Garden Update

I've pretty much spent the summer making zucchini bread and bringing it places. I add zucchini to any meal I can think of a use for it. Lesson learned for next year: plant less zucchini.

In other plant news, I've eaten some green beans and a few cherry tomatoes. Snap peas and Brussel sprouts never really took off. I think a creature ate them. I finally pulled up all of the beets I planted last week and just pickled all of them.

Yesterday, I went and did some serious work in the plot. I pulled up the zucchini plants that have stopped producing. I picked the Swiss chard and the last of the green beans (then pulled up those plants). I pulled weeds all over and immediately outside of my plot. I didn't bring my camera, or I'd show a picture of what's left. The cherry tomato plant and tomatillo plants are on the right side. The bottom is full of vines for sweet potatoes, and the corner they all form has the remaining zucchini. The rest of the garden I tilled by hand, then planted snap peas (2nd time's a charm?), beets, and Swiss chard. Clearly, those are not growing, so it's just brown for the rest of the garden. It looks kind of funny with two sides being lush and huge and the remainder being brown.

I'm finally getting a lot of cherry tomatoes, but they were still green yesterday. The husks of the tomatillos are there, but the fruit themselves are not big yet. Hopefully in a week or so I'll be overrun with those and bringing salsa verde everywhere.

Garden Update - with food!

I went to my garden and found this:

So I did this:

I also found these, but they're not quite ready yet:

Garden Update

Last week (I know, I'm horrible at updating in a timely fashion), I took my camera to my garden plot and took some pictures of what's going on there. We haven't eaten anything from it yet, which is what I need to do to consider this goal complete, but we're getting there.

We have a pepper growing! For the record, since I took this picture, I've gotten some cherry tomatoes growing and a squash blossom. I planted a ton of lettuce, but I don't think I watered it enough, as it pretty much stopped growing at 2 inch leaves. I didn't think I needed to get out there and water often, because we've been having a lot of rain, but perhaps not enough.

And now I'll leave you with a picture of my whole garden:

Looks pretty sad, now that I'm looking at it this way. I'll take more pictures next week, I think it looks better now.

Broad Street and Garden Update

First, Broad Street Run. I had been keeping my goal somewhat secret (I had told a few people early on, and more as I got more confident I'd make it) so that fewer people would know if I didn't make it. I'm going to finally state my goal for the whole internet to see, followed up a caveat that I may not make it, and that's ok, and you'll see why.

My goal for the 10 mile Broad Street Run is 1 hour 30 minutes. So, 9 minute miles. Last week, I did 10.3 miles in 1:33, which worked out to a 9:05 pace. And you always figure you'll run faster in a race than you do in training (except the third leg a Ragnar Relay when you have to run 9.1 miles, no shade, 3 hours of sleep, and you've already run a total of 9.1 miles over 2 runs in the past 24 hours; then you run slower), so you'd think I'd be fine. However, 8.5 miles into the run, my knee started really bothering me and I think I have and IT band problem. I bought a foam roller, iced my knee, and took some ibuprofin. My knee felt much better the next day, and I ran 1.5 miles on the treadmill on Monday with no real issue. Then, on Tuesday, I got an ear infection. It really hurt, was making me miserable, and I couldn't even fit my earphones in my ear (actually, the nurse practitioner couldn't get the ear looking at thingy in my ear). So, no running until Saturday, when I decided music or no (no music), knees hurting or no (pain), I had to run. I did four miles this morning, and my knee hurt around .25 miles in. On the plus side, I'm pretty sure I could've made it 10 miles. The pain wasn't too bad. Also, my knee didn't hurt nearly as bad after the run (last week, I limped until I finally got the foam roller, this week, I could walk properly and my knee was just uncomfortable, not painful). So, my current goal for Broad Street is back to 10 minute miles. My run today was faster than that (9:23 pace), and I didn't feel like I was pushing myself, but I'm not sure how much I'll be pushing myself if my knee hurts for 97% of my race and I don't know if I'll have to slow down more as I run farther. Maybe we should say my goal is 1:35 (9:30 pace). We'll go with that. Thanks, internet, for the confidence boost!

Onto the garden. I was finally given the OK to plant this week, so I loaded up everything in my backpack (aside from the watering can and markers for what I was planting [oops]), and biked out to the plot (holding the watering can in my hand while I biked). I planted cherry tomatoes, purple tomatillos (what do you call purple salsa verde?), green beans, sugar peas, brussel sprouts, green beans, lettuce, and zucchini. I still have a bit of space left, so I'm going to look for more seeds, and probably plant some flowers. I really enjoyed bringing home flowers for my dining room table earlier this year, and I think I want to continue that.

Community Garden Update

I'm sure you're all sitting around wondering to yourself "What's up with Carolyn's garden?" Well, last fall, I planted some flowers, and they've bloomed! Plus, we had a meeting earlier this week, and since I had a fall plot, I can start planting whenever I want instead of waiting for tilling. They'll till around my plot. Here is a picture of some of my flowers. (Clearly, I did not think to bring my camera to my plot, as I was unsure what I would find).