Jakers

This is what happens the day after you take your dog for a run in the morning, to daycare all day, and let him play with his girlfriend (the Hower's dog, Nutmeg) all night:

Speaking of pets, I know we've been talking a lot about getting a second dog, but...um...we really want chickens. K has found a really cute design for a chicken coop, and with the plans we have to start in on some sweet flowerbeds in the back yard and the recent research I've done regarding the awesomely nitrogenous-ness of chicken poo and how good it is for plants, well...we're getting chickens first.

Luckily, our local nursery is quite progressive and is not only hosting chicken how-tos AND a local farmer who raises chickens for just such purposes, so we're kind of excited. The next month we'll be putting in some new flower beds and constructing the coop, the earliest we'd be getting chickens will be around August 9th (coincidentally the same time they'll be showing "Mad City Chickens" at NHG).

We've decided to start with 3 chickens that lay brown eggs and then once we get the hang of things, we'll add an Americana/Auracana chicken. Why? Well, because this kind of chicken lays green and blue eggs, of course!

Dang...

So, I definitely got 3-day ACL tickets a few months back, and have been looking forward to it ever since. Last night, I found out that my hubs' company trip in Dallas (staying at a swank hotel) is going to be that exact same weekend. At first blanch I have no clue what to do. Ideas, anyone? What would you do?

How does my garden grow? Haphazardly.

One of the good memories I have of my dad from growing up was our annual attempts at tomato and cucumber farming. If I couldn't grow anything else, I knew I could grow tomatoes. In fact, one recent father's day, I gave him a huge palette of tomatoes I had grown from seed on the back porch of our (former) apartment, because I had started them from seed, not thinking all the seeds would take, and ending up with like, 50 little seedlings.

This year, I decided to veer from the cherry tomato variety and try my hand at some big momma beefsteaks. Of course, I get them planted and then 3 weeks later my sweet elderly neighbor who's been here forever informed me that they wouldn't fruit 'cos it gets too hot here.

I held up hope for months though, marveling at how quickly they grew from 1' to 5' in a matter of weeks, carefully perusing the internet for tips on pruning and staking, dutifully fertilizing with Garrett Juice.

A couple weeks ago, we witnessed the (ahem) fruits of our labors, so to speak...Sadly, though, the neighbor was correct. Although there are loads of blooms on my plants, they are dropping off like crazy. 

Luckily, a local gal from North Haven Gardensblogs and just this morning guided me on what to do next...looks like the tomato plant on the right is headed for the compost pile. You can't really tell from the photo, but there are pepper plants in there that are probably aching for some face time with the sun. The plant with fruit on it we're going to keep until the four tomatoes we have ripen.

This year has been a really big education for me in gardening. I told K at the beginning that I wanted to take a "more haphazard" approach to my garden, to which he replied, "MORE haphazard? How is that even possible?" I have to say that it's been a really magical way to garden...I was pleasantly surprised when even though I planted my pretty little violas and they immediately fried in the sun, they reappeared several weeks later about 1-2 feet from where they had originally been planted. Then yesterday, upon returning home from a wedding in Houston, I saw this pretty little surprise tucked up in next to my germander! I don't know what it is or how it got there, but it's little things like that (and the two frogs who have taken up residence in various pots and plants) that keep me gardening and realize the importance of going with nature's flow.

mobile update!

I am blogging from my hubs's phone so this won't be too lengthy as posting is kinda arduous with just using one's thumbs. I had an interesting week - it ended in a score of Autistic Kids: 3, Christina: 0. I don't know what it is but every time I go to assess an autistic chikd, there is usually screaming involved. I know I still have much to learn about this population, but it gets discouraging real quick. In other news. Kids with CP and DS love me.

ugh.

"Ours is a Family Run by Women"

The title quote came from my cousin recently while we were in San Antonio celebrating my grandmother's 88th birthday (or, grandmapalooza, as it was officially christened). It is QUITE rare that we all get together, even for Thanksgiving or Christmas, because I have one fabulous sister who lives in LA (who if you've not met by now, you need to) and a cousin who is generally galavanting around the world.

Even more rare are moments when the women in our family get together to laugh and tell stories. I was struck one morning when we gathered in my grandmother's enclosed patio: the glorious matriarch and all her ladies - my mother, my step-aunt, my sisters, my niece, and me. We truly are a family of mostly women...my grandfather passed away nearly 10 years ago, leaving my uncle, my step-uncle, my brother and my cousin. But oh, what a lush, eclectic, glamorous bunch of women I have as role models!

It's funny, then, that I am also doing Beth Moore's "Esther" Bible study and the very first week was all about the fact that "it's tough being a woman in another woman's shadow." This of course made me think about all the wonderful women in my life who have influenced me in one way or another. I know that I am now myself emerging from the shadows of influence - not that they were necessarily oppressive in any way, but as the youngest for a very, very long time, one can find herself struggling to find her own independence in a family of influential women.

So anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot over the last few weeks as I have slowly started realizing my own strengths and deep passions, that have all been crafted over the course of my life and led me to who I am. This has all been a product of finishing graduate school and suddenly hitting the wall of WHAT'S NEXT!? and being generally floundery in any sort of decision forward. But this morning, the last line of week 1's study was this: "it's tough being a woman in another's shadow, but sometimes, there in the hiddenness, God builds a woman she'd never otherwise become."

Huh.

Happy 3rd Anniversary!

Okay, so we have been married 3 years but have pretty much been together(ish, depending on how you calculate time spent together, then apart, then together ;) for 8. Right? Let's see. We went to a movie in Spring '02, spent the summer Emailing madly, and went on our first date that fall. Shakespeare in Zilker Park. We'll just count that as the beginning. So then, about 7ish.

Every once in awhile I pull out this book that Kyle made for me one Christmas that has all the Emails we've ever sent to each other. What I like about it is that it's a true chronicle of the bumpy road we went down to find, then lose, then find each other again. See, 'cos when I met Kyle I thought he was cute and all, and then we started dating and he downright scared me. I didn't have to prove anything, do anything, be anything other than myself and he loved me. Even a couple times when I ran helter-skelter and put up all these roadblocks to my heart, he was right there. Loving me. Unconditionally.

It was a long time before I could come to terms with that, and actually like the fact that I had truly found the most steadfast, faithful, Godly, hilarious, and way into me guy in the whole world.

Here, let me get you a barf bag.

I seriously am blown out of the water by the brains, the creativity, and the love my husband shows every day. And he's SUPER HOT to boot, so...yeah. Lucky me :)

And then four years later...

Reading Nook

I sent my husband's frustration with my flights of fancy quite nearly into the upper limits yesterday when he came home and saw that I had been, um, playing in the dirt all day. By the way, if you're stopping in from the germinatrix, welcome! Stay awhile!

What you're seeing is the beginnings of what I like to refer to as the "reading nook." On the East side of our house we have a long stretch of shady nothingness where pretty much nothing grows and nothing gets done except Jake running the fence and the composting. So, naturally, I want to overhaul it. This past weekend while spending quality face-to-face time with my sweet sister I pitched the idea to her and we came up with ideas and she threw all kinds of plant names at me to find and plant.

The basic idea is this: I want to have a space where someone can go to sit, relax, have a glass of tea, and read or listen to music. I'm a therapist, and I want a happy place. I have this idea in my head that I really really want to come to fruition, so yesterday I pulled out the gardening tools and went to town. There's a LOT of dirt to be moved, people. I'm planning to paint the fence a funky shade, probably a soothing blue-ish green or maybe even a lively reddish orange. It's going to be covered over in passion flower vines. There will be a long walkway that will open up into the nook, which will have a deck and be a little reminiscent of Casa De Luz in Austin.

I'll post pictures as I slog through this mess - there's a bunch of bamboo and did I mention a MOUNTAIN of dirt that needs to be moved around, but I'm really excited. The idea is to have the side of the house double as reading nook and built-in entertaining. So far I need to focus right now on the end of the path, but the rest will have a graded wall with all kinds of fun grasses, flowers, and low-growing groundcover like moss rose and moneywort.

So yeah, if you want to get a little sweaty and a little dirty, I need help in my garden! ;)

First Tri of the Season

I think Summer will be my favorite time of year forever, especially now that I've been bitten by the tri bug and there are tons of races each month! I have committed to two more: the Wurst Tri Ever in August, and the big mama Austin Tri in September.

This past Sunday was my sophomore experience at the Danskin Women's Triathlon and it was SUCH a different experience from the first. I was really annoying and kept saying "last year...." and comparing the races. First of all, we got there JUST as the transition area was closing, then had maybe 30 minutes 'til our respective waves took off and even then quite nearly missed them. This year I committed to partaking in some Clif Gu shots, which I have to say weren't all that bad. I had one before the swim and one during the bike, then I couldn't find my third between the bike and the run until AFTER the race. Burn on me.

The swim was SO difficult this time. I don't remember it being so hard to catch my breath - I expected the adrenaline rush at the beginning but even halfway through the swim I struggled to catch a deep breath. As much as I love swimming, I really didn't feel good about this swim. I felt different about a lot of parts of the race - like when I ran all the way (uphill, mind you) from the swim to the bike transition. That was when I was like "hey! I'm stronger!" and I thanked myself for those months of training even when I didn't want to. The bike - oh my. I only remember there being two really wicked hills on the course. My memory is completely jacked,  because the course is like a rollercoaster! The good news though was last year I walked two hills, but this time I walked NO hills. I also have about 50 more gears on this bike than I did on my old bike, and blasted down the hills as well as up them. The bike-to-run transition was killer again. My legs are just absolute jelly when I get off the bike. I have a plan to work on that over the next couple months - adding leg strengthening exercises, do some 5Ks, work bricks more diligently. 

So, here's my time & transition breakdowns:

Overall Rank: 1241 of 1976

Class Rank: 159 of 218

Swim: 00:22:46

Swim Rank: 596

Transition 1: 5:01

Bike: 00:49:32

Bike Rank: 975

MPH: 14.5

Transition 2: 3:33

Run: 00:46:09

Run Rank: 1664

Pace: 00:14:53

Final: 02:07:03

I'm surprised I did that well on the swim considering all the breathing problems I had. The breakdown clearly shows the areas I have to work on - the first transition, the bike, but especially the run. My goal for August is to shave some time off the bike time, but especially the run. I know that everything depends on the biking course, and knowing NB it'll be nothing like Austin, but still. I'm just really glad that I came in close to 2 hours - I wanted to beat last year's time of 2:30hrs and I did! Go me.

Afterward, I didn't feel nearly as spent as the last time...I mean, I was exhausted, but I didn't sleep for hours and hours. Instead, I went to Home Slice and Hey, Cupcake! with my cousin, then napped for about an hour, then dug into some barbecue. Yesterday I was overall pretty tired and moving slowly due to a sharp pain in the outside of my right foot but today I woke up at about 7am and am slowly working out the residual kinks. I think getting a massage immediately after the race also aided in my recovery.

SPEAKING of recovery, I've decided to put triathlon tips on here, just little notes of what I've learned along the way.

TRIATHLON LESSON #1: If you have clips, practice clipping out. A lot. This leads us directly to...

TRI LESSON #2: If you go biking two days before your tri, don't clip out on your right and then try to make a left turn in gravel.

So yeah! One down, two to go in this glorious season of tri, tri-ing again. Next up in August will be my very first co-ed race, and I am excited not only for that but also because it's going to be in fabulous NB!

Bloom Bloom Pow

So, in the front yard it looks like we're growing aliens. Aliens and blackberries which by the way I am in a constant race with the birds to see who can get to the ripe ones first. Right now the score is Christina: 2, Birds: 4. 

I took a gamble on some gorgeous looking Dahlias because I had never planted bulbs before and really didn't quite know what to do with them but hey they were on sale at Home Depot and I LOVE Dahlias. They were one of the main flowers in my bridal bouquet, including Chocolate Callas and Ranunculus. I love lush, interesting flowers, and am now starting to get excited about putting them into my garden and learning about what makes them grow.

The first photos are of flowers that have yet to bloom, and OH! the anticipation waiting for them to bloom!

And it is so worth the wait! Don't delay, get Dahlias in your yard next year!