Archive for November, 2007
This afternoon I picked a basket full of fresh greens from the garden for dinner tonight and for Thanksgiving tomorrow. The lettuce had a little frost damage as we’ve had a couple of days with temperatures below freezing this week, but it should still be good in a salad.
For dinner tonight I’ll cook up a mess of kale and chard picked this afternoon. I may put a few radishes in the wok along with them for a little heat and a contrasting flavor. Carrots, broccoli, and lettuce will save for another day.
November 21 2007 | Gardens | No Comments »
We don’t get a lot of nice sunny days in November around here, but today was glorious with temps in the low 40s. So I took off early afternoon for a 31-mile bike ride around Lummi Peninsula. It’s a nice loop on roads that mostly have a good shoulder and not too much traffic mid-day.
One of the challenges of biking this time of year is figuring out how to dress. I’ve decided that long underwear under my bike shorts on the bottom, and a long underwear shirt under a lightweight cycling jacket on top works fine. I think I want to invest in a pair of bike tights, but haven’t found any I like at a price I’m willing to pay. My fingers get a little cool in regular fingerless bike gloves, and my feet got a bit chilly in lightweight bike shoes and cotton socks.
I started out strong, averaging about 17.8 mph for the first 1o miles. At 17 miles I was up to 18.3 mph. Then I started to tire as I rode along the gently undulating Lummi Shore road, enjoying the view across Bellingham Bay to Bellingham, Mt. Baker, and the near-full moon a few degrees above the mountain. By the time I got to Marine Drive, about 27 miles in, my energy level was really sagging. I kept going, but riding slower and slower, and made it home. My overall speed was 16.7 mph, about one mph and 7 minutes slower than the last time I’d done the same ride.
I’m wondering if I just ride slower when it’s cold. I decided I hadn’t eaten enough for breakfast and lunch today, so simply running out of fuel was part of the problem. I tanked up on a cup of hot chocolate, an energy bar, and a bowl of raisins and nuts when I got home.
In any case, vigorous exercise for a couple of hours is a great antidote for sitting at the computer captioning photos.
November 20 2007 | Fitness and Bicycling | No Comments »
It’s mid-November and we’re eating all the fresh lettuce from the garden that we can handle. So far, we haven’t had a hard frost (just a couple of very light frosts) and the rains have been moderate. We also have fresh sugar snap peas, and combined with the garden lettuce mix it makes a great salad. The last of the tomatoes, picked some weeks ago, are ripening up on the kitchen counter, so we may have them as part of Thanksgiving dinner later in the week.
We’re not eating the kale as fast as we should, and the slugs seem to have found the chard. Some of the carrots are getting big enough to pull, but the beets are still pretty small. The broccoli planted at the same time is still pretty small, but starting to form heads. Last spring’s broccoli is still producing side shoots that we can cut every two or three weeks.
Our fall veggie garden was planted in mid-August. That seems to be about right for the lettuce, chard, and kale but the other crops should have gone in earlier. Maybe next year.
November 18 2007 | Gardens | No Comments »
This is the dark and rainy season in the Northwest, so it’s a good time to get caught up on captioning. That’s a good thing since I have a backlog of around 5,000 images to edit and caption from mid-September to now. I didn’t have time after my Kelowna trip in September before going to Oklahoma and then immediately to Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.
Captioning is a somewhat tedious process that requires identifying as many of the plants in each photo as possible, checking proper names and spelling, and entering the data both in my master database and in the metadata fields associated with the digital image files themselves. My record for number of photos captioned in a day is around 600, but most days I don’t hit that figure.
One of the challenges is simply forcing myself to stay in my seat in front of the computer. Sitting for long periods is tiring and definitely isn’t good for my body. But there’s no way to get captions written without sitting and concentrating on the task.
November 16 2007 | Gardens and Photography | No Comments »
I may have written this before, but I’m a sporadic exerciser. I like to swim and do it more during the winter months in an indoor pool. Last week, after not swimming for perhaps a year or more, I decided it was time to get back in the water. I go to the Arne Hanna Aquatic Center in Bellingham for the discounted noon lap swim. It’s a good mid-day break from working with images on the computer and its cheaper then.
The first day back in the water I was only able to swim 100 yards at a time (4 lengths of the pool), with a 60-second rest between. I swam 8 sets that day. A couple of days later I could do 250 yards (10 lengths) with a 60-second rest. The next time in the water I was back up to swimming a mile (74 lengths) of crawl without resting. My time of 40.5 minutes won’t set any records, but I’m still amazed at how quickly I get back to the distance I’ve swam in the past.
Hopefully I’ll keep myself motivated to get to the pool two or three times a week during the winter months. I also want to keep bicycling, although I may not make the 100 miles per week I was doing in late August and September. Short daylight hours make it harder to get out and ride. I bought a new bright yellow cycling jacket so I’ll be more visible, but riding distances at night just doesn’t seem either safe or fun.
November 02 2007 | Fitness | No Comments »