Gardening: Like a House of Cards, Part 3

Then, one morning I woke up motivated,  finally having the courage to weigh myself.  Those seconds staring down at the scale, waiting for the big red digital number to appear, it feels like being a little too close to the edge of a cliff staring down at jagged rocks, the wind at my back. I gained two pounds and poof, the freak-out switch was flipped on. I was mad at myself for not trying harder and for even bothering to weigh. That scale has caused me to quit so many times over the years. The irrational personal assault tape was on play. Outwardly I could feel my facial expression and my body shift position. I withdrew into the vortex of negative self talk. I surrendered to it, fully.

Because I hadn't shopped for food that weekend I went to work that Monday morning after weighing, having skipped breakfast with no lunch packed. I skipped that too, because I didn't feel like I had enough self control to get a healthy restaurant meal.  By the time I got home I was ravenous. I don't recall what I ate for dinner but lets say it was pizza and cake. Or something just as bad. The rest of the week was basically the same. In fact, until I wrote Cris that email in which I had a simple yet profound discovery, every day was one long string of depression, skipped breakfasts/lunches and binging dinners.  I floundered through all those hours knowing I was in a bad place but unsure what to do about it. And I had no motivation, whatsoever, to get to the bottom of things.  I didn't feel like I'd done anything to cause this but more like a cloud of badness was cast upon me without warning. I couldn't move out from under it. So I wallowed in it...and I ate.

Somewhere in that email to Cris I started to realize that yeah, the weight gain sucked. But the biggest problem wasn't the weight gain, it was that I was totally unprepared for it. In fact, I was unprepared for the week in general, regardless of the scale debacle. I hadn't stuck with my plan, and I never realized until that moment how important the plan actually was. If I'd taken the time to shop for healthy food and map out my meals for the week, maybe after I'd gained that two pounds I would've hung my head for little while, all day maybe. But I probably would have at least stuck with my eating plan. And if I'd stuck with my eating plan I wouldn't have been starving when I got home and if I hadn't been starving when I got home maybe I wouldn't have thrown in the towel and pigged out on pizza and cake...for an entire week.

Not taking the time to shop and plan my meals turned out to be so important that not doing it literally ruined my entire week. What I signed up for seemed like a simple nutrition and exercise plan I could easily slip into my life but I was realizing that it was much more complex than I ever knew.  Looking back over my shoulder, my success or failure was was much less a state of mind and much more a bunch of little processes, one connected and dependent on the next. It was like a house of cards. And pulling that one on the bottom out caused the entire thing to fall. School started > no meals planned > no grocery shopping > no lunches prepared > 2 pound weight gain > KABOOM!

Gardening TV Shows: Dig In Chicago

If you follow me on twitter you probably know I listen to The Mike Nowak radio show every Sunday 9-11 on Chicago's Progressive Talk Radio.  Well don't look now but he's started a gardening TV show!  "Dig In Chicago" airs every Saturday morning at 10:00 on Comcast channel 102.  I watched the first episode on my iPad this weekend and I'm hooked already.

At first I was skeptical. There aren't that many gardening TV shows out there and I have watched most of them, at least once. There's the big garden makeover ones which just piss me off because it's no fair I had to work so hard for my little garden and these people get a big fancy one for happening by some big box store at the right time. And there are others that are just too persnickety for me. I loved "The Manic Organic" which went off the air almost immediately upon my discovery of it.  It seems like gardening shows with content useful for real gardeners never seem to survive. Maybe that's changing. I hope so.

I love Dig In Chicago. That's the bottom line. It is informative, has gardening information that is relevant for the time period in which it airs and it even has a short segment from a local restaurant on how to make a couple of garden related cocktails and an easy meal using stuff commonly grown in our edible Chicago gardens.  The first episode featured a discussion about Lurie Garden which is apparently actually a rooftop garden sitting atop giant underground parking lots. As a Chicago gardener, I'm ashamed to admit that I did not realize this.  I've read and seen photos of Lurie Garden, their "Salvia River", on all my favorite Chicagoland garden blogs but seeing this TV segment made me push visiting Lurie to the top of my list of gardening things to do this year.

Chicago has a vibrant gardening community that I think will love this show. Even if you're not in our area, you should check it out. The show airs Saturday mornings at 10:00 am on Comcast and you can watch the previous episodes here.

White Peony In Bloom

I love these big gaudy flowers.

Troy-Bilt Saturday 6, We're Back!

You know how I know I'm not a real journalist/salesman/marketing type person? Because I've been trying to think of the right way to write this post about how I'm partnering with Troy-Bilt again for the second year in a row and it's caused a war in my head.

On one side there's the voice saying to just announce it. Be positive, sterile. Something like "I've teamed up with Troy-Bilt again! I'm so excited to be able to review their awesome products, give some away, write some articles for them because, hey! I love to write about gardening!"  On the other side there's what I really want to say about it. And the same ole question over whether I'm being too personal. If I write what I really want to, will Troy-Bilt be disappointed in me? What if my fellow bloggers call me an ass-kisser? A shill? But at the end of the day, when a blogger stops being authentic all in the name of product endorsements, it's over! Right?

Here's the truth. Last year I was so shocked (flattered) that Troy-Bilt asked me to become one of 6 bloggers in a new program they were trying that I couldn't stop questioning why they'd pick me, of all people. I know a lot of you thought the same thing, whether you said it or wrote it or not. It ended up being such a pleasant experience that I'd made up my mind when it was all over I would write an open letter to Troy-Bilt thanking them. One that would explain to all of you exactly why I loved working with them so much...after the contract expired and there was no incentive to continue writing about them. I wanted to be able to openly and honestly talk about how I'd long respected them like a lot of you because they were one of the first companies to ask garden bloggers for real, honest reviews of their products. But not that long after our contracts had expired, there they were again, asking our opinions on ideas about other programs they were considering for 2012. Then in a move that shocked the shit out of me, they asked us all back for a second year. Instead of indoctrinating a whole new set of garden bloggers, they were investing in the same 6 of us all over again.  We talked about what worked and what didn't work and here we, back for season 2.

As a member of the Troy-Bilt Saturday 6 I'll review a few products here on my blog, give a few away, and write a couple of articles for their online newsletter, The Dirt. I am particularly looking forward to trying some of the newer products now available with rechargeable battery power. I encourage all of you to check out Troy-Bilt's new Facebook page where they are sharing good gardening info.

Troy-Bilt, one day I'll write that letter so everybody will know the real deal. In the meantime, I am honored and appreciative of the opportunity to work with you again and I'm looking forward to this new gardening season.

On my end, consider this the official disclosure that I am being compensated for honest reviews of their products. If I don't like them, I'll tell you so.

Highs and Lows of Life and Gardening

I read something the other day about how stupid it is to limit what you write about on your personal blog when your personal blog is in a niche, like say, gardening. I took this as a sign from the eGods that that I should just write. So many days go by that I have things to say but don't publish anything because the gardening angle isn't clear to me.  Don't get me wrong, I can always find one but sometimes it's exhausting.

On the gardening front I have been plant sitting a flat of seedlings for a coworker. I'm freaking out about them because some of them are in serious need of thinning. I feel compelled to do it myself but if somebody thinned my seedlings I would not be happy. So, I'm just trying to keep them alive until they get picked up.  Meanwhile, all my seedlings are dead. It is hard to believe that I spent more money on seeds than ever this year yet I am going to be buying all my plants for the garden.

Tomorrow is my father-in-law's birthday. I normally have plenty of tulips and daffodils blooming in the garden on his birthday but with everything so early this year, I was worried I wouldn't have anything to take to the cemetery. But I think I can pull together a nice albeit very different bouquet than the last couple of years.  The pain's still there. We miss him terribly and need him now more than ever.

Earlier this morning a person in my husband's family died unexpectedly in his sleep. He was my age. I wish I could tell you about the sensitive details. They are in my head like a captured animal pacing around a cage desperate for a way out.  How sad and devastating it is for our family. How the frantic phone call led us to believe it was a different person. It is hard to find the words to articulate the feeling of having fully processed that a person has passed away then discover they're alive. That it's really a whole other person. It is a roller coaster of highs and lows. The highs eclipsed by guilt and shame, the lows filled with sadness and devastation.

I planted salad greens, radishes and things of that nature. They are up and I am thankful for that.

Garden: Like a House of Cards, Part 2

Back in late December 2011 my husband and I started a program at the gym designed to lose weight. It included regular meetings with a dietitian and working out with a personal trainer three times per week. I remember the first meeting with the dietitian when she asked me what my motivation was for signing up for the program, I said that I couldn't find the motivation to lose the weight, to get healthy on my own so I  decided I'd pay somebody to try to motivate me. I thought she was going to reject me on the spot. Return my money and send me on my way.  "Without a high level of motivation, most people are not that successful with programs like this." she told me.  "Sorry, I could lie to you and say I'm highly motivated but I'm not. I have no reason to believe that I'll be successful with this program because I've tried everything and nothing has worked. I know what to do, I just can't seem to do it." I was defiant. "Well, what's your expectation for a program like this" she asked me, puzzled.  "I just want to finish it. I never finish anything. I just want to follow the directions you give me and not quit before it's finished. I don't even care if I lose weight because I know if I just do what you say, it'll happen."  The doubt lifted from her face a little. She said she was relieved that I didn't have an unrealistic weight loss goal like most people.  "OK, let's finish it, then" she said. And that was that.  Sort of.

It was a long hard, slow three months.  The first few weeks of the program were horrible. I felt like that lame story of the clam without its shell. Vulnerable. I tweeted that I was wearing a coat of insecurity. I was afraid of everything.  And I didn't know why. The only thing I was doing was recording my food in an online food diary and working out and I've done that a million times.  But I was freaking out. About everything. My relationship with my husband. My job. My family. And then I started getting sick. This is inappropriate for a gardening blog but I got three bladder infections in one month.  Three! And a really bad cold a bunch of other crap.

Other stuff happened that is probably relevant but I haven't figured out how, yet. Like I refused to weigh because it always derails me. Or so I say. It was really helpful that my husband and I were both in the program together and although I was highly motivated at times, the team at the gym was mostly dragging me along kicking and screaming. I never missed a session with the personal trainer, or the dietitian. But I was a slack ass when it came to getting in my extra cardio and at some point I stopped logging my food.

One day after complaining to my trainer about feeling extremely unmotivated I got an email from the dietitian. I hadn't sent her my food logs in a few days. Her email was short. "Alicia said you were really struggling this week. Is there anything going on that we can help with?"  And I started an email to her that practically ended up like these blog posts. Long, rambling, cathartic.

Dear Cris, thanks for the email. I'm sorry I've been out of touch...

The intention of my email to her was to make excuses. And in the meantime to say something that would make me seem less lame. Or maybe make her feel sorry for me. Anything! But the more I wrote the more I was accidentally digging deeper and deeper into the problem.

One Seed Chicago: Voting Ends April 1st!

Vote for your favorite herb seed here!  Voting ends April 1st.


Candidates:
       Chamomile
       Basil
       Cilantro

I can't believe it's March 30th and I'm just now getting around to writing about one of my favorite annual gardening projects, One Seed Chicago.

One Seed Chicago is a program hosted by NeighborSpace, Chicago's land trust for community gardens.  Mr Brown Thumb is the ambassador of the program. You may have seen him educating folks about the program at various gardening events around the city.

Each year three seeds are chosen and people in the Chicagoland area vote for the seed they'd like to grow.  The winning seed is then mailed, for free, to everyone who voted.  Not to brag, but the seed I voted for has won every year that I've participated. Last year was Swiss Chard.

This is such a fun little contest because spirited debates always break out, each gardener arguing, debating on behalf of their favorite seed candidate.  In fact, an actual debate was held this year on Mike Novak's radio show. You can listen to the podcast here.

I was really excited to see that One Seed went herbal this year because I'd already made a commitment to grow and eat more fresh herbs, myself.  When you think about it, herbs tend to really easy to grow in the home garden and I think they are so underutilized. We could all make a lot more delicious homemade dishes simply by using all the wonderful varieties of herbs available.  I grow the basic herbs every year...a thousand varieties of basil etc.  But this year after reading Gayla Trail's new book Easy Growing, about growing herbs and edible flowers, I'm inspired to try more new stuff.

As much as I would love to launch into a debate over why you should pick Cilantro over the Chamomile and Basil, there is already so much good information on the One Seed Chicago site about all the candidates. Please check them out.  Personally, I am voting for Cilantro because it's an herb I have been trying to establish a relationship with for a while now.  I have always been on one of the cilantro-tastes-like-soap people. But over the last year I've read so many good things about the healing properties of Cilantro.  Supposedly it's like a blood cleanser and besides that, it is such a versatile herb used in so many different cuisines.  But I wouldn't be disappointed if Chamomile won because, My God! Those cute flowers!  And who doesn't need more basil?

The voting ends on April 1st so please hurry over to the One Seed Chicago and vote for the herb you'd like to grow.  Regardless of which one wins, it's always fun to be growing the same exact seed as so many other gardeners around the Chicagoland area.