Walks and hikes – Page 12

Personal Reboot

When I was younger, I never had sleep issues. I have always been an early to bed, early to rise person, but as I am aging, the sleep schedule seems to be off kilter. I still want to be in bed by around 10 p.m., but often awaken around 1 a.m. and can’t get back to sleep for a few hours. Then when the sun comes up, I don’t feel rested and often stay in bed dozing and waking for another hour or so.

Determined to examine my habits and see if I can get back into a healthier routine, I have signed off of Facebook. I realized that too many of the posts were virus or politics related and that caused me stress, because of the total saturation on TV and social media. I found that where I used to just skip through it, I was making snarky comments or wanting too and refraining from doing so which then caused me more stress. I have avoided reading news feeds. I can’t totally avoid the news because I am not alone in the house and my husband is a television watcher and news feed reader and so I hear it on the tube or we have conversations about an article he saw or read.

Through out my adult life, I have quit caffeine and started caffeine again in the form of coffee or tea. That is an area I can control and have returned to a policy of not drinking a caffeinated beverage after lunch. With the stay at home orders, my diet has cleaned up considerably as all meals are at home and I am controlling the ingredients, the seasoning, the fat. I have never had a problem with alcohol or tobacco, so that hasn’t changed.

We were already in a habit of walking nearly every day, but generally on a mostly flat paved trail. Being at home, the walks are on our rural road or the fields and as we live in the mountains, I can challenge myself by going off road and climbing steep terrain or stay on the road, which still has some significant elevation change over it’s mile. I can now leave home and regardless of the route, keep walking without having to stop to catch my breath and let the blood pressure pounding in my ears settle. Though I enjoy walking on the flats with hubby, I can challenge myself more alone.

With spring here, there is garden work, a lawn to be mowed and edged, and those are added to the daily cooking, cleaning, laundry chores, so I stay busy which keeps me from nodding off in my chair. I do take breaks and spend the evenings in my chair with my spindles and knitting to keep my hands busy and allow my mind to focus on creativity instead of news and other stressors.

Maybe it will help. Maybe not. Time will tell.

Walks

Each day I try to get in a walk. We used to go to town nearly every day for lunch and take a walk on one of several paved trails, but with the Stay at Home order, the walks are limited to home areas as even the marked trails in the National Forest are closed. When the weather is too wet, because our road is not paved, I will concede to walk on the treadmill, though my tolerance of it is much lower than being outdoors. Yesterday was miserable, cool, windy, and rainy so to the treadmill I went. I am trying to keep up my stamina which doesn’t work on flat walks very well, so I spent 35 minutes walking at 3 or more miles per hour at an incline of 6 to 8%, then a few slow minutes flat to cool down. It was a good workout, but boring. We have a TV down there and I put it on a music station, but I can’t hear it over the machine without turning it up so loud it drowns out the upstairs TV that hubby is watching.

Today is a cool but sunny day so I took off up the road, then off road for some exercise. Our road has a cattle grate set in it not far beyond our house then I am in the middle of fields with cows. There was a calling back and forth between the various groups today. When I headed out, they were all off in the distance. When I go off road, I challenge myself.

This steep moss covered hills crests to a high spot where I can look down on the hollow and our house. Back down this hill across the pasture I see groups of cattle munching on hay.

This young one was more interested in me than the hay. Back on the road home, there were two cows with their calves that I had to walk quietly by. One calf was nursing and not at all concerned about me, the other’s mom was unconcerned, but the little one was less sure.

Before I left to wander the hills, I turned the hens loose for free range time. Only 7 came out, so I peaked into the coop and found the other two sharing one nesting box (there are 6 boxes), and instead of side by side facing out, they were 69’d.

It is nice to be able to get outside and enjoy the beauty of this area.

Today’s Walk

Today was a glorious spring day. Tomorrow is wet and cooler again, then we warm up to spring for a while. Taking advantage of the beautiful weather, I transplanted the Calendula seedlings, some in the bed with the volunteers, some in a big pot on the deck. Also the Echinachea was given a partial bed and some in the same big pot. A few sprinkles of marigold seed were added to the pot and one of the flower beds. I want flowers, lots of flowers to brighten our days. It is still way too early to move the tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos out to the garden, but the spinach starts were added to one of the half barrels that have lettuce, radishes, and Chinese cabbages in them. There are a few other spinach plants that were direct seeded in one of the beds with peas, but most of them became victims of the hens the first time they got in the garden.

Since dinner out isn’t an option anymore and since Eat’s Natural Food Store, one of my favorite local businesses, is providing email ordering and curbside pick up, I resupplied on Yogurt, nuts, herbs, and a selection of Mediterranean goodies like olives, hummus, Dolmas, and Feta. Tomorrow I will make Pita bread and we will have Greek salads and hummus with Pita for dinner. Since I don’t have to cook any of it except the Pita, it is almost like dinner out.

This evening, before the rain and wind resume, I wandered our hills again. Each adventure out has something new to see. I could hear one of the neighbor’s cows bawling well away from the road and spotted 3 of the spring calves trotting in her direction. I didn’t get a photo of them today. The recent wind had brought down a dead limb that the woodpeckers had really worked over.

When we had our perk test done for our septic during pre-construction, the soil scientist told us that we had really good soil because we were on the leading edge of an alluvial field from the last ice age. When you walk our road, you can see evidence of it in the huge scattered, eroded rocks.

On our way home from the grocery pick up, we drove across the top of our field to see how the grass for hay is coming along. It is so emerald green now. It will sprout seed heads which will brown off before it is mowed and it will either green up again if we have rain or remain brown for the rest of the summer. This is looking west back toward the orchard, coop, and house.

One of the bluebirds was visiting the feeders this evening.

I was hopeful that they got one of the nesting boxes by the garden, but it appears that both are occupied by tree swallows again. On the hillside in the distance, you can see the trees beginning to leaf out, and the very green shrub in the rock pile directly behind the bluebird is Autumn Olive. It is an invasive shrub that was deliberately introduced to the state as an ornamental shrub for landscaping. You can’t kill it my cutting it down, it has to be pulled up by the roots. On my way out to walk, I started the tractor for the first time this spring. If I can get a pin for the hitch, I will use a long piece of chain that we have to wrap around some of them and pull them up this spring. They can be burned after they dry and the hay has been mowed.

Whenever we go out away from home, not often recently, but I always carry with me a small knitting project or a drop spindle. My favorite one to take is one of my newer ones, the diminutive 2″ spindle in my last post. Because it is so small and fragile, I worry about breaking it, and today, I emptied a small 3″ diameter by 3″ tall round tin that had tea in it. It is the perfect size to fit the spindle and a couple ounces of fiber and is protected in my bag in the car.

My spring walks are improving my stamina. The road is not flat and the hills are not gentle. When I started earlier this spring, I would have to stop and catch my breath a couple times. I still slow down on the steepest part on the way back home, but I no longer stop.

Until we visit again. Goodnight from the mountains.