October 2007 - Page 4 of 4

Bzzzz October 5th, 2007

Before I fall off the wagon and eat a whole coconut cream pie, I suppose I’ll explain why I am on a detox diet following my trip to Las Vegas.

Newsflash: Las Vegas is an astonishingly unhealthy place. In fact, if you truly hate yourself, just pack up your bags and move there right now, get a job in a casino and live in one of the teeny tiny concrete apartments on the edge of the desert where you can enjoy the sounds of cars whizzing by at all hours.

But I digress…

I truly enjoyed Angela’s company while in Vegas. She is one of those gals with a sunny, bright disposition who peppers her conversations with chuckles and laughs. She seems to find almost everything amusing. She’s also up for trying most anything in the way of fun or adventure. Here’s Angela:

Angela%20in%20Vegas.jpg

The thing about Angela is that she prefers not to spend a lot of time or money in Vegas on silly things like food. She prefers to play poker while in Vegas. So with the exception of a proper sit-down dinner following our outing to Zumanity, my diet consisted mostly of coffee, sandwiches, croissants and, in my misguided bid for at least something approaching a healthy meal, a bizarre kind of boiled fish concoction with overly-steamed vegetables. THAT’S a meal that was donated right to the trash bin.

So, add to this culinary nightmare the bad casino air, light deprivation and noise pollution and you’re starting to get the picture of what I mean by unhealthy.

Sure, we got out and walked one morning. I wanted exercise and Angela, being the adventurer that she is, turned it into a walk with a purpose–hiking on foot from the Venetian to the Sahara where she recalled seeing an attraction where you could drive a Humvee over some obstacle course. Nevertheless, we did walk.

Still, I was feeling very out of sorts. I missed my garden. I missed the quiet. I missed my family and little dogs. I missed the fresh air. And I REALLY missed exercise. To walk in Vegas is to hike along the strip, which is like doing exercise in a gas chamber.

Then, here was the clincher.

I ran into Lady Diana. No, I’m not delusional. I’m talking about her wax image at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. (Thrifty Angela finagled us free tickets.)

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See, although I wasn’t an official royalty watcher, I was always interested what Diana was wearing because we were always the same height and weight.

“Wow, she looks good,” I would tell myself, figuring that if she looked that good, I probably did too. Okay, it was perhaps some faulty logic, but there you have it.

Well, I hate to say it, but when I stood next to Diana, I had the startling realization that I could probably, maybe, perhaps not fit into that size 6 blue sequined gown she was wearing. Crap. When did that happen?

Well, so there you have it. Bad air. Bad food. No exercise. And then to realize I can’t wear the size 6 blue sequined gown. Not that I want to wear blue sequined gowns in the garden anyway, but I might want to dress up when I water the indoor plants or something–you know, just for a change of pace and to brighten my mood.

So, here we are at the Las Vegas Detox Diet. I invented it myself. (Okay, it’s mostly common sense.) It consists of:

– Drink a glass of water every single hour you’re awake, starting when you get up in the morning. Fizzy water doesn’t count because it usually has sodium, which defeats the purpose. I have found also that drinking this glass of water every hour reduces the hunger pangs.

– Eat ONLY fresh vegetables, fruits and small amounts of cheese and nuts. Avoid breads, pastas and other starchy foods.

– Avoid alcohol and large slabs of chocolate.

– Take a mega-vitamin.

– Drink green tea in the afternoon and evening (in addition to the water).

– Avoid snacks between meals.

– In addition, run (or walk if you have to) a full hour each day.

Now, I absolutely LOVE to run and really do try. It’s just that I-can’t-breathe-and-my-heart-is-going-to-pop feeling that I don’t really like. So I alternate running and walking. Walk north up the driveway. Run south down the driveway. Walk north up the driveway. Run south down the driveway. Do that twelve times and an hour is gone. It’s an important part of the Las Vegas Detox Diet, so don’t skip this part.

Don’t worry. This won’t become a blog about my quest to get into that size 6 blue sequined gown. But I might consider a series of gardening exercises–stretch while you weed, flower pot weight lifting, aerobic tilling–that kind of thing.

Ciao!

Posted In: Travel

Tags: Las Vegas

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Bzzzz October 2nd, 2007

Back to gardening! (At least until I get all my Vegas stories written.) After stalking it either too early or too late in the day several times, I finally was able to capture a picture of the flowering moon flower vine.

The moon flower is one of several flowers I planted as part of my experimental garden this summer.

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Moon flower blooming in the dark of night

See, I have a super-scientific method of identifying the flowers that get the honor of going into my experimental garden. Here is the step-by-step process.

1. I mosey up to the seed display at my local garden center.

2. I scratch my head and think reeeeaaaalllyyyy hard about all the seed packets, considering carefully all the pretty pictures in bright colors. (I tend to prefer seed packets with drawings rather than photos. I think it’s because it helps me to fit these fantasy flowers more easily into the fantasy garden I carry around in my head.)

3. I pick up a packet, read the back of the packet instructions and descriptions, put the packet back and instantly forget what it said. I usually go through about 30 or so turns at this.

4. Finally, overwhelmed with all the information and choices, I just pick the pictures I think are pretty, without regard at all to instructions or descriptions.

Pretty cool method, huh? The beauty of this approach is that I never, ever know what I’ll end up with.This year, one of my picks was the moon flower.

I started the moon flower seeds in my indoor light garden–ending up with about eight seedlings. I had no idea where to put them, so they languished in their seed pots on my front porch for at least a couple of weeks while I gave careful consideration to where they should go. After much deliberation, I plunked them next to the garden fence in the flower bed.

I really thought that they had died because I didn’t even notice them for quite a long time after that. Now, please understand that my attention was taken up with drought, hollyhock rust and other assorted disasters of the garden variety. When I finally noticed them, it is because I was weeding and accidentally snatched up two of the plants before I realized the error of my ways. Instantly, I shoved them back into the soil and gave them my sincere apologies.

I kept an eye on them but wasn’t much impressed for some time.

Then…The other day, I was gazing out at the garden just as the sun was rising and thought I saw what looked like several pieces of trash that had blown against the fence. I was baffled by this because it would be a long journey for trash to make it into our yard, given that we live far far away from our neighbors and the trash would have to make the trip through the woods. Our trash, of course, is never allowed out to roam, so it couldn’t have been ours.

Well, curious gal that I am, I ambled outside with my coffee to see just what this trash was. Imagine my surprise to find flowers. Moon flowers!

They’re HUGE! I would say they’re about as big as my hand and perfectly white. They almost don’t look real the flowers are so very perfect. The vines have become quite healthy and spread everywhere–even onto the wind gauge for my new weather station.

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Those wacky moon flower vines on my wind gauge

I was so happy with them that I went to show my husband the flowers later in the day. Guess what? They were GONE.

It turns out that the flowers are called moon flowers not because they look like the moon, but because they bloom at night–in the moonlight. Duh.

By the time day gets rolling along, the flowers curl back up and hide from the sun again until nightfall.

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Moon flowers curling up to nap during the daylight hours

Intrigued, I did a wee bit of research. It turns out that the moon flower is a tender, perennial vine in warmer climates. I’m thinking that here in Zone 7 it won’t return next year without help, so if I want more moon flowers, I’ll have to save some seeds.

Several people online have also commented on the “pleasing fragrance.” I was hoping for another heady fragrance like the honeysuckle that blooms here in the spring. Now that’s a glorious smell! I didn’t recall smelling anything “pleasingly fragrant” near the moon flowers, so I rushed back out to push my nose into the flower. I must have selected the unscented variety, because mine don’t smell a bit.

So would I grow them again? Perhaps if I had a place where I could enjoy them at night I would. As it is, they’re in bed when I’m out and about in the garden. And to the uneducated eye the vines might look a bit like weeds.

So, there you have it. Moon flowers.

Posted In: Gardening