Garden Weight Loss Plan

  In the last three years, I have lost close to 60 pounds. I say part of that is because I work out in the yard. A lot. Winter is down time for me and I will usually gain anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds back, but as soon as Spring begins and I am out in the yard regularly I tend to shed that weight relatively quickly.

Mulch-y goodness!

  Yard work is a wonderful form of exercise and it kicks your butt. A lot of squatting, bending, lifting, tugging, shoving, patting and cursing. Kind of a like a high-impact aerobics class.

  Today, I bought 8 bags of 2cu. ft. bark mulch for my garden paths and lugged them into the car by my lonesome and out of the car by my lonesome and up into the yard. I will have some buff arms soon enough!

  I am planning on grabbing some cardboard for ground cover before I lie the mulch down. I don't care much for plastic weed barriers since they don't break down over time, you go back a few years from now and find the stuff everywhere.  The previous owners put the shit down everywhere and after living here for 10 years I am still finding it and having to rip it out. Whoever thought this was a good idea needs to be smacked upside the head with a ping-pong paddle(not that I condone violence, but stupidity should be corrected).

  Friday morning, I awoke to find the Chicks huddling in the corner of their box.  Their heat lamp bulb had blown out in the night and, of course, I didn't have a spare. I plopped a 100 watt bulb into their light and ran off to work hoping that they didn't freeze what little of their tails they had off.

  After work, I wasn't able to find a suitable light in the pet shops around West Seattle, so on Saturday morning I had to run to Burien to Hayes Feed and Country Store, first thing, and grab a bulb before heading over to Port Orchard to hang out with the boyfriend and his daughter.

  It was the first time I left them alone all night long and when I got back this afternoon, their water trough was filled to the top with wood shavings and they had eaten all of their starter mash. Starving, thirsty chicks. I gave them some cool fresh water and they guzzled it down, (although, I don't believe that chickens are able to guzzle without lips...).

  Chickens will basically become ill and die quickly if they do not have access to clean drinking water. It is their biggest weakness and being that they have such fast metabolisms, something as seemingly unimportant as having something to drink within the next hour can knock them out. I could have asked one of the neighbor kids to look in on them, but I didn't have time. They seem no worse for wear.

Daffy-dils are fun ornamentals!

  I mostly grow food stuff, I am not an ornamental gardener, to the chagrin of my neighbor. I have a vegetable gardener. I have a hard time understanding why, when you have perfectly good land, you would want to only grow stuff you cannot eat. I have a few flowers here and there and I like how pretty they are. But I do not want to grow only flowers.

  I tend to use them more for when parts of my bed are in a fallow phase. Meaning that they are not expending energy on growing vegetables and are recharging by turning those flowers into the soil for a nitrogen boost. So they are beneficial in feeding the soil, as well as in drawing insects and birds to my garden as pollinators.

And, I guess they are kinda pretty.