i can do this..

i can make it a habit to write. i'm just taking a break from cleaning and packing.. and enjoying the spring breeze and sunrays coming through the window. still don't know when exactly i'm moving, but i hope it's before i leave for Arkansas so i can get the garden started at least. we went out for a stroll in the downtown core last night to check out the scenes and peek around at the In the Soil art festival to take our minds off the stresses of everything happening at once.

what else.. oh yeah, i turned 28 a few days ago.. i'd have to say it was a pretty good birthday. i feel like i accomplished a lot since the last one, like i've changed as a person for the better. learned some lessons that will keep with me for a long time to come, and i am grateful.

i have learned a thing or two about self confidence, and gained the motivation i needed to take better care of myself. since january i have been focusing on my overall health and expanding on skills and knowledge. not to mention networking, i went from having no place to garden this year to having so many places to choose from i could visit a different one each day of the week.

also, i've managed to settle down into a pretty cushy position in my job, i love the schedule.. it's the shift i have been waiting years for, ever since i started working full time.finally i'll be able to enjoy my evenings and weekends and work out a routine like a 'normal' person, and plan ahead for mini adventures.

..and now that we're finally getting some sun, i'm taking breaks from packing and cleaning to soak it up. i'll be hitting up my papa's house tomorrow for further birthday celebrations, and the weather is supposed to be amazing. and i get to introduce matt to my parents.. even though we've been living together forever we finally started dating. it's hard these days to find someone you can trust, his presence in my life has been a blessing..

2013 is going to be a good year. it already is.. so much freshness. well i've got so much to do, and more sun to soak up.. so imma head outta the interwebs. i'm attempting to use thins thing as a way to keep track of myself and what i've been up to and how i grow, so here's hoping i can keep up with the habit. cheers..!

...really?

wow.. it's been a month since i've hit this blog... well, i've been busy i suppose! getting ready to fly out to Arkansas [i won!], definitely more decisive [i'm moving!], and excited to plant some gardens!! not only do i have a bunch of different plots to help out with, i get to have my own.. the new place has a big ol' back yard, and i can do what i want to it. overjoyed..

what have i been up to? dang.. everything. i'm still on my get healthy venture, i managed to quit smoking, it's been 25 days! unbelievably, i don't want a cigarette. i'm on a mission, this is my year to get fit and kick ass, and i'm bloggin' it out right here:
http://sagethrivechallenge.blogspot.ca/

hmm.. then there's the gardening.. always about the gardening. at the beginning of the year i was under the impression that i wouldn't have my own garden space, but many people had offered up their yards. now we discover that we're moving to a place with a yard and i can garden all i want... and i still get to help others too! it's gonna be a busy year.. and i'm blogging that stuff here:
http://southernontariourbanpermaculture.blogspot.ca/

what else? oh yeah, i came up with a new style of 'gardening'... similar to guerrilla gardening but not quite the same.. more like hiding food plants right out in the open. i blended my two favourite hobbies, gardening and geocaching.. and came up with gardenCaching! and i'm excited to get on it.. and yup, you guessed it, it has it's own blog too:
 http://gardencaching.blogspot.ca/

well that's all i got for now.. i gotta get packing! only two more weekends before we move, and i've only just begun to go through my stuff. it's the perfect rainy weekend to do so, probably a blessing in disguise that the weather has been so cold. i'll stay inside to get my chores done, and save playing outside for may. peace for now..

sprung ahead... and indecisive.

wow, as if time isn't going fast enough, another hour right out the window... i just realized i haven't typed anything in over a week. haven't had a day off work either. it's been slightly less winter out, so i've been spending most of my week outside of the house. more or less vagabonding around, i've spent more hours trekking the town with a rucksack or surfing other people's couches [when i'm not at work].

in the past week and a bit i've been nominated to go to Arkansas for work, helped a friend deck out his new urban apartment with luscious tropicals [2 day project, soon to be augmented with herbs and vegetables], got a couple of runs in, worked every single day [did i mention tomorrow is 10 of 10 in a row?]... lost an hour of sleep that ended up being all night somehow, had my audition for said possible work trip [find out if i win by Friday], walked a sh*t ton [deployed 25 Munzees around town, on foot..], and survived mostly off of shakes and eastern-ish cuisine. i think i forgot to breathe a few times, but at least i remembered to shower [ha!]. oh yeah, and i went to that Geocaching event downtown, at a grill joint that had some damn amazing wings.

om. nom.

so much to do, house cleaning.. laundry! writing, printing... planting, digging, mapping, planning... ohh man this is gonna be a crazy year. possibly relocating?! who knows.... maybe, back to the rucksack for a little while. i'm becoming claustrophobic [as i seem to every spring] and i'm feeling the need for more space. or maybe just my own space? i've been hunting for studio or bachelor apartments that i could have all for myself, one with a kitchen... it seems that i may have a wait ahead of me. so maybe i'll spend the season living out of my backpack once again.. it depends on some luck, opportunities and timing. stay tuned...


 

bring it on spring..

hurry up already! it's been so cold... i guess we were spoiled last winter with a ridiculously warm one. next to no snow at all.. crazy. we actually had a winter this time. for real yo. been keeping super busy planning for garden season, the SOUPgarden group has some fresh plans for 2013 including some community gardening, various urban plots throughout the city, and some minor guerrilla gardening and wildcrafting.

been spending some time at the local library parusing the ever growing collection of gardening books, and i found one in particular very inspiring. City Farmer by Lorraine Johnson is a story [rather collection of stories] about her journeys as an urban farmer, and much of her experiences involve community gardening and travelling to urban plots much like the ones i plan to help build and maintain this year.

trying to get my health back on track with a busy lifestyle has been a challenging task, but i'm doing my best. time to step it up this spring, lots of travelling to garden, garden building and maintenance, not to mention some trail running to cover the cardio. piece by piece i'm slowly incorporating new healthy habits into my lifestyle.

oh man there's so much going on i can barely keep up writing about everything i have planned for this year. gardening, learning, and some photo taking too, i'll be following around the car club again this year to photograph their charity events and city cleanups. and then there's a few other side crafting projects on the go, life is far too short to sleep!

the 'new' library

well it's not really new anymore.. it [finally!] opened this past summer. to be honest, since the beginning of the build i had a kind of 'spite' for the place.. the park it was built in had some of the few remaining apple trees from the orchards of the north end's past.. well, the whole what is now our city was once covered in orchards and vineyards. anyways, i spent many [homeless] nights in that park, especially in or around this one particular apple tree.

it once had a third main branch coming off toward us in the photo, the fence line for the construction was only a few meters away and some of the roots must have been disturbed in the dig which killed off that whole third section of the tree. it was once like a comfy hammock, that would cradle me [and probably many others before me] to sleep. the day i passed by on the bus and saw the fences go up i doubled back to see if the hometree was inside the fence line. i was hot with anger as i ran around the field in search of this tree.


there it was, just outside the fence. i came back once a week to sit inside the branches and watch the construction. i thought it would never end. i wondered for months what this thing would look like, this 'acquatic center' with an attached library [where they moved the grantham branch].

  so today was the day that i'd finally go in, and i'm glad that i did because ...it's beautiful. i'm in love with libraries, and i'm intrigued by the attached swimming pools.. i may look into getting a pass for public swim. but for now having access to a seemingly overlooked prime stash of gardening books is enough to help me dream away the next few weeks of winter with images and ideas of what's to come this spring.

there's a couple titles i hadn't seen before, and one in particular i've been trying to get my hands on for a while but it's always checked out, so i'm glad i finally got to grab it. it seems that the word permaculture is being used more, and finally working it's way into Niagara's gardening vocabulary. all i have to say about that is... awesome!

well i checked a few of these out and i'm quite absorbed in one of them right now.. i just wanted to take a break from reading to write about my score. soooo jacked for spring, already starting to see some green poking out in beds along my regular walking routes, and the smell of thawing earth is in the air :)

gettin' back on the blogger..

yea, it's about time. this blog was supposed to be my 'journal'.. look how well i kept up with that haha. ahem.. yeah. well, i gotta get back in the habit. so here i am, clackity clack. well first off, it's snowing like crazy outside, blowing sideways wall of whiteness.. so i'll probably be sticking inside for the rest of the evening. i got out earlier for some chinese buffet style, and i plan to spend the evening working out to make up for it.

i decided to take up a new sport... running. i started a blog to keep track of my journey, The Sage Thrive Challenge. it's about more than just the running and the training, but about an overall lifestyle change to get fit and stay that way. i did a lot of backpacking and hiking in my younger days which kept me in shape, but i've been more of an urbanite since i've been working full time and becoming more involved in my community.

what else have i been up to..? oh yea how could i forget... gardening!!! my absolute most favourite pastime ever. nutritious and delicious too! of course i spent plenty of time in the yard last year, took lots of photos and of course shared the bounty, but didn't spend as much time as i should have blogging and keeping track of the progress. i'm spending the winter months in hibernation catching up on the past crazy year, as i prepare for the one up and coming.

and in the spirit of winter and staying green, i put the bicycle in the shed and picked up a transit pass. it's been a few years since i've lived far enough from work to worry about transportation, and a transit pass was definitely a wise choice. i have once again managed to become a transit ninja, mastering the routes and transfers to get me around town in the snow.

well.. i think that's about it for my break from my workout.. time to get back to it! great things to come this year.. 2013 will be a year of postitive change for me, i can feel it! woop woop!

Random Freshness

well.. it seems i took the year off from blogging.. lots to do, so little time. now that hibernation season is upon us, i'm finally getting around to sorting through my picture files. so far i've gone through the media stored in the SD card booklets, some of the CDs and still haven't touched anything saved to a phone.. that will be fun.

going through all of thse disks, i'm coming across photos i'd forgotten i had even taken, some random hikes and adventures, big city scenes and farmland chillaxin'. and garden... oh, soo so much garden. even other people's gardens! so my goal is this winter to play catch up, get back on the ball for blogging [though i was barely on it to begin with] and make some use of all these lightbeams i've been capturing.

i also found the rest of my travel photos, now i just have to find the journals to go with them. i started that adventure blog many moons ago and stopped in the middle of the east coast adventure.. and there's so many more journeys i'd love to go back and write about.

anyhoo.. time to jet for another random adventure.. i hope everyone is enjoying this holiday season... time to get excited for what 2013 brings!