A touch of the ADHD

Many times, it pays to be impulsive because you get to go on grand last minute adventures. Sometimes not, but I like to chalk those up to learning experiences instead of poor choice making (the gym membership was an excellent case in point). After my bootcamp class this morning, I met friends for coffee at the local morning watering hole. We were discussing our Saturday plans (mine initially included getting some pants hemmed) and my friend mentioned she wanted to go check out the local community garden and find someone who would let her apprentice for the summer. Well, who needs a gardening mentor when you have Google and the garden plot only costs a relatively risk-free $25 for the summer? Not this girl! The only gardening experience I have is the tomato plant from last summer, which I got frustrated with around July because it was growing uncontrollably and kept falling over. So all of these thoughts occurred at one time, and I gamely volunteered to take this journey with my friend, no experienced gardeners necessary. Luckily, the other gardeners are helpful, and pointed us to the pile of "aged manure" (formerly known as horse poop) and we set to work getting our raised bed ready. With no gloves. Because who has gardening gloves when they go on impulsive adventures? The other fun thing about impulsivity is that it often goes hand-in-hand with instant gratification. So off we went to the gardening store to get some seeds (with no actual knowledge of the dimensions of the bed or how many rows we could/should plant) and some gardening gloves. So it turns out seeds have to be planted at different distances from each other and different depths under the soil and all sorts of details that one cannot be bothered with because I have never in my life seen a gardener or farmer out in the fields with a ruler. So in the little seedies went, with a mixture of dirt and horse treats sprinkled over. Just like a warm smelly blanket, which is good... because it definitely said on the back of the seed packets to wait to plant until after the last frost, which is not so great since it is supposed to snow tomorrow. Nonetheless, internet quotes variously attributed to famous authors abound to describe today's activities: Seize the day! Do one thing a day that scares you! And my personal favorite by Mr. Winnie the Pooh: One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries. Word.

Unique strengths

I almost don't even know where to start. I get so annoyed with blogs when the bloggers don't post. And it's not like I have a lack of things to post about. I think it was that whole I got so far behind and then I felt like I should have some big interesting post and well, my life is not that exciting. I mean it's exciting to me but not to the general public. I've been doing some farming (i.e., container gardening) which is awesomely awesome. Except for the cilantro plant that is taking over my life and killed my basil. I mean I love cilantro but it's up past my waist at this point and I just can't make that much salsa. My tomato plant is similarly OOC except apparently they can't be harvested for like another 2 months. I'm pretty sure at some point I'm going to wake up and my whole condo is going to be filled with cilantro and baby tomatoes. But I digress. What I really meant to make this post about was my shocking lack of planning, spatial organization, and general engineering skill. I have mentioned before that I really like iced coffee. And this is a pretty good recipe for homemade iced coffee (which is good because my local coffee shop charges $4 for iced coffee and psychology just doesn't pay that well. Plus I don't have a lot of flex time in my morning routine). So anyway, I've been making 1/4 of this recipe for a while (1 1/4 cups of ground coffee to 8 cups of water) and it's dandy. But it's kind of a pain in the bum to filter the coffee and it takes an annoyingly long time. So I decided to make a bigger batch, per the original instructions. So I bought one of those water dispenser thingies at the grocery store. My thought process was: I'll make a hole in the top, dump the coffee in, let it brew, pour the coffee out of the container into a filter sitting in a pitcher, rinse out the water dispenser, and put the brewed iced coffee back in and then it will be like I have my own personal coffee dispenser. You will notice a measuring cup, my coffee maker carafe, two bowls, my mesh strainer, my permanent coffee filter, about 15 paper filters, a pitcher, and a glass bowl are in use. Yeah, so... anyway, planning, volume estimation, spatial stuff = not my strong suit. Clearly. Here's hoping the coffee tastes good.

My journey toward locavore-ness

I did it! I bought a half-share (evidently equal to a half-bushel, whatever that means) of a CSA through Bergefurd Farms. I can't wait for June. I'm totally going to blog about it every week, perhaps with a picture of me and my farm share. I had a nice chat with the owner of the farm about how joining a CSA would broaden the variety of vegetables in my diet. Bring on the kale!

Wegetables

I've been pondering over having a lot of contests for myself recently. One was blogging once a week. Epic fail, as the kids say. One was making a yeast-based recipe each weekend to make use of the 2 pounds of yeast (that's 128 packets in case you're curious) that I bought at Costco in January. That's currently going okay; I made lemon pull apart bread last weekend and this weekend isn't over yet. The other thing I'm thinking about that is not so much of a contest but along the same lines, is joining a CSA. I love the idea of a CSA; supporting local farms, enjoying fresh produce, being challenged by making something delicious using two pounds of kale and six beets, etc. I also kind of feel like joining a CSA will balance out my earth-killing love of Costco in a super hipster earth-loving kind of a way. I found one that allows pick up at the Hyde Park Farmers Market, which is close by and would not require gas usage that would poison the environment. Plus I'm not organized enough to remember to budget out an hour or more every weekend to drive out to a farm and pick up produce, quite frankly. Imagine how fun it will be for me to blog about my weekly farm share/take pictures of me being overwhelmed by kale (I don't like kale, it's my greatest fear that the farm share will only include kale), thereby solving the problem of failed contest idea number one for the bargain price of approximately 300 dollars. Genius!