Welcome Friday – so glad to see you!  I had a great night’s sleep last night, hooray!  I actually got up later than normal at 7:30.  I was going to go for a morning ride, but then just decided on breakfast.

1-minute muffle with apple/cranberry topping.  Who needs grains? This was awesome.

Work very busy today.  I am curious as to whether I will be working on Monday.  If we don’t have power, I won’t be working.

I took a quick snack break of a plum:

I went out for a porch lunch today.  I had the rest of the ricotta puffs (not so puffy) topped with peanut flour mixed up with water, honey and cinnamon.

The bees were also out en masse eating lunch.  This time of year the bees really start collecting pollen.

They especially love the sedum:

I do get that close the the bumblebees, too.  I love the bumbles.  They are really non-aggressive and you can get in their face and they don’t care.

More Giallarda (it rained last night):

Purple snaps:

My white liriope:

Butterfly weed:

I wonder what this garden will look like after 65+ mile per hour winds hit it on Sunday.

I can’t believe I got my finger in that shot with a digital camera.  D’uh!

I also took a picture of my neighbor’s chimney.  They have a guest.

Me thinks that chimney may have issues during Irene.  I hope it falls the other way and not towards our house as only a driveway separates us.

The afternoon was so gorgeous that John and I played hooky and went out for a bike ride along the path.

Surprise, surprise at where we stopped!

This was mango flavored froyo topped with coconut.  Yes indeed.  The color is a little funny because we were under a red umbrella.

The day is so beautiful.  I can’t believe how conditions are going to deteriorate over the next couple days.  Can you imagine back in the day before there was radar?  You wouldn’t even know it was coming.

Gourmet dinner tonight.  I sauteed up some broccoli and shrimp and then added half an ounce of cream cheese and a splash of milk to the pan to make a cream sauce.  Topped with a little parmesan.

This was sooo good!  John said it had too much broccoli in it.  Pfffffft.

I disagree.  I may have to go run off with Green Giant.  I think he will appreciate how much I love broccoli!

We hope to get out early Saturday for a bike ride before conditions start to deteriorate.  It all depends on how windy it is.  Then battoning down the rest of the hatches for Irene!  I hate the waiting for it.

Two more grain-free days to go!

So glad it is Friday!  Thank you all for John’s birthday wishes 😀

It’s also What’s Blooming Day!

Today is a pseudo rest day.  Now that I am done with big rides for the summer, I can relax and just enjoy how easy the shorter rides are.  We are planning a 45 mile ride tomorrow, so I took it easy today with just walking.

I made banana custard oats for breakfast.  Probably the last oats I will eat until September with the no-grain challenge starting next week! Eeek!

Topped with crunchy Teddy PB and jam.

Work was a slog today.  Yesterday was fast and productive.  Today, the dictators were problematic and slow.  It means I make less money, which is irritating.  And you know, if a doctor cannot pronounce a medication, they really should not be prescribing it. 😯

Lunch time!

The last of the mango and a whole cucumber with my sammie.  Cucumbers are like eating air.  They make me belch.   😳   Enjoyed on the porch, although picture taken inside.

Garden is doing good.  Colorful right now.  My scentimental rose bush keeps blooming and blooming.  I just love this bush!

It even looks pretty when the petals drop:

They are so fragrant, too.  I think I would love to have about 10 of these bushes in a large garden.  The scent would be intoxicating.

Here are a few things that decorate my garden.  I don’t have a lot of ‘things,’ but a few.  Here is my bowling ball.

I took this out of a flip house I did – the same house I got my ferns and sedum from.  John’s mom has a bowling ball in her garden and I found it amusing, so I plopped this one in mine.

My birdbath.

I would get closer to it, but it is dirty and I didn’t want to photograph my shame.

This is a metal butterfly that gets eaten by the clematis every year.  I keep thinking about moving it, but it is too hard to untangle.

Here is Buddha.

He is only about a foot tall.  This is part of the garden I am struggling with finding the perfect plants. Always a work in progress.

Potted geraniums:

My sedum is all broccoli-looking now.  That means summer is halfway over. 😥

My butterfly bush attracted a friend at lunch today – a black swallowtail.

Eat up little buddy – the bush is for you!

Here is a funny coneflower.

All cone and no flower.  Not sure why it is like that.

This afternoon I decided to really wage war on the battle of the flat tires.  I went to the bike shop and picked up some of these.  See, my tires are less than 1 year old and I really shouldn’t have to replace them, and the shop said the tires were in good condition.  I just couldn’t justify dropping 90 dollars on 2 new tires.  They told me these liners would work just as well and if I get a flat with the liners, the company will replace the liner and tube for free! For only $20 for 2 liners, how could I lose?

So, I spent a good part of an hour wrestling those in and got the tires all pumped up.  We shall put them to the test tomorrow, hopefully.

I was hot and ready for a snacky:

Ice cream left from the birthday last night.  Good stuff.  I ate too may calories today.

For dinner, I chopped up most of my basil plants and made some pesto.  I just threw some pine nuts that were in the freezer into the processor with some parmesan, basil leaves and macadamia nut oil.

I cooked up a serving of Barilla Plus pasta (it has 10 grams of protein) and added it to my sauteed broccoli and a dollop of pesto.

Tasty!  And it really bulked up the pasta adding the broccoli, too.  Yay!

I am trying to relax tonight, but might do a little work as I took some time off this afternoon.

Eating some of this:

Tomorrow we are hoping to catch some horse racing at the track!

Garden day!  I always love putting this post together.  We had that really hot spell and the garden just popped today.  Our temps got low overnight. I think they were in the upper 50s 😯  It was about 60 degrees when I went out for a quick pre-breakfast bike ride.  I did 6.5 miles in 30 minutes and I needed to wear a little jacket.

It was cool enough to want a warmer breakfast, so I did banana custard oats today using 30 grams of oats instead of 40.

Topped with peanut flour and a drizzle of chocolate syrup.  I threw a few chocolate chips on there, too, because it is Friday.

Pixie is in cooler weather mode, too.  She is following me around and sticking to me like a burr.  A white furry burr.

She makes my laptop a kneetop…

Busy morning of work, then it was lunchtime and Tour time!

I do have to say that watching the Tour during the daytime is shooting my productivity all to hell.  Oh well, it’s only for 3 weeks. Go Thor!!

So on to the other tour – the tour of my garden! Lots of sleepy plants woke up this week.

3 of my 4 rose bushes are blooming again.  Scentimental:

One lone clematis bloom peeking through the porch:

White swan coneflowers and liatris:

I have been trying to get this combo of globe thistle and coneflowers working and it is starting to come together. I love the texture of this combo.  I touch my flowers a lot.

The knockout rose bush in the background:

This is looking down the little walkway.  The left actually has only foot high plants, but the burning bush makes it look full on that side from this shot.

A lot of times I just stand in the middle of this path and enjoy.

Sunsprite rose:

Marigolds are really starting to pop now.

These are next to my butterfly bush which is taking forever to bloom! I see other butterfly bushes in the neighborhood all blossomed out, but not mine.

The tiniest snapdragon in the world:

It’s about 3 inches tall LOL!

Hooray for color!

Time for a caffeine hit:

Had a hard time concentrating for the rest of the afternoon.  I had a case of the Friday’s today!  I really wanted to be done with work. I also thought about going out for dinner, but John had started cooking something before I finished up work, so we stayed home.

Little mini pizzas on Arnold thins.

Good, but not real pizza.

I am off for an evening bike ride tonight, then some dried pineapple for dessert later.

I will have a fun update for Sunday.  We are doing a Tour de Farm ride on Sunday, which is a 35 mile group ride through historical Saratoga and then we get a picnic sponsored by local farms afterwards.  It’s going to be fun!

Any good plans this weekend?

Yay – it’s Friday!  That means garden time!

I was surprised at how many of you have sleep issues as well. I had a pretty good night’s sleep last night, other than waking up from a bad dream.  Hate that.  I did a morning walk around the block and took some pictures of my garden.  Want to see me pre coffee and with puffy morning face?  I took this to show how tall my lilies are (I am 5 feet 2).

Actually, the sleep mask keeps my hair in place, so that is an unexpected side benefit to that.  Normally I look like Medusa when I get up

I made up the banana breakfast bread pudding this morning.  Topped with some peanut flour mixed up (nonsweetened) and strawberry jam.

Tasty!  It almost looks like caramel.  I wish it were caramel – that would be awesome!

Trying to get as much work done as early as possible.  It was a little irritating today.  There are some doctors that don’t dictate very well and they affect productivity.  Well, some MTs decide they can skip over those files and cherry pick the easy doctors out of the line up of files and leave all the tough ones behind.  That is  against company policy, but the management never does anything about it!  It’s really not fair.  So I waded through crap files today.

I was glad to break for lunch.  I cooked up a pork burger and had a pear.  Simple, grain free, and delicious!

Along with the Tour de France, it is time for the Tour de Jardin!

Echinacea Razzmatazz (which I keep calling Doppelganger, for some reason). This plant is actually very old.  I took it with me when we moved from Illinois.  It is about 6 or 7 years old now.

Closeup:

White Swan coneflower:

And I have a single bloom on my echinacea milkshake!  It is like the white swan, but the center is ruffed like the razzmatazz.

The garden is a little quiet right now.  Still behind compared to last year.  This is an annual called Browalia.  True blue flowers are not very common.

The liatris is finally starting to bloom.  This is also called gay feather.  They come in purple and white.  I just have the purple.

Next week that one out to be filled out nicely.

This is one of my few garden ornaments.  My mom gave him to me.  It is a Jim Shore (??)

He’s watching over my annual asters, which aren’t doing much of anything right now.

The remains of the clematis snow queen blooms, aka my truffula trees.

Since it is Friday – I made lattes today and jazzed them up with a little creme de menthe:

That perked the afternoon right up!

John went to the bike shop today and found out he has a broken spoke, which is why his wheel had a bulge in it.  Good news because he doesn’t need a new wheel, he just needs the spoke repaired.  Bad news is they won’t get it fixed until Sunday.  That means a solo ride for me tomorrow and an attempt is going to be made to do 100 miles.  I will miss my buddy, although he will meet me periodically during the ride on his scooter.  Since I will be solo, I am taking some precautions.  I will be looping my ride into 3 segments so that I am never more than 20 miles from home at any given point.  I am not riding anywhere new.  I will do a 40 mile loop north first, then pit stop at home, then down to Saratoga (cause you all know there will be cupcakes) and back (44 miles), then partway to the lake as far as I need to go to finish it out.  I will be in contact with John via text quite a bit to keep him updated.  He actually will be going to Saratoga as well and meet me there.

John doesn’t particularly want to do 100 miles anymore, so that is why I am not waiting to do the ride. Not to mention the temps this weekend are supposed to be low 80s, which is really good for July!  Gotta grab it when I can.

I wanted some carbs to get ready for the ride tomorrow, so we walked for some pizza for dinner:

Cheap and tasty. Can’t beat that

Tonight is prepping the bike bag, doing a bike tuneup and hopefully a good night’s sleep before tomorrow.  If the weather cooperates I should have a good recap come Sunday night!

Hooray it’s Friday!  Work has been swamped this week and if it turns out rainy, I might pick up some lines this weekend for extra $$ to put towards Disney World!

It was the most gorgeous of mornings today.  The heat wave has broken and I had to get out for a ride.  John was still sleeping at 6:30, so I just went on out.  I did a nice easy ride at an average of 12 mph for 10 miles.

Great pre breakfast ride!  Or I guess that could be my commute to work? 😉

John was still sleeping when I got home.  Unbelievable!  Usually he is up and has coffee brewing when I get back from a workout.  I had soaked some steel cut oats last night, so I got those cooking with a mashed banana.

Topped with peach jam.  I may go on a jam canning spree this weekend if it is rainy.

I worked for 2-1/2 hours on the stability ball this morning.  Remember how I said I don’t think it did much?  I was wrong.  I just needed to sit on it for longer.  My legs were definitely a bit tired and I could feel it in my glutes a little when I transferred to a chair later.  Good deal!  The ball is much easier than standing while transcribing.

Lunch time!  I have been bringing potatoes back into my life more.  Starch without the wheat.  Point to note.  This is a serving of a potato.  A regular serving is about a 5.3 ounce potato for 110 calories.  It looks this size.

Do you know how hard it is to find potatoes this size?  Normally they are like footballs, but the Yukon Gold seem to normally be much smaller. Score!

Lunch on the porch. The potato was topped with laughing cow, sauteed broccoli and a couple ounces of cooked chicken.

Shall we take a tour of what’s blooming this week?  My roses are all flushed out now.

The scentimental bush has wonderful fragrant blooms on it.

Wouldn’t it be cool if this one smelled like peppermint?

Gaillardas blooming.  They are so cheery!

This is a volunteer snapdragon. I just let it grow where it was, which is in a cluster of mums. It’s a bit taller than the normal dwarf size I buy, but that is common for the seed offspring to be different than the parents.

Zinnia from my sister’s family.

This is the saddest basil ever.  I started these from seeds in March!  I think I mentioned about how our new windows blocked the UV light and the seedlings were all stunted.  These are now just starting to grow being outside.  Hurry up – I want pesto and pizza with you!

This is my liatris.  It isn’t blooming, but getting close.  I just thought it looked really cool at this stage.

Next week the astilbes will be in bloom!

John made lattes today. You know the drill.

I was really spot on with no extra snacking today!  I had about 1/2 an ounce of peanut and a date just before we left for dinner.  Double dip ride today.  It was too nice not to bike!  This is my belated birthday dinner.

We biked to Wholy Crepe.

My bestest biking bud:

Obviously we sat outside.  I had a crepe that was stuffed with eggs, feta and bacon.

Tres delicious!  One nice thing about crepes is that they aren’t super filling so you can save room for dessert:

This was a crepe filled with lemon curd, topped with fresh blueberries and a dollop of whipped cream on the side.  This was outstanding!  I must try to make some lemon curd.  I don’t know what it is about the blueberry lemon combo.  Is there another fruit other than citrus that goes so well with lemon?

Then it was biking home.  The dinner round trip was 13 miles plus a tiny bit.  Total miles for the day – 23.  I will take it!  That burned off my dessert crepe at any rate.

Have a great night!

We had lots more rain last night, but the sun came out for a while today.  I find my mood is much more affected by sun as I am older than when I was younger.  Or maybe I just notice it more?  I was up too early, though, as our blinds were not completely closed and a lot of light peeked in.  Hello 5:45 am. Nice to see you…. not.  I got up to get an early start on work and had a bowl of soaked steel cut oats.

I made up my blueberry sauce and just dumped the oats (with egg whites) on top for a parfait style breakfast.  And coconut butter, must not forget that!

Lunch time included another type of parfait:

Doesn’t that look like whipped cream?  It’s Fage.  One thing I love about Fage is the fluffy stiff texture.  Not runny or gelatinous like other fat free yogurts.

John had out this tropical dried fruit mix because he was making granola.  I had to bogart some:

I love dried pineapple.

All of this rain and the garden is just greening up like crazy! It was a little difficult getting pictures this week with the rain, so I got out whenever I could to take pics (and just to admire)   With the cloudy weather, the tulips are lasting a long time.  I ended up with such a nice array of tulip colors this year:

The one tulip that was not open last week was the Iceland.

Beautiful green and pink.  I love it!  I can’t wait to get more tulip bulbs to have even more next year.

This garden is now a fairly mature garden as I have been working it for 4 years now.  It’s an evolving process, but there is now a nice solid backbone to it.

My ferns are going gangbusters with the dampness.

I need to thin these out as they are starting to crowd my astilbes. I don’t know much about ferns.  These were at a flip house I did and I dug them up and brought them home when I redid the landscaping at that house. Free is always good.

The Shirley tulip that I pictured before keeps getting more and more purple.  How cool is that?

Last week:

Today:

Some alyssum that are with my geraniums.

And some of these:

I don’t mind dandelions in the lawn, but they must stay out of the garden bed.

I also have hanging planters with some fuschia.  I hope the hummingbirds stop by.

I notice a lot of people looking at my garden when they walk down the street.  It makes me proud and happy.

Happy happy, joy joy time!

Lots of rain this afternoon.  Good thing I got those pictures earlier. That is enough, Mother Nature.  Seriously.

I decided to attempt another fish item for dinner. Stats on this were nice. 120 calories and 18 grams of protein.  I like crab, so I thought this would be a good option.

Note the picture and how there is a large fillet over a small amount of stuffing.  This is the reality:

The fish was 2 tiny chunks stuck on either side of a wad of stuffing. Needless to say, the fish was totally dried out.  I kind of liked the stuffing, but I will not be getting this again.  I could not wait to get to my pear tonight…

John’s granola he made up today found a home on some cooked up strawberry rhubarb filling.  A pseudo cobbler!

Today was a rest day from exercise as we have a 40 miler planned for tomorrow.

Have a great weekend!

My tulips are bursting this year!  We had some warmer sunny weather this week, which made the garden go bananas.

I leaned over the side of the porch and the perfume of lily of the valleys just wafted up and I saw a big cluster of them.  I am just amazed how how fragrant such tiny fairy flowers can be!

Our house is over 100 years old, so there are some old fashioned flowers that were in existence here, like the LOTV.  I just let them grow wherever they feel like popping up.  I am kind of a casual gardener 😀

My tulips:

The Shirley. This is a new one for me.

The purple blush starts at the very tip and spreads further down the petals each day.  I am very taken with this one! This one is amidst the Apricot Impressions.

The Queen of the Night and Ice Princess.  The Ice Princess are still a bit yellow looking until they mature a little bit.

The Queen of the Nights are not really black, but the deepest, darkest color of purple, which looks pretty much black.

For the life of me, I cannot find the name of these, which I have had for a few years now.  They are such a lovely deep red color.

Orange Princess:

Another new one is the Passionale.

For those that want to get bulbs, I buy mine from John Scheepers, which come from Holland.  I have never, ever been disappointed with the quality or price.

Seeing these just makes me want to dance around.  Maybe I was some kind of garden nymph or butterfly in the past or something

There is one more set of tulips that haven’t opened yet.  I don’t know if they are more of the ones already open or something different.  Guess we will find out in a few day!

And we now have a pocket door in the half bath! Hooray for privacy 😀

Hope you enjoyed the tulip tour!