Bonsai Bar with Nebalee

I've probably talked about it before, but I prefer to give experiences as gifts rather than things. So for Christmas, I gifted Nebalee a sister date at a bonsai bar event. It looked like something she and her green thumb would really enjoy, and any time I can force sister-time, I'll do it. We don't get to spend nearly enough time together anymore.

The event was held at a brewery located between our two houses, so it was perfect. They provided everything we needed, and had 'extras' for sale. When we first got there, we were told to pick a tree that spoke to us. Now, a couple of years ago, I would have laughed at that, but now that I'm attempting to be a gardener, I listened and one chose me. 

We used dwarf jades for our bonsai.

The next step was to name it. Huh. Most of my plants have names, but the little tree hadn't given up his name yet. I told Nebalee that he would tell me eventually. Also, odd that the tree is a he, since most of my plants are female, so I guess he was talking to me a little bit.

Getting ready to dig in.

He didn't want to come out of the pot, but when he did, he reminded me of a Mandrake from Harry Potter. Minus the screaming, thankfully.

I imagine this is how we both looked once
I wrested the tree from his pot.

Everyone, meet Mandrake, Drake for short.

The hardest part, for me, of the whole endeavor was scraping away the dirt and loosening the roots. I'm always afraid I'll hurt the roots and kill the whole plant. Once we'd freed the roots, it was time to put them in their pots.

Again, we had to make decisions. Turning the plant this way and that, we had to decide which was the front, then decide how we wanted it in the pot: straight up and down, or at an angle? So many decisions.

I wanted Drake to be at a sharp angle.

Drake did not, so this is our compromise.

Nebalee's tree, Jasper, liked the angle.

This is a bad picture, but Jasper has a much
more dramatic angle than Drake.

If I thought just repotting was hard, and had a lot of decisions to make, I was in for an awakening! The first prune was easy: trim the leaves a quarter of an inch from the trunk of the tree so we could see the 'bones' of the tree. Then, the decisions got progressively harder: choose one of two opposing limbs to cut off, then start thinning the crown and determining a shape for your tree. 

Fully planted, packed in diatomaceous earth,
ready to begin pruning.

Opposite branches pruned, ready to start the crown.

Once the crown was thinned to our liking,
it was time to shape the tree with wires.

Done. Drake on the left, Jasper on the right,
extra cuttings in the back.

I'm not in love with Drake's shape right now, and would have loved to add more swooshes to his branches, but I'm afraid of hurting him. Once he grows a bit more, I can adjust the wires to give him more shape.

We gathered up some of the cuttings to take home to try to plant some 'mame' (mini bonsai). Of course, the instructors were willing to sell us cute little mame containers for once they rooted, along with the drip trays for underneath our pots, and some special fertilizer. Nebalee took the cuttings home, and she'll be in charge of getting the mame started.

I was worried about where I'd keep Drake, especially when I heard the care instructions. I don't have a lot of sun windows in my house. I initially thought he'd be great in Maggie, but it turns out that she's not quite right for him. Maybe this summer he can go live in there, but even with all of the insulation, she'll still get a bit too cold for him in the winter. I ended up moving my Puerto Rican oregano from my bedroom plant shelf into the kitchen and put Drake in its place, next to my failing succulents.

I wasn't sure how well he'd like it, but the other day, when I was watering him, I saw new growth!

Now, of course, the question is, so I let him keep his new buds, or snip them and force him to continue to establish his roots. Okay, that's not much of a question, because I know the answer, but I'm loathe to clip those cute little buds. I'll give them until his next watering before they get sacrificed for the greater good.

One Last Birthday Craft with The Best Sister Ever

Painting our garden poles was a ton of fun, but I had one other craft I was determined to complete on Sister Craft Day. The week before, when I put out the new round bale of hay for the horses, I found some barbed wire sticking out of it and pulled it out. I threw the barbed wire away and put it out of mind.

However, a couple of days later, Jay and I were at an antique mall and I happened to see a coil of rusty barbed wire that instantly made me think of a wreath. Then ... my brain made the connection between the coil of barbed wire in the antique mall and the length of barbed wire I'd just thrown in the dumpster a couple of days earlier and I knew I had to make a barbed wire wreath for the outhouse.

I went dumpster diving when we got home, pulled the barbed wire out, and cut away all of the hay net that had gotten tangled in the barbs. Jay was kind enough to coil it while I looked up pictures for inspiration on Pinterest. One of the pictures showed a horseshoe in the middle of the wreath, and I remembered I had an old rusty horseshoe that we'd found in the yard this spring. Since we don't shoe our horses, I knew that it was old and had to have come from a horse other than ours. I held onto it to put on Maggie's door, but knew it had to go into the wreath instead.

Barbed wire from our hay bale,
horseshoe from our yard.

When we were finished with our garden poles, Nebalee helped me wire some silk flowers to the wreath, which was surprisingly more difficult than I expected it to be. 

It's rather minimalist, but I love it.

Putting it up on the outhouse was one of the many "little" chores I had lined up for the next day, and I wanted to see it on the outhouse so badly that it jumped to the top of my to-do list and I knocked it out first thing Sunday morning.

Just ignore my finger.

I love it, but I might add some more greenery to it at some point. Or maybe not, it depends on how badly I want to risk tetanus. Either way, I love it on the outhouse door. Once it cools down, Mom and I are going to use stencils to paint flowers around the base of the outhouse to liven it up a little bit.

Birthday Crafts with The Best Sister Ever

Birthday #54 was last week, and I was traveling for work, so it was pretty low-key. Nebalee and I had planned a craft day for the Saturday after my birthday, and I was so excited about it. She and I don't spend nearly enough time together any more. A couple of years ago, we were doing monthly 5 and 10k, but life keeps getting in the way. The fact that we both love and enjoy spending time with our significant others is a hindrance, too. 

We had planned to make butterfly baths out of terracotta pots, but that became cost prohibitive very quickly, so Nebalee came up with an alternative craft - making garden totem poles. I looked at Pinterest for a few ideas and was pretty overwhelmed. I love me some crafts, but I'm not super creative or artsy. I do best when I can look at a few ideas and steal them to make my own, so that's what I did.

Our "practice" beam on the left.

I tried, and failed, to paint flowers
so I made Nebalee paint them for me.

Nebalee's flowers.

I wish I'd thought to do my flowers like this!

I'm always hashtagging my pictures
#WeLiveInAPostcard so it had to
go on the post.

After I saw Nebalee's dragonflies,
I made her add one to the flowers I'd 
previously made her paint.

Side-by-side. Mine is taller because I had to
sink it securely in the ground. I don't need the
wind treating this like the outhouse.

#BestSisterEver and I with our completed posts.

We planted hers in her butterfly garden.

This was such a fun craft! While I was initially overwhelmed with possibilities, once I settled down and decided to simplify the post, things went much better. Right at the very beginning, I had a thought of painting vines to wrap around each side, but I didn't like the way they turned out. You know what the beauty of painting is? If you hate it, you can just paint over it. So I did, and ended up with lady bugs, bumblebees, flowers, and our hashtag. Every bit of my garden pole makes me smile. 

I was determined to get my garden post planted right away, so the next morning I pulled out the auger and got to work. It's scary how fast I'm getting with the auger - it no longer intimidates me, so it's no big deal to just pull it out and dig a hole. Jay did come out to help me with the last couple of inches - I'm not quite tall enough to get the leverage over the top to dig down as far as I need sometimes. This was one of those cases, and when I saw all of the shale dust come out of the hole I understood why I came to a standstill with my hole digging.

I decided to plant my garden pole at the end of my newest arch. The arch was supposed to support the watermelon I planted. Unfortunately, my watermelon plants didn't make it. I may have been a little over-confident in my growing abilities this year.

After Jay helped me dig the hole deep enough, he broke up the flagstone for under my little arch, and helped me move my antique school bench from Whimsy to the archway. This was another one of those "it'll just take a minute" projects that sits and sits. With his help, it did take just a minute, and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. This fall, I'll sprinkle some creeping thyme seeds in between the flagstone to germinate over the winter.

Just picture this next year with some sort of climbing edible plant.

The Bionic Cowgirl and I took a moment to enjoy
the new seating area.

Virtual Races 2020

I've neglected this blog for so long, and I feel guilty for it. I probably don't have any readers left, and that's okay. Instead of writing for others, I'm using this as a journal of sorts.

Two years ago, I started Ease Into 5k (a Couch to 5k-type app). Copper became my running partner and we completed a couple of virtual races. Then the weather rolled in, and I hung it up.

In 2019, I thought it would be a good idea to do a cumulative race of 121 miles. I thought it would be something I could complete between February and my birthday in July. I was wrong. It actually took me 13 months to complete. I just couldn't force myself, even with using the Ease Into 5k app, to take up running on a regular basis.

At the beginning of the year, though, I decided to give it a try again. I was the most out-of-shape I've ever been. A flight of stairs defeated me, so I found more virtual races that looked interesting and signed up. I joined the community rec center and started walking on the treadmill. I didn't break out the training app, figuring I could do intervals all by myself and build up that way. Because I was so unhappy with my fitness level, I managed to make it to the rec center on a fairly regular basis and forced myself through run/walk intervals, either on the treadmill or on the 0.1 mile indoor track.

I lined up 5ks for the next few months and whined to Nebalee about how much I hated running. Poor thing had to hear it before and after every workout. She likes to do the BolderBoulder 10k for her birthday, and I knew if I was going to have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving, I needed to train. Except, when I "trained" in 2019 I started strong, then gave up. The 2019BB was awful and seriously gave me PTSD. To this day, whenever I'm faced with a 10k, she has to talk me down the day or two before.

In February, I committed to doing a 5k a month for the rest of the year. I had to do something about my fitness level. So, I found a few and signed up.

I've done 5ks in the past, so when I huffed and puffed my way through the Love Your Heart race and turned in a flat-out pathetic time that underscored exactly how unconditioned I was. It was disheartening. I kept at the walk/run intervals at the rec center between my first race and my second. In doing so, I was able to shave 15 minutes off my time, but I hated every damn moment of it. Not only did my mind hate it, but my body wasn't doing well. My feet and knees were giving me fits and after each of my 5ks I was lamed up for a day or two.

 Nebalee listened to me whine about it, then suggested that maybe I give up running and just walk. I thought she was out of her ever-loving mind. She asked me to try walking the April race to see what happened and she offered to join me.

I'll be damned if I didn't shave another four minutes off my 5k time at the next race, and we never went faster than a walk. I wasn't lamed up for days after the race, plus I'd cut time. I was sold!

Right after March virtual race, the world shut down, so I was forced to "train" outside. Luckily, the weather was good enough that I didn't freeze and once Nebalee proved to me that walking was better for me than running, I never had to talk myself into putting in the miles. My entire attitude about exercising improved.

Oscar's SCRAM! 5k

Since that April virtual race, Nebalee has been my constant race partner, always setting a good pace: one that is doable, but still challenging. I was beginning to think I might make it through the BolderBoulder, now re-named the VirtuALL 10k, since the world was still mostly locked down. Tens of thousands of people crowded into downtown Boulder wasn't a great idea, so they took the race virtual. 

We did one 5k in May, prior to the VirtuALL 10k, which was good. I was beginning to think I might be fit enough to do a 10k. And I was. We didn't turn in a great time, but I finished with minimal cussing and didn't even hate my sister for one moment, as I have in the past with the BolderBoulder. I was sore, but not lame, and decided that I would commit to not only one 5k a month for the rest of the year, but also a 10k.

Nebalee was doing a great job of encouraging me, and pushing me at every race, no matter the distance, and I had hopes to hit at sub-sixteen minute mile by the end of the year. Then, August happened and our state caught on fire. The air quality since has been hit or miss. Some days it's okay to be outside, some days it's not. I wasn't going to give up on my races, so bad air or not, on race day, we walked. We didn't want to push ourselves in bad air, so went from trying to cut time to just completing the miles. I'm trying not to be frustrated about being forced to slow down; seeing improvements in my time was the motivation I needed to keep going.

I've now completed six 10ks, though I get a bit of a panic attack a day or two before each, and Nebalee calms me down each time. I've decided that next year, I'm going to walk a half-marathon at least once. I've got races lined up for the rest of the year, and I no longer dread training for them.

I'll be posting race updates in the table below, just for easy reference for myself. 

 

2020 Date	Race name	Distance	Time	+/-	Note
February 29	Love Your Heart	5k	1:17:06
March 18	Super Grover Red Cape	5k	1:01:17	-00:15:47	Lockdown began mid-March
April 22	Oscar’s SCRAM!	5k	00:57:24	-00:19:42	Began walking instead of running
May 4	May the Fourth	5k	00:53:48	-00:23:18
May 25	VirtuALL	10k	1:47:03		Replaced BolderBoulder after lockdown
June 12	Zombie	5k	00:52:37	-00:24:39
June 24	Smokey the Bear	10k	1:43:07	-00:03:56
July 2	World UFO Day	5.1k	00:52:49	-00:24:17
July 17	Dragonfly	10k	1:42:37	-00:04:26
August 18	Ratification	10k	1:55:43	+00:08:40	Intentionally slow due to poor air quality
August 28	Wonder Woman	5k	00:55:41	-00:21:25
September 7	Riveter Run	10k	1:56:06	+00:09:03	Intentionally slow due to poor air quality
September 7	BoldiTUDE	10k	1:56:06	+00:09:03	Intentionally slow due to poor air quality
September 25	She Believed	5k	00:53:07	-00:23:59
October 10	Stranger Distances	6.7 mi	1:58:12		Odd distance
October 12	Jolly Jack-O-Lantern	5k	00:58:18	-00:18:48
October 31	Thriller	5k	00:58:56	-00:18:10
November 1	Day of the Dead	10k	01:45:35	-00:01:28
November 26	Thankful Turkey	5k	00:50:53	-00:26:13
December 5	ColderBolder	10k	01:39:45	-00:07:18	New PR
December 24	Smilin’ Santa	5k	00:49:29	-00:27:37	New PR