A New Plan

 

Hello, Dreamwidth!  I fell off of the blogging radar for a while thanks to the evils of Tumblr and Twitter.  Recently I've begun to feel down in thedumps again, as I am apt, so I've decided to turn this place into a bit of a happyblog.  Every few days, or perhaps twice a week, I want to update with a photo and a bullet-list of good things and positive feelings followed by something I need to pay attention to or work on.  Much better than my previous plan of running away, I think.  So let's begin:

• Pictured above is a newfound love of mine: succulent gardening!  I've turned to this almost out of necessity due to living in a fourth-story apartment for most of the year, and while I've always had a succulent or two, my interest has really exploded in the past fewmonths.  At the moment I'm working with my guinea pigs up here, trying to figure out proper soil mixtures watering times, andsunshine tastes.  The stringy guy on the left, Rhipsalis clavata, and the small spiky aloe to its right, Hawthornia attenuata, have been with me since high school, the aloe for almost ten years.  It's started to look pretty bad recently, so I trimmed it back a LOT tohopefully spur some growth, but even if it dies, I've got a pup from the plant sitting in the front-right pot.  :]  This is too fun, haha.

• A week or two back I decided to start volunteering at the Shoal Creek Living History Museum (the place I may have spoken of before with all of the preserved cabins and houses from the 1860's).  Turns out the gardens are kept nice and functional by a handful of  70-something-year-old women who volunteer on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I'm happy to lend a hand.  One of their husbands thought I was "doing hard time" for community service, haha. :D  I guess twenty-somethings aren't normally out and about volunteering...Anyway, I've mostly been watering the extensive gardens since it hasn't rained in almost two weeks.  Everything except the established perennials and theyarrow is wasting away.

And as for something to work on, my dietary health has been abysmal to the point of putting on something like five pounds since getting home for the summer.  In the best of all worlds I'd go for the Paleo Diet, but the truth of the matter is I am a lazy ass.  For now I'll simply focus on redirecting my snacking habits to fruits and veggies instead of chips and such- frozen peas are a godsend, and by that I mean just eating them frozen out of the bag.  Who knew they'd be so lovely?  The hard part is finding a source for 'em that doesn't add salt to the package- in Ohio, Kroger offers them without salt, but here in Missouri the only place I've found is Walmart.  And that's always a problem.