A beautiful day in the neighbourhood.

What a delightful surprise it is to find unexpected flowers hiding in your garden, we almost missed this one, I found it tucked against the fence, almost hidden by another shrub.

It is one that I brought a piece of from my folks' place when they sold it, actually the shrub that the flower was hiding behind is also from there, it is nice to have some of the flowers around that I remember from my childhood. Um , and here is another one brought from there.

O.K and these bleeding hearts are also from there. (Yikes, you would think that I had taken all my Mom's plants.) I used to sell these, forget-me-nots, buttercups and ferns in lovely little bouquets when I was little. I did sell Kool-aid as well and sometimes I even sold rhubarb. I loved having a little stand and selling all these things. My mom used to tell me a story of how the bleeding heart got its name, am I the only one who was told this story? No one else I've met knows it.

I was working on the apple trees today too and I love apple blossoms. This afternoon was all about gardening, and boy, did we find some pretty stuff. E got ahold of the camera for awhile and is quite pleased with his pics. Here are three that he took.

Then it was my turn again. These are some other bleeding hearts,much larger than the purple ones above. When we first moved here we had a few white ones and a lot of pink ones, now they are all white. I'm not sure why this happened but I like little garden mysteries so now I just enjoy the white ones.

And these lilacs are from my neighbour. She knows that I love the smell but never want to cut mine as my lilac bushes are still fairly small, so she always brings us some. She also brought me some strawberry rhubarb and, after I borrowed some sugar from another neighbour to make rhubarb cake, we also had a delicious dessert tonight. And of course we shared some cake with both of our generous neighbours...so you see, it really was a beautiful day in the neighbourhood, in more ways than one.

Food Not Lawns

I have been enjoying this book lately. It has all kinds of practical gardening tips as well as ideas for living a more sustainable lifestyle. This is a quote from the book that I really like, "By putting our hands in the soil, we gain access to the wisdom of the earth, and by putting our heads together we learn how to use that knowledge for the benefit of all." What a simple idea but the results of such simple actions have huge potential. She goes on to say, " When members of a community start living more ecologically, they improve the soil, purify the water, plant trees, encourage wildlife, and reduce pollution and waste. By giving back more than it takes, every ecological project increases the overall health of our planet - and thus our capacity for peace and sustainability."

Many people would think that unrealistic, I am sure but, as a gardener, I know that anything is possible and would like to leave you with another favourite quote.

"Gardeners, I think, dream bigger dreams than Emperors" - Mary Cantwell

And I think any gardener will agree with that. ;-)

Taekwondo tournament

I've covered a lot of kilometres in the last three days. About 1370 of them. That's 858 miles. My middle son K and I were out of bed at 5am Friday and on a bus at 7am with our fellow Taekwondo competitors. The trip took about nine and a half hours. We had to repeat it on Sunday to return home.

We were in Prince George, BC, for the Western Canadian ICTF Taekwondo tournament on Saturday. Unfortunately I don't have any photos to show you because I took my older video camera rather than my digital one. The hotel was just across the road from the Coliseum, an arena that was set up for the day with eight "rings" made up with competition matting.

We went over to the Coliseum at about 8.30am and were there until six. The competition starts with the youngest kids, white belts, works its way up through the age divisions and the ranks over the course of the day, culminating in the black belt patterns and sparring in the afternoon. K, being an 11 year old red belt, competed in the morning and earned two bronze medals, one for his pattern and one for sparring.

When you get to my age (44) there aren't that many competitors! In Taekwondo, the largest numbers are in the lower belts and younger age groups. In the 36 - 45 women's division, there were only two of us red belts. We were placed with the four black belts in the same age range, one of whom wasn't competing in the patterns section. So I was up against three black belts and a red belt. We do the pattern for our level - in other words, I was doing Hwa Rang, and the black belts were doing something else.

I went to the tournament with no expectation of earning a medal. My goal was to execute my pattern to the best of my ability, without messing it up due to nerves. I did better than that. I did it well with good power - won the first heat - did it again - won that - did it a THIRD time - won it again. I couldn't really believe it until they gave me the gold medal! I was so excited. I made sure to go over to my instructor and tell him as I didn't know whether he'd been watching - there's so much going on at once at a tournament.

I didn't enter the sparring part because I've been taking a rest from sparring since learning about my ovarian cyst, and it turned out to be a good thing as I would have been very nervous being up against the black belts.

So I'm home - a little short on sleep but happy!

Orangutan Babies

Please click through the link below to watch an amazing video showing the efforts to save orphaned orangutan babies.


http://www.quantumshift.tv/v/1178084064/

The China Study

This week I'm reading The China Study - Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health by T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II. From the book jacket: "For more than forty years, Dr. T. Colin Campbell has been at the forefront of nutrition research. His legacy, the China Study, is the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted...."

This book is very much about the link between our diet and our health and sheds some light on misheld beliefs on what constitutes a healthy diet. As I am only just getting into the book, I can only give early impressions. Well, I'm hooked. There's facts supported by scientific evidence along with charts and bar graphs and statistics, but it is all given in an easy to understand voice.

My curiosity is piqued. The correlation between diets of the affluent and the diseases they are afflicted with is very interesting. Of particular note is the widespread notion of eating protein - and what is considered quality protein has been animal sources of protein. Curiously there are findings linking diseases specifically to the high consumption of animal protein (say, 20% of your diet being said protein). Now this interests me greatly as I have been weight training for a few years and the literature for this predominantly supports the notion that the only way to get really fit and build muscle is by consuming animal protein.

When I first started weight training and learning about the nutrition aspect of getting fit and healthy, I followed the recommendations. I ate water packed tuna, chicken breasts, salmon and lean cuts of beef as my main protein sources. However, over the past 3 years I have become vegetarian. Not over a moral position, but from a health perspective. I am dissatisfied with some of the animal husbandry practices that are a part of factory farms and after finding out the inside story of slaughterhouses... well, quite frankly, it put me off eating meat. Too risky, in my opinion. Interesting to discover, was that my body was okay with not eating meat. No cravings or feeling deprived etc. No loss of health and vitality. The one hang-up I've had in the back of my mind concerned how removing meat from my diet was - would this negatively impact my ability to build and mantain muscle. My concern of not getting enough protein was because that's the downside I've heard and read concerning going vegetarian (from those who obviously were not vegetarian themselves - perhaps they had a bias?). I never stopped to think about whether this makes much sense. Then I started considering the fact that the planet has many herbivores. So, if they don't eat meat obviously they should be small, weak and poorly muscled in comparison to the species that do eat meat due to the fact that plant protein is "poor quality". Funny. That's not what I've noticed growing up on the farm. Hmmmm. Well, anyways, back to the current book I'm reading. This Doctor has many years researching and studying in his experience and from his own studies and those of others he shows that it is actually not in a person's best health interest to consume the copious amounts of animal protein. This is not just the man's opinion. There are numerous studies that support this. Anyways, I'm enjoying the read and learning so much that I just had to tell you.

Another do-it-yourself dinner

This type of meal always goes down well in our house because everyone can pick their favourite things and leave what they don't like. The tortillas are home-made with spelt flour - we filled them with guacamole, home-made bean dip, tomatoes, salsa, olives, onions, lettuce and cucumber.

I prefer the spelt to wholewheat as it makes a thinner lighter tortilla. We used to buy commercial tortillas but it has become difficult to find any that are just simple vegan ingredients - when I see mono- and diglycerides on the packet, or anything else with a questionable source, it puts me off. Mine are just flour, baking powder, salt and water and are cooked in an ungreased pan so they're completely fat free.

A Must Read!

Here it is, a book that my boys say is a must read, two thumbs up, in fact. Are we talking about a classic book, one of the many, many books we have on our shelves? Sadly no...this is what is considered great literature by my guys.

Actually it is rather good, very funny, and quite informative too, so, yes...I give it a two thumbs up as well.