Rants, Recipes, and Running

 While most of this blog since it's rebirth has been focused on "growing a watermelon" in terms of having a baby... I thought I'd take a more literal approach and do an update on the actual watermelons we grew! What is funny is that we planted our watermelon seeds back in April, and tonight we finally ate one. So that took about 9 months seed-to-table. And I'm on my 9th month of growing a baby!  Moral of the story - don't eat watermelon seeds.  We are in the midst of my absolute favorite gardening season in the Sonoran Desert -- The winter garden! (Yes, we get to garden year-round here). In the winter we grow things like: all the greens, carrots, beets, broccoli, Brussels. Right now we still are enjoying some of our long summer crops such as butternut squash, eggplant, and watermelon. Squash has a very long growing season - partly because we had such a dry summer.  Here is what we are enjoying currently via pictures :)  Here is a bowl of greens! We currently h...

If you follow me on instagram, you know that since we moved into this house - we have been busy growing our own foods. When we decided to stay in Tucson, and buy a house -- our goal was to have a house with land and privacy -- where we can grow a garden filled with vegetables and fruit trees! This is a work-in-progress and a multi-phased approach. This year, we just did a small "bed-garden". And Ryan worked (really hard) on leveling out the land, burying drainage pipes, and we got gutters installed - so we can eventually become "RainWater Harvesters"! This is my 1st real success in gardening in the 8 years we have been in Tucson, and I am so excited!! Here are the photos of what we have been growing and making: Olive trees are illegal to grow in Tucson. They cause bad allergies, apparently. But when you buy a house that was built in 1952....they can't make you cut it down! And we are technically not in city limits. So when were realizes we had olive ...

Tucson has been trying to increase the Farmers' Markets scene. And this is something I support 100%! We have great farmers doing great things, and this should be celebrated. I think my appreciation is heightened, as I have had many-a-failures on "Tucson Gardens". Stay tuned, however. I have been picking brains of every single gardener I meet, and I am heart-set on growing a tomato garden this year! Seed planting begins in January! ( indoors ) Ryan and I have a great love for food, and good food. So after church on Sunday, we decided to check out a festival in town that celebrates local farmers, food, and entertainers: Viva la Local Tucson. We had so much fun, and will definitely start attending this bi-annual festival!! The 1st section of the festival is the farmers market portion. This had local farmers/vendors selling their produce, olive oil, teas, ranchers selling their meat, local bee-growers with their honey, tamales, and the list goes on. We go to the loc...

If there's one thing I've learned since we moved to the Sonoran Desert, it's that you can garden and eat things from the ground. It just takes some serious labor and love. I cannot just plant tomatoes, water them every other day, and expect fruit. That's just silly and naïve . One must do extensive research! In  fact, I am currently starting my seeds for next years garden. As it takes much love and transitioning to get them ready for Arizona's awful, relentless heat! One thing we've really embraced this year - is making use out of our cacti. We have a beautiful prickly pear cactus in the corner of our yard that bears wonderful fruit! What does prickly pear look like again?   There are 2 distinct parts to the prickly pear. The green paddles (nopales) and the purple prickly pears.   Harvesting these isn't always fun. You will get hairs and thorns impaled into your skin. Unless you were smart and perhaps wore gloves?   The nopales pa...

I've been finding my "mojo" in the kitchen again lately, and we've been cooking some really fun stuff! I made a recipe last week that I had to share. It was so fun and delicious. I thought this would make a really good dinner party appetizer. Especially in the summertime. How I came up with it: We bought our 1st "produce share" through a Groupon this month. It was $20 for a basket of fresh, organic, local produce. In the basket, we got eggplant (and green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, oranges, and garlic. Mmmm). I'm not a big eggplant fan, but was determined to find a way to like it. So I decided that basil and tomatoes (and cheese) make everything good. Ingredients: (super easy!) 1 eggplant, sliced handful of fresh basil leaves sliced tomatoes whole mozzarella 1/2 cup balsalmic vinegar 1/4 cup olive oil s & p to taste How to make: Slice the eggplants, and soak in a container with the olive oil & balsalmic (10 min) Grill for ab...

Last year we purchased soil, mulch, and all these plants that grow great in well-watered, rich-soiled areas. Then we went away for a weekend, and everything dried up like a prune. I was a bit disappointmented, as gardening is a hobby & passion of mine. In fact, I became quite frustrated with our hot climate. But we did some research on desert plants, and I found a new love! Desert plants are quite fascinating, actually. Their tough outer skin & small leaves result in maximum absorbtion of our spare water -- allowing them to thrive on little. They are also extremely regenerative. You can cut a branch or an arm off a cactus, and plant it in the ground somewhere else to create a new plant. So we found a very local cactus nursery last weekend, and got to work! Here are a few of the gems we planted. (These are pictures I've found offline, as I haven't taken proper pictures of our front yard yet due to the immaturity of our plants at this point) The Desert Barrel ...

Let me just start out by saying that last night may have been the worst night of sleep I've ever gotten. What was Abby doing at 3am? Sitting in the living room, crying, and googling eye issues. My allergies are in crazy-mode right now. And I woke up to find myself itching my eyes, unfortunately. When I looked in the mirror, I found that the sclera (whites of my eyes) were sticking out further than the iris (colored part). Also, there was a giant growth/bump on my eyeball! ...I freaked out a little. I worried I had cough some crazy infectious disease...being all my patients this weekend were fighting weird parasites, infections, MRSA, etc. (...and I work on a cardiac floor? Weird, huh) Anyways.. Turns it, my eyes are just really fricking irritated & pist off at Palo Verde trees & Dust. So now my eyeballs have bumps on them. Going to the Optometrist on Wedensday. So I"m going to focus on "happy". Growth. Yesterday marks 3 years of growth. 3 years ago...

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone! I'm not Irish, but my husband does have Irish heritage. I plan on making Sheppherd's Pie this weekend...b/c I love him. My ultimate goal is to find a way to make this recipe healthy! (Shhhh don't tell him.....) What have we been up to lately? Well, let's just say from Friday - Wednesday .....23 hours have been spent getting our back yard set up! In addition to the 23 hours of gardening, I sneaked in 48 hours worth of work in that time, too! Yep, we've been busy! But now I have Wednesday-Sunday night OFF. Free! So life is good. So remember when we moved , and our back yard looked dram like this?...... Well, Friday morning -- we woke up and I decided to don my garden gear and we were going to get to work! We headed to the green house & Home Depot and got flowers, vegetables, soil, mulch, the works. Our flower beds hadn't been TOUCHED in about 2 years (our previous home owners gave up on the back yard when they h...

Do you ever find yourself losing sleep over something? Worrying and keeping it in the back of your mind? And then when you finally realize what it is that's causing "stress" - all you can say is "Wow. I need to chill out!"..... Or "My, I'm pathetic". That has been occurring this week. And I thought I would share - because it's kind of comical. First, to give you understanding of my deep concern - our Tomato Plant has been very productive this week. I've pulled 4 fresh, plump, red tomatoes off! And I'm loving it. That's like $4 at the grocery store I'm saving! So, I found myself last night at a happy-hour for Ryan's work - sitting at the table talking about my concern. I found myself saying,:   "What do you Arizonans do with your plants when you leave for the weekend ? Do you get a drip system? Do you have someone care for them while you're gone? Do you think we could just bring our tomato plants and daisies o...

I received news by my teacher today that I have been placed on some mystery unit at my sponsoring hospital for my practicum. Which will hopefully help my chances of getting some visibility and getting hired at that unit, too! My teacher cannot release the information since only 2 out of the 25 people in my class have placed. (killing me! I want to know now!) So I am praying for either Emergency Department, ICU, or Telemetry (in that order).... Yay!!!! Things are moving along. 76 days until I have my BSN. I am starting to feel a little better, I think! So yay! My stomach is still.....irritable. But, it is doing a little better. Maybe the antibiotics I'm on are actually doing something! (fingers crossed) And Ryan is back, and he is like a different person!! After he graduated - had guard annual training for a week, was sick for the following week, was in North Dakota/Nebraska for the week after THAT...............And now life is getting back to normal! I have not seen t...

As I've mentioned in previous blogs, I have been dreamings about gardens. I have gone back and forth about just waiting until we have a house, waiting until we move to a different state....... But I've realized -- who knows when we'll move...and I am missing out on years of great gardening! So yesterday, I finally went out and purchased pots, a big bag of soil, a watering can, and a nice array of plants! To make this purchase, we used a small little portion of our tax return this year! And I realized, if everyone took a little bit of their tax return to plant some flowers, a tree, some fresh herbs, etc -- think of what we'd be giving back to our world! Yes, I officially just want hippy on you all. But it's just a thought! So here is the final product!: Let's hope they are fruitful, and my green-thumb comes to life! Gerbera Daisies Celosias Geraniums (in the middle) and Vincas (on the outside) Celebrity Tomato plant - (side view, I am way not comp...