I could never lift a 60 pound bale of hay!

PPal - BEAUTIFUL! *JEALOUS!!!* Did you see the pic I posted earlier? You should put those in the database for full plant pics so people can see what a grown plant will look like. Must be nice to have greenery....

Rita - Problem with crunches that you can actually make your abdomen area bigger by building the muscles there. Everyone has a six-pack, but 99.6% of the population's 6-pack is hidden by body fat. You can crunch until the cows come home (like I did) and actually see your abs get bigger rather than lose size there. That was one thing I found to be a problem. I was doing 50-200 crunches 3x weekly & never lost an inch on my waistline. Are you tracking your body size? That's what I started to do when I realized that the scale wasn't gonna move. And I was able to see progress.

Did 50 squats yesterday & 20 lunges (10/leg). My legs are leaden bricks today from lack of working out like that. But I still did more stuff today (mostly arm stuff, but did another 20 squats & 10/leg lunges). DOMS sucks. I'm going to get some milk for my office so I have milk to drink after working out. Supposedly that will help with DOMS.

Joanne - Reminds me of buying dogfood. 40lb bag I balance on my head or throw over my shoulder. Why bales of hay? You don't have livestock, do you?

Toni you may have noticed how well our weeds are also doing - one of the disadvantages of a long growing season!

I wish my square hay bales weighed 60 lbs. These days few of them make 50 and yet they keep costing more, hmmm... We used to buy hay by the ton but our latest supplier sells by the bale. However, after the drought I feel lucky to get hay at all.

Toni, I figgured that if I got stronger abs it might pull my belly in. I have a lot of that belly fat that women tend to get when we go overweight. I am working on loosing weight. It is going very slowly. So I thought the crunches might help. I am not concerned much with trying for a 6 pack, I just thought it would help. And yes, I can see a difference since I started exercising and loosing body fat. But have so far to go. I lost ten pounds, my target is too loose 30 pounds. So I have a long way to go.

Squats, squats are a very good exercise. When I first added them to my routine, I was in really sorry shape hurting for quite awhile. Better now and continueing with the squats every other day. I use weights with the squats to make them harder to do. Lead bricks is how my legs felt too after the first few rounds of squats.

But you did really, really good!

No, no Potting Soil Bales ...the hay bales were when I was a kid. Raised on a farm, which I own now, but don't live there. I rent the pasture to fellow for his cows in the summer. We camp out at the old farm house about 6 times a year. It is about a 6 hour drive from here one way. Just grow potatoes there, but I did transplant a red leaf rose last spring, so I hope it winters over. Brace your self: the farm is in Zone 1A. It does get colder than -40



Here's my potato patch


And here's a funny shot. I found this thing near the garden that I think a horse should have pulled and thought I would make the rows for planting. My husband & kid laugh so hard. The farm has been in my family for over a hundred years, so you never know what you may find

Joanne - Ok, totally misread that. I was doing like 8 things at once at work & just bales and immediately thought bales of hay. But I've seen pix of your garden & couldn't quite figure out why bales of hay.. maybe for mulch? winter protection? Backdrop for archery? Hay fort? Chickens? And zone 1.. ouch ouch ouch. Where my parents used to live & I was an hour away from in NNY was zone 3 (I think Watertown NY was zone 3 as well, but I had a teeny apartment w/no access to outside, so couldn't grow anything even if I wanted to, so I'd go to my mom's house to play in dirt). But zone 1? Uhhhhhh... no thank you. I think that zone 5 is tough enough!! And I think that is a horse-drawn plow.. looks very similar to what I've seen the Amish use. And that's a beautiful snake! Is it a wild one? Doesn't look like a garder or common garden snake.. and I know it's not a coral snake.. some kind of color ribbon snake? Did a quick google, it's a Western Ribbon Snake. http://www.herp-pix.org/thamno... I love snakes. I don't like getting bit by them (been bit by a rosy boa & a ball python), but still love snakes. They're good critters.. eat bad things like mousies & grasshoppers.

PPal - Of course you're gonna have weeds. Who doesn't? But still, it's green! And when you have 6-7 months of blah, any green is welcome green!

Rita - That's a good, reasonable goal! As long as you don't try to lose it all at once, you'll get there! As I put it, I didn't get this pudgy overnight, it took many moons & many meals to get this fat, so it's gonna take many moons & a lot less meals to lose it.

Skiekitty said:
Rita - That's a good, reasonable goal! As long as you don't try to lose it all at once, you'll get there! As I put it, I didn't get this pudgy overnight, it took many moons & many meals to get this fat, so it's gonna take many moons & a lot less meals to lose it.

And I am one third of the way there. I used to weigh 150. I want to weigh 120. So now am 140.

And for me it took years to put this weight on also. Never had a weight problem until I got old and then it started adding up. I have been ignorning it but when that scale reached 150 that was it for me. I had enough. Started on a healthy eating and weight loss progam right away.

lovely day in the neighborhood to day !!!! was out at 6:30 am had to shovel Chewy a potty spot snow was up to his little chinny chin chin he was not to thrilled with that so while I'm throwing snow he poos on the side walk LOL guess he realy had to go . then I cleaned the car off got stuck in the road got plowed out by the little mister and Frank then thy plowed the court out so we could all go to work whewwwww hope you are all fine theres still storms out east

Too much snow! And too much snow here. Going to be finished snowing by tomorrow. Dumping snow all night. Yeck to all the snow.

Pretty day here, I have cabin fever bad, hubby took pity on me and took me and my crutches out for breakfast with friends. Then I got to sit in the parking lot at the DMV for 1.5 hrs. while hubby went in to renew his temp. handicap sign. ( he's still healing from foot surgery) Then I sat in the parking lot while he went grocery shopping.
Good times.

stay safe Rita its stopped snowing early today and the bright sun came out

at least it was warm Sue LOL did you have a good book or some thing to do ??

No, didn't have anything, didn't realize it would be that long. I ended up looking through the UB40 CD in the car, reading the lyrics and humming. People watching was interesting.

What a mess. Just heard on the news that already 20 inches snow on the ground in Suffolk County. Our major East to West road the Long Island Expressway is closed in Suffolk. Don't know exactly how much is on the ground here but more snow on the north shore of Long Island, which is where I am, than on the south shore. And the snow is still to continue all night long.

Still frozen in Michigan

We just got a foot of snow last night, so it will be a while before I'm in the garden tending a new season of roses. So to help celebrate ATP's Rose Week, I decided to share some favorite varieties grown in previous seasons. I thought I'd start in alphabetical order, and add a few letters each day. So to kick things off, here are roses whose names start with A, B, or C.

Anybody else want to join by posting photos of roses whose names start with those three letters? We could do the next few letters tomorrow, and so on throughout the week.

Amber Queen


America



Angel Face



Berries & Cream



Betty Boop



Blueberry Hill



Blush Flower Circus



Champagne Cocktail



Cherry Parfait



Chicago Peace



Christopher Marlowe



Country Dancer



Crown Princess Margaretta

AMAZING Photos!!! Are you going to put them in the database?

We had about 18 inches of snow here around my house on Long Island. Thank goodness the power stayed on.

Joanne,

I think most, if not all, of those photos are in the database. Zuzu's very good about "helping" me do that!

I hear ya' Rita. We haven't lost power either (not yet, anyway).