For the first time in several years we were pretty slack on the gardening front and the only real harvest was from the very late flowering chilli plant.

Okay, there was also the usual rosemary, bay leaves, thyme, basil and parsley. But I really wouldn’t call those harvesting because everything apart from the parsley and basil grows all year round.

I’m not sure what inspired this lack of enthusiasm, but I suspect it was the prospect of losing everything once again to the dreaded caterpillars.

I’m wildly successful at growing food to feed an army of bugs, but I’m full of envy of and admiration for anyone who can manage to successfully grow edible plants – edible by people and not by creatures. 

I’m kind of at peace with abandoning the big goal of growing lots of things to eat and am pretty happy with the idea of growing ingredients and planting the occasional random seed to see what happens.

mardi gras detritus

I’ve always been someone who is insanely curious and a completely voracious consumer of information: news and books and blogs and memes and, well, everything. I have a lot of my identity wrapped up in being current and knowledgeable, being able to discuss a wide range of topics and having an opinion on everything.

Back in January I embarked on a two week news fast because reading the news was making me alternately depressed and ragey. To my extreme surprise I liked the results so much that I’ve kept it up and have barely opened a news site since. I’m not exaggerating when I say I was previously spending hours a day reading the news.

And then there was twitter, really doing not a lot for me at all despite checking it many, many times per day, so I cut down use to once a day, then once every couple of days and now I’ve deleted the app from my phone and tablet.

As tends to be the way with these things, this information overload is really zeitgeisty. Last weekend I stumbled across the infomagical project on the great note to self podcast which pretty much nailed what I was feeling.

And that led me to the earlier bored and brilliant project, which made the case for the creativity and big ideas that come from boredom – and to stop using the phone / device as a crutch. Which is of course exactly what I was doing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still the same voracious information monster, it is just now I’m trying to be more intentional about what I’m consuming.

Who knew that not knowing everything could be quite restful and calming?

After an extreme amount of dithering, I settled upon the easy as pie scarf as my complicated scarf – a not too hard combination of lace and cables, but I think sufficiently hard for me.

In the spirit of using of what I have, I’m knitting with the yarn from the abandoned boxy jumper.

So far going well, though I did have to rip back and re-start my first attempt. I can generally complete a pattern repeat during an episode of House of Cards

will hopefully improve with blocking

I must admit I was extremely tempted this morning by the vintage Shetland baby shawl patterns on kate davies blog. Thankfully there are no babies on the horizon, but I think such a thing would be a quite excellent throw for the kitties to claw to bits!

I think we’ll see how I go with the scarf first!

spotted in emergency (twice!) at RPA: i can’t even begin to understand

I was going to write a whole lengthy, ranty post about my feelings on international women’s day.

On how paternalistic and patronizing I find it and how I’m appalled that in 2016 there is still such a long, long way to go to be acknowledged as equals (if we were equal, we wouldn’t need a “special” day, would we?).

But it is late and I’m tired, so I’ll leave you to fill in the blanks – do feel free to make them sweary blanks.

Yesterday, just to mix things up, I started to experience a fair bit of left knee pain about 3/4 of the way back.

I’ve had this before when riding and mentioned it to RelentlesslyCheerfulPhysio on Saturday. He said it was likely due to my knees not tracking over my toes and that I should probably have Don check out my form. On the ride, I was super conscious of trying to sit properly, but after the pain started I asked Don to watch me – turns out I was way over-compensating for what I thought were my knees jutting out and they actually stick way too far in.

Handy diagram below:

Left is how my knees should be, middle is how I thought they were, right is how they actually were. A slightly more professional diagram here.

Once I corrected my position I found it a whole lot easier, but it felt rather weird and completely like I was manspreading. This explains a lot and I realise now that I have also been riding incorrectly on the stationary bike for, like, ever.

RelentlesslyCheerfulPhysion phoned today about my x-ray results and all is good! He wants me to continue to work on the rehab and reconvene in a couple of weeks. We agreed that perhaps I should have Don check my running style in case I’m doing the knees-in thing when running, or even walking. If this is the case, it may well be the cause of all my foot, ankle, knee issues, so I really do hope that it is.

These bad habits accumulated over years really do come back to haunt you in your old age – work on that posture now, kiddies!

Fortunately the ankle felt a whole lot better after a decent night’s sleep, so we could get out and ride. We got a reasonably early start because I skipped the morning journally type stuff and the pushups/situps, figuring I would be getting plenty of exercise to compensate and that I could reflect while I rode.

We chose an out-and-back route down to the George’s River and racked up 42km!

the route

The weather was completely fabulous and sunny. I do definitely need to organise a lip-balm with high SPF protection, but otherwise unusually managed to miss no spots with the sunscreen!

Apart from the start and end bits (where I largely rode on the road!), the route was pretty much all very flat bike path which was excellent! There were a good many cyclists out enjoying the morning (but it was never over-crowded), loads of runners about too which had me consumed with envy. I really enjoy riding the bike and especially spending time with Don, but in no way does it compare with pounding the pavement.

Some scenic shots in order of appearance. Truly, I do live in a very, very beautiful city.

Just after entering the Cook’s River path – it was incredibly still and the river all mirrory.

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Naturally we had to stop to admire the golf course.

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Abandoned grandstand, home of the St George Saints

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Chinese market gardens

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Airport control tower. I appear to really like shooting into the sun.

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Botany Bay. Northern End of Lady Robinson’s Beach.

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I was blown away to encounter this stone pine / umbrella pine grove beside the beach. I generally think of this as a totally Roman thing (one of my favourite bits of Rome – along with everything else in Rome). The InformationSuperhighway tells me this was an accidental planting from the 1930s.

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If you squint at that horizontal thing in the distance, you might be able to make out a very land-locked jetty. The sands shift a huge amount in the bay and there is always a ton of dredging going on to try and stabilise the beaches.

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End of the line. We decided against entering The Shire and turned around and went back to where we came from </shire joke>

It was a really lovely ride – very much recommended. Definitely not a ride for a sunny afternoon because the shared path along Botany Bay was getting crazy-busy with unpredictably wandering pedestrians by the time we made our way back.

We plan to head all the way to Kurnell at a future date, but that will be a pretty epic outing which we may need to work up to!

You’d not think it from the temperatures and humidity, but autumn is definitely upon us – the sun is rising later and later. Sadly this does not affect the kitties very early demands to be fed. I’d already been awake for some time before this photo was taken:

And I hit the 100 (knee) pushup mark! Woo! Each time I find this difficult, I remind myself that we I started I could barely do 10.

The plan is to keep up with the 100 for a couple of weeks, then each day attempt to replace one knee pushup with a real one – so like 1+99, 2+98, 3+97 &etc.

Then it was off to see RelentlesslyCheerfulPhysio after a two week hiatus. Don had an early tee time so I busted out Corey to get me there. So quick and convenient!

Sadly the ankle had reverted to painful(ish) over the last week, which seemed to have been triggered by the longish walk to meet Don in the emergency room on Tuesday.

While poking and prodding, RelentlesslyCheerfulPhysio found a new area of pain on the top of my foot and decided it was probably worthwhile sending me off for an x-ray. So I called up, checked they could fit me in and rode Corey there too! I was delighted with my bravery. Though I did stick mostly to the footpaths, which were fortunately not at all crowded.

I was pretty sure that pokey bit on my heel shouldn’t be there and Dr Google confirmed that it is a heel spur. Dr Google also tells me that it is probably due to running (rats!), but there doesn’t appear to a any link to ankle pain. Back to RelentlesslyCheerfulPhysio on Wednesday morning to get an actual professional interpretation of the results.

After all the manipulation this morning I was pretty ouchy, so I’ve busted out the anti-inflammatories and am trying to stay off it. I do have the go ahead to go for a bike ride tomorrow if I’m feeling up to it. We’re planning a rather sedate less-than-55km route!

WEEKEND!!!

On the agenda: physio visit, bike ride, unpacking overlocker, meal planning, ironing, cooking something long and slow (as yet undetermined), baking something delicious, introspection, bathroom cleaning, decluttering, slothing, no thinking about work.

Bloggers block, so here’s a picture.

A picture which rather suits the theme of SML right now – it’s quite exhausting being in the midst of the giant sausage fest, one can barely move for all the dicks being swung about.

What is it they say? If only I had the confidence of an average white man.

Fortunately, I can at least outperform some in (somewhat) intelligently discussing exercise and sports. My much superior work output being worth little in this kind of situation.

newkitty would really prefer don stay at home, or go to work naked

Finally I got down to a good relaxing potter about tonight. It has been a stressful week at SML, despite the blissful quiet left after the departure of AnxiousMum.

Rather like when MrT left us, I feel rather like I am coming out of a hostage situation and this has brought up a lot of emotional stuff which I’m now trying to resolve / get past. It seems quite unbelievable that we will no longer have to walk on eggshells around her or cater to her unreasonable whims to get things delivered. What a horrible, negative, selfish, difficult, nasty woman she was.

So I folded laundry, hand washed stockings/tights, tidied, &etc. It was excellent. And I think she is finally out of my head.