I Am Grateful And Blessed! Thank You!

Hello All!

I hope everyone had a great week this past week!  The weather was decent, not too hot or too cold.  The squirrels and birds are definitely picking up that I'm putting food out for them.  I don't know who enjoys seeing them more, me or my one dog Fleury.  And for the first time a few weeks ago, I had a squirrel take a shelled peanut out of my hand.  It was awesome.

I'm going to stray away this week from talking about my garden.  Not much new in that area.  I did get a tiny little dog zen statue.  I'll try to share a pic of that next week.

As a few of you may know, I recently broke my hand almost 2 weeks ago.  I'm not going to get into what actually happened.  That's a story for another day.  And my purpose for sharing this is to talk about how blessed I am.

I wasn't wanting to share this.  Please understand that I am not asking for anyone's sympathy.  The last thing I want is for you to feel sorry for me.  Do I need help with some things?, yes.  And I certainly appreciate any good vibes you would like to send my way.

I could look back on that night and dwell on the thousand different ways it wouldn't have happened.  But that isn't going to help.  I'm not one to sit around feeling sorry for myself.  What's done is done.  I choose to be grateful that it wasn't worse in a thousand different ways.  And it could have been way, way worse.  Easily.  For one, it could have been my right hand.  That alone would have been a struggle.  Or I could still be laying in a hospital bed right now.

I am going to heal. It will be a little bit of a process, but I'll be good as new before you know it.  Someone was looking out for me that night.  And for the I am truly blessed.

Some shout outs:

*my neighbor Carl.  I truly don't know what I would've done without him that night.  He came to help me, as soon as he figured out something was wrong.  It could've been a way different ending without him.

*my stepdad Charlie. When I called him that night and said I needed to go to the ER, he dropped everything he was doing to take me.  He also took me to the hand specialist the next day.

*My mom and Bekah.  They were on vacation at the ocean.  They packed everything up and came home way early to make sure I was ok.

*my mom for taking me to my surgery (and not taking any videos)

*Bekah, for helping my put on my watch (and lots of other things around the house)

*everyone at the ER.  Not everyone has a good experience with the care at the ER, but I truly feel that they did everything in their power that night.  They were caring and attentive, along with giving me great medical treatment.  And they tried everything the could to save my 5 year McGuire ring before cutting it off.   I guess its better to lose the ring than the finger.

*Dr. Alexis Pilato and her office team.  They got me in the office asap and scheduled me for surgery the next day.

*the surgery center.  everyone there was very friendly and helpful in that stressful time.  We even laughed together when my pregnancy test came back negative.

*my department director at work and friend Laurie Smith.  I am sure then when I texted her that night what happened, her heart probably dropped.  I honestly couldn't ask for a better boss.  She checked on me multiple times to make sure I was ok that week, and also got ahold of my mom to make sure the surgery went well.

*my coworker and friend, Amber.  At the last minute, she handled not only her share of the workload, but mine as well.  Kudos to her.

*the HR team at McGuire.  It brightened my day to get a get well card from them.

*our Senior Leaders at McGuire.  Along with Laurie Smith, they helped ensure that I was able to come back to work when I did.  I have some limitations, and I am blessed that I am in a position that I can come to work with those.

*Charla Crawford, for tying my shoes.

*my family, I appreciate the love and support.

*my friends, I am blessed that you have been reaching out to check on me

*and a huge shout out to everyone that has been sending me all the good vibes and prayers.  I know that those have been helping me heal as quickly as possible.  Please keep sending them.

With all of your support, I am on my way back to being 100%.  I may not be in my teens or twenties anymore, so I know that it isn't going to happen overnight.  But my goal is to finish at the top of my age bracket when it comes to healing time.

I am grateful in so many different ways.

Sunday Zen Day 6/18/2023

Good day, my lovely friends!

I hope you are finding peace and happiness today, wherever you may be.  I have been spending an extra few days at home, just relaxing and enjoying some zen time.

I know I left off last week with talking about trying to find some strawberry plants.  So, let's just get started.

I kind of felt like I didn't have good odds finding any strawberry plants, but I wanted to try anyways.  It was already going on mid June, and strawberries definitely should already be in the ground.  And just in case some of you don't know, you really need to wait until the second year to see any fruit.

I figured I would start at Walmart.  I knew that the last weekend they still had a handful of strawberry plants, so it was worth a shot.  I wanted to get started early, there was a car cruise in town that pretty much goes from the one end of town to the other, and wanted to get a head start.  the main section of town was already loaded with cars AT 6:30 IN THE MORNING!

Well, I got out there, and there were no strawberry plants.  I checked and double checked, but no luck.  My next try was Home Depot.  They usually have a large selection of plants to pick from.  I have gotten strawberry plants fro the before, and they did well.  I walked on the inner garden section and then the outside section.  They still had a lot of veggie seedling to pick from.  Lots of tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc.  But no strawberry plants.

I came home defeated.  Even though I didn't have high hopes to begin with, I still wanted to find a couple. I was going to my local fruit market that morning, getting 1 or 2 more tomato plants.  Sine they are only a few blocks away, I decided to walk.  Once I get there, I thought I would walk around.  Earlier in the week, I didn't see any strawberries going, but why not check again.  And then I saw what I thought were strawberry leaves and I got all excited.  I practically skipped over the few steps.  When I looked at the tag, it said 'pineberries."

What the heck are pineberries?  So I went to google real quick.  They are basically white strawberries that taste a little like pineapple.  Sounds good to me!  I grabbed 3 of them.  And I also got their last patio tomato plant.  

Once I got back home and got them planted, I did a little more research on them. Along with some other interesting facts, it is highly recommended to have at least 1 regular strawberry plant for every 3-4 pineberry plants for pollination.  I had already started 1 runner from my old plants, so I wanted to get a couple more just in case.

This blog is getting kind of long, so I'll wrap it up.  I dug up 7 or 8 of runners from my old plants.  This was challenging, considering on how dry and somewhat rocky the ground was.  I planted all of them, knowing that probably at least half weren't going to make it.  And I was right.  Probably at least 3 or 4 might not make it.  Let's hope for the best.

There's really no other news from my garden this past wee.  Thankfully it has rained a few times, so I haven't needed to go out and water as much.

If you would like to donate towards my Zen garden, look me up on PayPal at paypal.me/plantbasedbrandi

One of my pineberry plants:

One of my strawberry runners I started a few weeks ago:

A couple of my sister's flowers:

Sunday Garden Zen

 

Good day, my lovely friends!  I hope your week has been good to you.

So I have been semi busy this past week trying to get my little bucket garden even better.  As you may remember, I tried starting some tomato/sweet pepper plants from seeds.  I'm not sure what happened, but they just weren't growing after they sprouted.  Almost a week ago I decided to stop at the fruit market in town that also sells some seedlings/junior plants.   I also wanted to see if they had some strawberry plants.

First, they didn't have strawberry plants, so that was a little disappointing.  But I was looking around at their other plants.  I was looking to get some cherry tomato plants, but unfortunately they didn't have any.  But I did find patio tomato plants.  I had never heard of them before, so I was intrigued.  I did a quick google search in the store, and they were pretty much was I thought they were going to be.  They only grow about 2 feet tall, so they are great for growing on the patio/porch, small gardens, or containers.  I grabbed up t a couple of them.  Now these were already past the seedling stage, and even had a couple of little tomatoes already growing on them.  I also grabbed a 4 pack of green pepper seedlings.

Once I got home and took care of a few things (including taking the fur babies out), I got to work with planting them in my buckets.  It's didn't take too long, and I even gave them a good amount of water to drink.  I have to say that I am loving the patio tomatoes already. 

So I wanted to learn a little more about these tomato plants.  So I went back to google.  Amongst some other little facts, I learned that there are indeterminate and determinate tomato plants.  With patio tomato being determinate.  This pretty much means that the tomatoes pretty much ripen around the same time, instead of getting them more spread out.  If you like to can tomatoes, you want them to ripen together so that you can harvest more.

I did more work yesterday, including going strawberry plant hunting.  But I think I'll save this for another blog post later in the week.  

I hope you all have a wonderful day, and take time to invest in yourself!

Your zen friend,

Plant Based Brandi

Patio tomato:

My crookneck squash:

Bonus picture of my squirrel friend this morning:

It's Monday Funday!

Happy Monday, my friends!

I hope you had a nice weekend.  Whether you worked (like me), chilled around the house, or went out, I hope you had fun.

I worked 12 hours on Saturday, with 4 hours of that not planned.  But hey, I'm trying to pay off a house early, so every dollar helps.  Even though it was a little toasty, we still got to go outside and enjoy the nice day.

Yesterday, I did some little odds and ends around the house, plus I just relaxed a good bit.  I had to do the usual, like laundry and started meal prepping a little for work.  But I also got a little reading done.  I'm reading Still Water by Amy Stuart right now.  I got it from one of those Lending Libraries nearby.  It's probably something that I wouldn't have bought, but it's not bad considering it was free.  And I'll be certain to pass it along when I am finished with it.

Speaking of books, it's still my dream to own a book store.  Imagine, I could tell a customer to hang on for a minute, that I'm trying to finish this chapter, and they would perfectly understand.  And if I had a used book store, I could read a lot of books before I sell them.  They're already used, so it would not be an issue if I put some extra creases in it.

So, who wants to donate some cash towards my book store?  I could also sell books online, which in many ways would be more up my alley.  

As far as my bucket gardening, my seedlings that I bought from the store are doing great.  I'm pretty sure that they are already growing in their new containers.  However, my ones that I started from seeds still don't seem to be doing much of anything.  They aren't dead, but they don't seem to be making any progress.  I might go to the store again and see if they have any more seedlings left, just in case.

I'll take more pictures over this next weekend and share with you guys.  Side note: no tomatoes just yet lol.

Have a zen day!