It may be a week late, but the tomatoes and peppers have been planted!

I haven't labeled the trays yet, but I did take a picture for some record-keeping.

The first spring planting!

Look at those adorable little seeds...

Wee peppers.

Here's hoping everything sprouts!  Tomorrow, I plant the one-week-late collards and garlic cloves.  The cloves have already begun to sprout, so they are super ready to be in the ground. 

First milestone down: no longer obese!

I've been trying to lose my extra weight for AGES.


That extra weight was 100 pounds, peaking in 2004... and as of December, I still had 40lbs to lose. 

My TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) in December was about 1800.
The TDEE at my goal weight is 1550.

THAT IS JUST A DIFFERENCE OF FREAKING 250 CALORIES PER DAY. 

That's one extra slice of homemade pizza, or half a slice of lasagna, or 2/3rds of my favorite homemade roll.  Or not measuring dressing/toppings on a salad, or not measuring pasta.  Or absent-mindedly munching.  Or not going for a walk.  That's it!  That's enough to maintain obesity forever. 



As a result, I've changed my mindset.


I already knew this logically, and thought I had accepted it, but for some reason it never really "hit me" like it did last month.  Instead of actively trying to lose weight, I need to be able to eat, FOREVER, at my goal weight's maintenance levels.  There is never going to be such a thing as "intuitive eating" for me. 

So my goal has been just to eat and behave like I'm maintaining at a healthy weight... eventually (by July 2019, thanks losertown!) that would get me to the final goal, and I will have learned great habits along the way.  In reality, just knowing that I can hit "maintenance" calories every day has been working so well that I've been hitting my maximum safe calorie deficit.*  

There are a few tools that I'm using, which have proven motivating in measuring calories in vs calories out:

• My Fitness Pal (at sedentary)  
• Fitbit with heart rate tracking (for additional calorie burn), integrated with MFP
• Food scale (more accurate than cups or servings)
• Focus ONLY on the day's calorie goal (1550 plus exercise or reasonably less)

It's not a hassle anymore, I don't get as hungry, and I am nowhere near being in danger of burning out. 




Some motivating milestones.


These are the 5 major milestones on this last part of my journey, after having already kept the first 60 pounds off for a decade.  Hopefully I will get to share them all with you within the next year or two!

1. 10lbs:  No longer obese, so fertility/health improved  <-- Achieved!
   
2. 20lbs:  "Baby weight" is gone, felt healthier in general at this weight
3. 30lbs:  My driver's license weight is no longer a lie, felt far more energetic at this point
4. 34lbs:  My wedding weight (I starved and dehydrated temporarily for this, only maintained for 1 day, so never truly achieved it), the lowest my husband has ever seen me
5. 40lbs:  In the healthy BMI range, and 100lbs lost

* (1% is generally accepted as the max safe weight loss, for sparing muscle and your gallbladder.  For example:  1% of 150lbs = 1.5lbs lost per week = 750 daily calorie deficit)

The Year's Long-term Projects

As part of the bullet journal adventure, 


This chart allows me to see the progress of all my big and/or long-term projects for 2018 in one page. 

I did have to redact some things, otherwise certain people could guess what they might be getting as gifts!

(Click to view full-size)

I know it looks like a ton of stuff.


It's not, really!  There is an average of 4 task pieces per week.  Just pieces.  I'm averaging 6 per week so far, so it's manageable.

On the top half, the red, orange, and green boxes represent only 3 big projects broken up into something I can accomplish in a night or two.  I'm guessing that if I get in a half hour of distracted-by-TV crochet most days, I will get done with plenty of time to spare. 

The bottom half of the chart represents chunks of the bigger and more difficult projects... the ones that might require a solid half day of work (or more) in addition to a lot of preparation and decision-making.  This year I vow to get Halloween costumes finished before the first early October costume party! 

You may also notice that there are only 48 weeks this year... it gives me another 4 weeks' worth of buffer time.



But why?!


I could have just made a brief list of the major projects of the year.  But these days if it's out of sight, it's also out of mind.

The goal here is to keep myself from procrastinating everything until the last 3 months of the year.  If I can see, in general, whether I'm ahead or behind the schedule, it may be just the motivation that I need to get done early.  I was that annoying kid in grade school who filled out the entire semester's spelling book within the first week, the drive to complete all the work in front of me was huge... hopefully that will be a personality trait that will serve me well this year.

Stretching out the crochet over time will also spare my hands, and if I get done early, then perhaps crochet will have become an official habit, and I will have become more skilled and be able to add on more projects for fun. 


The last line is just for fun! 


We like to celebrate everything from Captain Picard day and national hike day to St. Patrick's day and Thanksgiving to the solstices and equinoxes.  A repeated holiday theme in my life is that I feel like it takes me a week to get into the holiday spirit, but I only remember/prep for the holiday the day before.  This way, I can see them on the horizon and get excited in advance... sometimes the best part about a holiday is the anticipation of a reason to celebrate.  Groundhog's day, I'm looking at you next!


Is anyone interested in seeing a monthly update on how the chart is getting filled out?

Free Compost Worms!

Red wigglers


I wanted to start up some indoor composting again.  Outdoor ended up not working well for me, because we don't have space for a big enough pile to create internal heat.  The Geobin pile was sloooooooooooow, and took 3 years to make about 6 cubic feet of compost.  I'm sure the fruit trees liked it, since it was positioned over their roots, but I finally decided that it wasn't worth the space, and indoor composting had definitely been producing faster than that! 

I'm revamping the diet a bit, and Torin's taken an interest in making/drinking vegetable juice, so lately we're ending up with a lot of wasted veggie bits that don't go well in a bone broth.  But... $20 for worms and shipping... yuck.




Nextdoor to the rescue!


I asked on Nextdoor if anyone had some composting red wiggler worms they'd like to share, and got 3 responses right away!  I am lucky to have such generous neighbors... one guy even offered to bring over a few buckets of them.  The first offer was from a lovely lady who lives only a few streets away... and she gave me this half gallon of concentrated wormy goodies.

99% of the worms in there are hiding from the light.

This is a HUGE and perfect amount to get me started with my indoor bin, since they eat half their weight per day.  And these wee wigglers are far larger than my composting worms ever grew, they are so healthy and happy.



I even learned something new.


I had always heard that the compost worms couldn't survive outside during winter, due to the cold, so I had always kept them inside.  Nope!  Everyone I talked to from Nextdoor kept their bins outside without any problems (aside from a fruit fly outbreak once every other summer).  They do say it slows down a tiny bit in winter, but we're in the midst of the chill right now, and these worms were crazy active in their outdoor bins.  People also just drill holes in the bins and let the extra moisture seep into the ground.  This gives me a few more worm bin construction/placement options to consider, though we will start small and in the kitchen.

We get to set up a worm bin today!  Torin is pretty excited about getting to tear up newspaper.



I do have some ulterior motives.


The turtle and dwarf gourami are going to be pretty excited too, when they learn that this will provide live treats for them long-term. 

Garden 2018's vegetable planting calendar, Zone 9b

Zone 9b is NOW.


The holidays are over, and in USDA Plant Hardiness Zone 9b, that means it's time to get started!!

This week's goals are to get ready, because next week is the beginning of the Spring Planting. 


Take a look at the plan:


Here's the year's schedule, as part of my clipboard bullet journal experiment.  I divided it into weeks since all the seed directions say "plant X weeks before/after first/last frost"... and because it makes it easy to update my main weekly to-do chart.

Week	Plant Indoors	Plant Outdoors	Transplant	Other
Jan 1				Remove last dead plants Fertilize beds
2				Sanitize seedling flats Sanitize/find potting soil
3	Thyme creeping Sage Pepper Tomato Tomatillo Ground cherry Snapdragon*	Collards Garlic**		Spring planting begins! *snapdragon won’t germinate without light… leave on top of soil **Spring garlic plantings are only for garlic greens, fall plantings are for bulbs
4
Feb 1	Thyme creeping Sage Pepper Tomato Tomatillo Ground cherry Snapdragon**	Collards Garlic Miner’s lettuce Purslane Onion Spinach Arugula		**try freezing some snapdragon seeds a few days this time
2				Raised bed finished by now?
3	Sage Watercress*	Miner’s lettuce Purslane Onion Spinach Arugula Radish Turnip Kale Peas, snow		*try watercress in long planter, heavily watered.  Unknown transplant time to container pond and aquariums.
4
Mar 1	Basil	Radish Turnip Kale Peas, snow Chard Mustard Mizuna – lots this year Red malibar spinach		Summer planting begins!
2	Sunflower, very small test batch	Beet	Thyme, creeping	Begin first harvests:  onion
3	Basil Squash	Radish Chard
4		Mustard Mizuna Red malibar spinach	Thyme, creeping Sage	“Last Frost” date
Apr 1		Radish Chard Methi* Beans	Snapdragon	Begin first harvests:  arugula, spinach, peppermint *Methi:  soak overnight first
2		Calendula Cilantro Sunflower Nasturtium	Sage Basil Sunflower Squash	Begin first harvests:  mustard, mizuna, red malibar spinach
3		Cucumber Squash Beans Mizuna	Tomato Ground cherry Snapdragon	Begin first harvests:  radish, beet, chard Tomatoes, ground cherries, tomatillos transplanted after April 20th, as is tradition.
4		Radish Calendula Cilantro Pea, snow Sunflower Nasturtium Methi*	Pepper Tomato Basil Squash	Begin first harvests:  turnip
May 1		Basil Sunflower Cucumber Beans		Begin harvests:  methi (dehydrate some)
2		Radish Squash		Begin harvests:  kale, snow pea, garlic
3		Pea, snow Basil Sunflower Beans		Begin harvests:  collards, cilantro
4		Radish Methi*		Begin harvests:  miner’s lettuce, purslane, calendula, nasturtium, last fall’s garlic bulbs
Jun 1		Squash Basil Sunflower		Begin first harvests:  squash, beans
2		Radish Pea, snow		Begin harvests:  cucumber
3				Begin harvests:  basil, sunflower
4		Radish Squash Methi*
Jul 1		Pea, snow		Begin harvests:  tomato, tomatillo, ground cherry, pepper
2
3
4
Aug 1
2
3
4
Sept 1
2
3		Radish Arugula Onion Kale Collards Miner’s lettuce Purslane Methi*		Fall/Winter planting begins!
4		Mustard Mizuna – lots this year
Oct 1		Radish Arugula Onion Kale Collards Miner’s lettuce Purslane Garlic, for summer bulbs Beet Chard
2		Mustard Mizuna
3		Radish Arugula Onion Kale Collards Beet Chard
4		Mustard Mizuna
Nov 1		Radish Arugula Onion		Be ready with sheets for covering citrus trees during frost.
2		Mizuna		"First Frost” date (often does not happen until Dec/Jan though!)
3		Radish
4
Dec 1				Order next year’s seeds this month… maybe Santa sticks them in my stocking!  :)
2
3
4

What is your planting zone?