Getting Cold

This past weekend a bunch of my friends all partook in Mini-Hell. A fun fill weekend of crawling in mud that is finished by jumping in a frozen lake. I couldn't afford the time off work. However, I have been getting back into my own cold weather training. Last night when it was 21 degrees Fahrenheit  -6 Celsius  I went for my first shirtless run. For these I wear only shorts and shoes. I ran 1.75 miles in that cold. I ran down the biggest street in town at about 10 o'clock at night. I ran from my house to my girlfriends. By the time I got there I was a little worried that my fingers wouldn't work to unlock the door. I got in just fine though. After an hour or so I was warmed up again. 
Then this morning I went out again this time the thermometer read 20 F, -6.6 C, I did 2 miles to start. I wore a thin shirt that Was over at Moe's house cause my bag was irritating my hips. This time I ran from her house to my bank. 
From there I ran to where my father had left my car about another mile. The whole time I was on main roads and people were starring at me. I would see them in their cars all geared up for the cold with their heat on. Meanwhile I am half dressed booking it down the side walk. It's an empowering feeling knowing that I can face something most people do everything they can to avoid. 

I am scared.

 Over the past month I have been losing my hair. Not in a male pattern baldness way. The hair loss seems to be all over my head, with some areas that are worse than others. On both sides of my family my grandfathers had full heads of hair into their upper 80s. The pattern of hair loss that I am seeing seems to only be explainable by something being wrong with me.
Tomorrow morning I am scheduled for blood tests. I am getting my testosterone, thyroid and Complete Blood count.
I don't have much more to say about this at the moment, just feeling scared.

Sprouts!

I started sprouting about three years ago after visiting a friend of mine who was sprouting seeds in her house. She spoke to me many of the health benefits, but she had me at cancer preventing. She gave me a jar full of sprouts, some seeds, and some ideas of where to get more. Since then I have sprouted off and on. I do it more in the winter when access to good greens is harder.

 I have made my own version of the sprout jars. For the most part a sprout jar is a mason jar with a special lid that will let water pass through but not seeds and sprouts. You can buy these special lids that will fit on wide mouthed mason jars. The trouble with those lids is they are about four bucks a pop. When I really have my sprout farm going, each jar is in rotation for about two weeks. One week growing, one week eating. I start a set of jars about every three days; two or three jars at a time. That means that at any one time I can have between nine and fourteen jars going, about $60 in lids alone; not to mention the mason jars themselves, which are about $15 a dozen. Instead I made my own lids. I took the metal ring section from the mason jar lid and hot glued window screen from the hardware store for $7 a roll. I had to use two layers of the screen because the holes are just a little large for my smaller seeds. It works perfectly and I will never run out of the screen. After that I just add one to two table spoons of any sort of seed I want and begin sprouting. I won't use this space to discuss the method of sprouting cause the internet is abound with that information.

For a green future I think we should all adopt sprouting. Sprouts can be grown with out light for the first several days. They require only the equipment which I have described above and water. I use about a gallon a day to water my sprouts. However, that water could be recycled and purified and they would only need about 1/2 a cup to grow a quart jar full of sprouts. To grow sprouts with that little water would require a lot of work on behalf of the humans involved. If you are trying to grow them in a completely closed environment where water is scarce, it could be done. Whether your goal is just having a salad growing in your window or if you want to try a bio-dome experiment, sprouts are a great option.

Currently, on my shelves I have broccoli, radish, clover, and fenugreek. They are flavorful and in some cases, sort of spicy. They go great on salads as a garnish, or cooked into things like you would with spinach. Seriously, if you are still reading this you should start sprouting.

Thoughts form This Year to Next.

This year I think I learned a lot in my garden. I learned how vicious deer can be. I learned how fruitful scraps can be. I learned that sweet potatoes will grow in high rises. I learned the value of having a comfortable place to sit. I also learned the joy of good gardening with good people. That is the part that next year and in all the years of my life I want to cultivate.
Next year, I want to prepare better for the challenges laid out by the area of the community garden. I want to have a better fence that will protect my garden from deer. This year I felt I was always doing damage control from the deer. They would find a place to jump the fence and the next day I would come see the damage. Then I would scramble to find a way to disrupt their "landing zone." I found that if there was no where for them to safely jump the fence and land they wouldn't get in. However if I cleared a bed to plant or removed some junk that had been left out, in they came. Next year, I want to use fast growing tall plants to act as a second barrier to them. I am hoping if they can't see past the fence very well they will be afraid to jump in. Really, I want to have a wall of sunflowers all around my garden. This will also help with the noise from that guy who insists on rotary tilling his plot once a week.
I will also reattempt my sweet potato skyscrapers. Next year should go better since I already have a good deal of soil down at the garden. At the end of this year instead of leaving all my new soil down there to be tilled under and spread about all the other plots I hid it in the woods next to my plot. I will also get a good deal of soil from my father's compost here at my house just like at the beginning of this past year. In addition to that I can use my tactics from last year and collect some soil from the surrounding woodlands. Maybe if I am lucky I will also have a truck by then. That way I can haul some compost or soil from somewhere far off. There are some other improvements I want to make to the skyscrapers next year. I want to find a way for them to generate more of their own heat. The reason my sweet potatoes didn't work very well this year was because our summer was not hot enough. Next year could be hotter, but sweet potatoes really need Southern Georgia levels of heat to thrive. I want to try a few things to improve the heat in the skyscrapers. First, I will paint all the towers black. I don't expect this to have much effect because the tires are starting out very dark gray or black, but it should help. Second, I want to try mixing in some raw compost into the tires. I will probably try a few different methods to do this. By raw compost I mean things like grass clippings and other non-decomposed material. I will experiment; one tire Soil and the next Raw Compost switching all the way up. Or perhaps soil in the middle of the tire and Raw Compost on the outside. I will leave some skyscrapers with only soil as controls. My hope with this experiment is that as the compost decomposes in the tires it will generate heat and the plants will thrive. My concern is that the action of the decomposition will cause the sweet potatoes themselves to become sick or even die.
This year was the first time that I created a space in my garden that was purely for sitting and being comfortable and relaxed. It was also the first year that I managed to have mostly plants that I planted covering the rest of my garden. I do not think that was a coincidence. I know that there were days that going down to sit in my chair in the sun with some cider was the reason I went down.  Usually once I was down there that I also got myself to do a little weeding or watering. Next year, I want to do that in spades. I want to build a second chair for Mo. I may even build a few smaller chairs for the kids. I also want a coffee table.
Having this will help me on my way to cultivating a community for the Community Garden. However, I don't want to stop there. I have already talked with some friends about helping them to find a plot for next year. There are some other gardeners down there that are pretty social and come over to our plot and say hello. However, that is the exception not the rule. Next year I want to hold a few gatherings of all the gardeners down there. I don't know what form those gatherings will take, but I want them. I want an opportunity to talk to all the gardeners down there and to hear what they have to say. I want to know why they garden and to share why I garden with them.

Finding Balance.

I am feeling very out of balance lately. Not in a spiritual or existential sense. On Tuesday I had a plantar wart treated on the heel of my right foot. That is the nice way of saying I had a dermatologist give me 3ed degree frost bit! Since the procedure I have been unable to put weight on that part of my foot with out a good deal of pain. This means I am either favoring my left foot completely or standing only on the ball of my right foot. As a result I am sore. Sore everywhere. My hips are imbalanced, my calves are tight. Don't get me started on my feet. I just finished beggar's night with Mo and her kids and From the waste down...
I don't mean to complain. I am grateful to live in a society where I can go get a procedure like that done so easily. I am also grateful that I live in a place where walking is not a fact of life. Well, maybe most days the fact that most americans don't walk more is part of the problem, but today walking was the problem.
I am mentioning all this because I find it very interesting. Something so small as this can cause such a problem. This ice burn is smaller than a dime on the sole of my foot. However, it's effects have telegraphed through most of my body. There are many small things that we encounter everyday that are preventing us from being all that we are capable of being. Some of them can't be avoided, some can. Things like sleep and stress or bad diet. We may think that staying up a few nights a week won't hurt us. Or that eating that bit of gluten will be fine as long as tomorrow we are 100% paleo. But in exactly the same was a favoring my left leg is throwing my body out of whack, only working on one corner of your lifestyle is as you let the rest spiral out of control will wear you down. I think what I am trying to say here is that I need to get some sleep.

Preparing for Winter.

For the past two weeks I have been working very hard to clear out my community garden plot. We have to have everything out of the area by the end of tomorrow. A week ago I was not sure if I could get that done. I know now I am with in striking distance of the goal.
The reason for this is because of how the city manages the community garden plots here. Every year on October 31 we need to be completely out of our areas then they till the land. Then again in the spring they till again. Every year I get more and more stuff down there that has to be pulled out at the end. That makes this task harder and harder. This is also a very depressing time of year for me because as I am doing my fall harvest I am also destroying my garden. The fall harvest should be a time of celebration.
However, this process also gives me an opportunity to think about what I will do next year in my garden. That is a positive that I can focus on. Next year, I want to build more furniture to have down there. The adirondack chair that I made myself really made me very happy this year. Next year I want to build one for Mo. I think having a coffee table would be nice as well. I want to plant all the sunflower seeds I collected this year. I am going to make a wall of sunflowers all the way around our space down there. On the outside of that I want to plant marigolds all around the perimeter and I think inside of those two flowers I will plant more giant zinnias. I want to create a room out of flowers. I am going to reattempt the sweet potatoes using the same tire method I used this year. I want to do butternut squash again, but I want to try to grow up and not out with them next time. I also want to do other squash. This year I had a great crop of early lettuce, next year I want to get that going earlier and last longer.
Over the next several months I will be doing a good deal of indoor gardening. I am going to finally put the leg work in on the window farms. I want to start sprouting more again. I also want to get back to writing again. For now I am going to get some sleep. It feels good to post again.

Up with the Sun.

I have been struggling with sleep for the last few weeks. My new job keeps me out past 10 three nights a week. Even when I get out at 10 I am still amped up. Last weekend I was up pasted 1 am three nights. I have also been drinking more, enough that even once I am asleep my sleep is disturbed. A few glasses of wine seems like the best way to wind down at the end of a busy night. But I have found after an hour or two of sleep I am then awakened. I usually am then up for 40 minutes to an hour. Getting up in the morning has been hard too. I get up after 8 or even after 9, which is late for me. I am never getting restful sleep after sun up. All in all for the last few weeks I have been getting in the range of six to seven hours of sleep a night. This really messes me up during the day. My allergies will be much worse. I obviously feel more tired. My brain function is lower, my memory and learning are not as sharp. I don't blog as much.
I have a solution for this problem at least three nights a week. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I work nights and Thursday I have a game night with some friends. That leaves Monday, Tuesday Wednesday that I control my evening. It just requires discipline. I have two alarms set on my phone, one is for about 30 minutes before sunset and the other is for sun set. When I am disciplined I turn out all my artificial lights after the second alarm. Out of boredom or frustration from stubbing my toes I usually go to bed with in half an hour of this.
I did this last night. I was in bed for 11 hours and 40 minutes and I was asleep for just over 11 hours. Its very interesting to see how different my sleep feels like this. I feel like me sleep is a more active. Last night there were three times that I remember being up in the night. Normally waking in the night is stressful for me cause I know I only have a very limited time to be asleep and if I am waking up I am cutting into that. I feel great today. I love when I get to do a solar cycle. I know there are still four days a week that I can't be going to bed at 7:30, but I want to work on before 12 and really push for before 11 for at least three of those. I also want to get this "down with the sun" thing on for the other three days a week that I don't work. Not just one or two of them.
I would love to be able to have a job or lifestyle someday that would allow me to remain on a solar cycle all the time. I can't really imagine what that job would be or how I could swing that. Doing something like that though the summer would be easy enough. In the winter in Central Ohio around the solstice we have only about 9 hours and 18 minutes of sun up. That wouldn't leave much time for much besides an 8 hour work day. If I have a job where I work on my own schedule it might be possible.