Picking up Sticks

 I have never been someone who has had a really nice yard. In my previous two marriages my husband always took care of the yard. Our yards were fine enough, my last house with my second husband had the nicest yard. We had a lawn treatment service and a sprinkler system. All that really needed to be done was mowing, edging and trimming the bushes. When I married Dwayne he took care of the yard at first. But then I made a mistake...I made a case for quitting my job to be a "household engineer" (everyone is some kind of engineer in Huntsville!). I told him I would mow the lawn (among other household jobs) so that his weekends would be freer in the summer. That lasted a few years actually. He remembers it very differently but I vividly remember listening to The Marathon Show and I'm Here to Win by Chris McCormack while mowing. 

I can't tell you why I stopped. Maybe it was when I started coaching a lot of adults and my kids' team. I just didn't have the time or energy to get it done. Dwayne hired a guy to mow for us. Throughout all this time we had a lawn treatment service but no sprinkler system.

Our yard just continually got uglier and uglier. We had three trees in the backyard and one in the front that just got bigger and biggeer-shading the grass. We cut one of the trees in the backyard down because it wasn't growing well. One of the other two was a River Birch. It was a beautiful tree, but, unbeknownst to us it was leaching all the nutrients out of the ground making the dirt HIGHLY acidic. Last spring we had a long discussion about whether or not to cut the tree down or keep it and try to figure out how to make the grass grow. We decided to keep it and put the work in...and, no kidding, that very weekend the TREE BLEW DOWN in a storm! (You can see how the yard under it was all DIRT!)

Well....since then I have been trying VERY hard to make our yard look better. I added some natural rock edging to make flower beds, I've planted A LOT of flowers and plants, we limed the yard to bring the Ph to where it needed to be and I put out some grass seed. The yard has REALLY come A LONG way....and it still has a LONG way to go before I will be willing to call it a "nice yard".

I have no idea what kind of tree the only remaining one is in our backyard, but it's really pretty. We limbed it up so that most of the grass does at least get some sun throughout the day. I made a big rock circle around the base. I added a bird feeder and birdbath and planted Ajuga. It's one of my favorite things about my backyard now.

Except...

That tree really drops a lot of little limbs any time the wind blows. Combined with the Crepe Myrtles that line the back fence, we end up with A LOT of little sticks all over the yard.

I didn't seem to notice or mind when I didn't really care what the yard looked like, but now that I do, these sticks are the bane of my aspiring gardening existence. 

Last spring, when I realized the sticks were an issue, I asked Dwayne not to mow until I picked them up. He didn't wait. We ended up with A TON of chopped up sticks ALL OVER THE YARD! They weren't small enough to "feed" the yard (maybe that's not even a thing?), but they were barely big enough to pick up! I walked the yard in a grid pattern with a bucket for HOURS trying to get them all up....believing this was crucial to the health of my yard.

Here's what I noticed. When I started, I picked up the big sticks and barely noticed the really small ones. But as the larger ones were collected the little ones seemed to "grow" so I'd go back over the yard again, picking those up. But as I did this I began to notice the tiny little twigs that I had not seen before...and as I picked up those twigs then I noticed the weeds! As I have started dealing with the weeds I have begun to also focus on overseeding and feeding the grass...learning how to water it and cut it properly.

I think back to those years when we first lived here...I had NO IDEA the River Birch was actually causing harm to the health of the dirt. I NEVER paid attention to those sticks (that were being copped up by the mower and probably causing additional "damage"). I never even thought about watering the yard, or how to mow it properly. 

Let me tell you...taking care of our bodies is just the same. Most people have little habits that are at best not optimal but at worst they are causing unseen damage that eventually is not only seen but felt! When you feel unhealthy (from chronic issues, I don't mean from something like a stomach bug) it won't be a quick fix to reverse the process and "get healthy". It will be much like "picking up sticks".

If you are having an issue with your yard, I can't really help with that because I'm a true beginner and I don't plan to do a deep dive into learning all the things I would need to know in order to help someone else have a nice-looking yard. But if you are noticing some "sticks in your yard" when it comes to how you are feeling, reach out to me. I have spent the last year becoming a Nutrition Coach and a Functional Nutrition Counselor. I'm still learning. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist or registered dietician, but I can help you "pick up sticks" and move you in the right direction.

Thanks for stopping by and sticking around (no pun intended!)

Trying New Things

A couple of weeks ago I tried something new! Cross-country running!

Sure I've run trails before, lots of trails. And I've run at our old "Cross Country Park" but until that day I had never run "cross country".

It's different. If you've never done it, it's like running on the fairway of an old golf course. Funny because that's exactly what it was for me/us! Huntsville morphed it's old municipal golf course into a multi-use park that included a cross country run course. To officially open the new park a big Cross Country meet was held and they included a "community run" which I decided to enter.

When I signed up I didn't really think about the fact that this would be a new thing. But as the race drew closer I became more and more nervous. I asked Dwayne to sign up to run with me to pace me to a "faster 5K" (which he did). I was really glad he was with me. It sounds silly to be so nervous but I think the truth is I'm either having a little symptom flare of my brain disease or, as a friend put it, I'm at "critical mass" on stress and this little thing was a bigger thing in my head than it needed to be!

We got there in time for me to pick up my bib and to sort of warm up, and plenty of time for me to stress over the idea of doing this new and foreign thing! It wasn't long and we were lining up. If you look at the picture you can see the start is a long straight chute. It was designed for high school/college cross country races so to make the start more fair you can't have a big difference in start times. Each school/team has a starting spot. (If the start was like every other race start you could have a good :30-1:00 difference in start times between the first and last person to cross the start line.)

I knew I would start out too fast. There weren't a lot of people doing the race, I didn't want to start off in the very back even if that's where I eventually ended up. We were about a half a mile in and I saw a group of girls women I know. They are all faster than I am right now and all in MUCH better shape, probably training for a marathon....but I made it my goal to stay with them. Okay, so my real goal was to pass them, but I knew that wasn't going to happen. They were doing intervals so early on I thought at least staying with them was realistic. Every time they would walk I would start to close the gap...and then I would have to walk. They were running faster so throughout the 3.1 miles they slowly inched away.

We played a bit of leap frog with and older man who, like Dwayne, had run cross country back in college and this race was bringing back a lot of memories for them both.

I was struggling not so much with breath as I was with sheer energy level. It feels like I just don't have any oomph in my body. Like my muscles are all on vacation. My doctor thinks my adrenals just aren't working properly. She said when I was on steroids my adrenal glands basically retired. After getting off steroids they were told to come back to work but they are resisting that. I've been on an adrenal supplement but it's probably not strong enough. Also my ferritin levels are low. Ferritin is a protein that stores protein and releases it when your body needs it. The question is WHY are those levels low...we haven't figured that out. The short term answer is to get iron infusions, and I've been needing to get one for months. I've just put it off because it's not crucial. But no doubt I would be able to train (and in this case) race at a higher level if I got one.

At about mile 2.5ish we picked up a 15 year old runner who was walking. I'll call her coach because as we got to talking and she found out this was my first cross country race, she began to coach me! It was the cutest thing. She explained to me how I needed to relax on the down slopes and pick up my knees on the up slopes. She talked about mindset and breathing. 

I know from my own experiences, she was getting as much out of it as I was! 

One of the gals I was chasing starting walking and we caught up with her. She's a good bit younger than I am but her heart rate was SKY HIGH. She stayed with us a little bit but when we decided to pick it up at the end she held back to let her heart rate slow down a little bit.

Dwayne was still thinking I might be able to catch the other gals but I was giving all I had but they were still pulling slightly away. It was funny because they were just out for a training run. They ran miles before and after this little 5K. But I was (sort of) actually racing them. I ended up finishing just 30 seconds behind them so I was VERY VERY pleased given where I've been and how I've been feeling. It's the fastest 5K I've done in like 3 years! (33:21) I think if it had been on the road with the same terrain I might have been able to get that time close to 30 minutes!! That is VERY encouraging!!

The course was WONDERFUL. I will say at the time I didn't think I was a big fan of cross country running. It's harder than road running (slower and more work) but it's not as hard as trails (not as slow or as physically/mentally taxing). My legs and ankles weren't really sure what was going on! But, fairly quickly after it was over I decided I actually LOVED it for all those reasons! In fact I plan to go back to run it again soon. I think it's going to feel very weird to run the course alone since it's such a big open field, but I really liked the more-challenging-than-roads-but-not-as-challenging-as-trails aspect of it.

The next thing coming up for me right now is Little Rock Marathon but goal number one is a faster Knoxville Marathon next year....which means hills. I've really got to figure out what's going on with my ferritin and adrenals before then!

Thanks for stopping and and sticking around!

:D