I carry and plant each item from the garden center in it's chosen position. I walk the dogs to Yellow Hill, and look at the roses, and see the sun beginning to slip behind the trees. I grab one more jar of water for the Lower Salmon River squash, now nestled in the front bed. We've rearranged the bricks there into a pretty formation that doesn't block the footpath.. it deserves a photo in the light soon. I take one more look at the new lily that has bloomed and bring Charlotte in to flop down on the floor and do laundry (her one, me the other). More postal route tomorrow, and I am thinking of the massive amount of rambling pink roses I saw growing wild in a fenceline there.. and wondering how they got there, when, and who. I'm getting it done, bit by bit,

  Working on an expansion at the front garden.  It doesn't look like much now, but the other area was added last year and it did so well, and retained so much moisture without watering, that we are trying to expand out a few more feet.  Next year, we might even go another layer deep.  We grew rooted parsley, carrots, kale and basil here last year and used almost all of it. These are wild roses growing down under the power lines by the side of our road.  There is a big thicket of them there, and they seem to bloom only for a few days a year.  The purfume off of them wafts across the road and through the field - it is always telltale that there will be a carpet of small pink roses to be found if you go and look. They mow them down often, so the other year my daughter and I took a cutting and brought it home to root.  IT has done so well even through not being watered in its new pot beside the pole garden.  This year it has it's own bloom, at the same time the mother plant bloomed

 I like cooking things nobody else in the house will eat.  That's sarcastic, but I do like to cook some odder things.  And I like to experiment freehand baking, while I'm already up and at things, and see how my chemistry brain works out. Strawberry Muffins  1 cup flour 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg .5 teaspoon cream of tartar .5 teaspoon baking soda .5 teaspoon salt (would add a shake more next time) 1/2 cup of white granulated sugar soaked overnight in a handful of fresh strawberries from the garden, cleaned and chopped.  (I'd add several more tablespoons of sugar next time if I were baking this recipe with it.. but it is our standard preservation method for strawberries from the garden that are not eaten immediately)  This batch was not 'sweet'..more like an oatmeal muffin, so it would take more sugar to sweeten it up to most people's taste, or maybe some honey - that is worth further pursuit. about 3/4 cup of milk 1 fresh chicken egg 1/2 stick butter Stir together

 I try not to complain.  So I'm not.  I'm just laying it out as it went through my head this morning.  I push my physical body to the limit of damage as a way to get things done - and it is not visible.  Pain.  I know I can't relate to what other people say pain is, until it gets to the 'loudspeaker' point with a broken bone or concussion or huge gash gushing blood.  The everyday things, like a sprained wrist, or a headache, or a twisted ankle.. all parts of my normal EDS, I just tell them to shut up, and get along with my day as best as possible.   Pain medication does almost absolutely nothing for me.  I find it annoying to get ten minutes to an hour of relief and have it come back.  I find it 'easier' to raise the mental wall and use my own body's defense mechanisms, because they last longer, and in the moment, I'm me - I can't rely on anything outside of myself, because then what happens when it isn't there?  If I can deal with the pain i

 I'm still hypothesizing what I mean by theRule of Effort.  It is not a cut and dry equation.  There are so many things that cascade and swirl around to create this turmoil and dilemma t hat comes up in my head often. Do I put forth the effort for this - and for myself, or for others, or for both? Saw a quote today that said 'growth is caring more about your own progress than what others think of it/you'... and yes, with my PTSD I have trouble with this.  It is a bad scar taht if I pick at it, it will come open and be hard to work through all of the rest of what is in front of me every day. Then I think again of what it means in context of the Rule of Effort. My head moves at a hundred miles per hour compared to my fingers, my body .. and so often, my body does not even want to cooperate, or there is no time in the 'real world' schedule to bring what I am thinking of to life.  Other times, the rule of effort comes in and I am giving the project some time, but it is