We did manage to grow a lot of salad and spring onions as well as new potatoes, beetroot, red onions and sweetcorn last year. Also courgettes but I tried leaving them to grow to marrows and discovered too late that they are indeed different varieties and it didn’t work very well.
This year will hopefully be salad, potatoes, onions, garlic, beetroot, carrots. Maybe some more adventurous veg but it makes sense to grow things we will use a lot of that don’t all have to be harvested in a glut.
I actually studied really hard and took the JLPT level 5 in December. Results out in March. I fully intend to take JLPT level 4 this December now too. Though admittedly I haven’t really looked at any Japanese for the last month. Time to start again soon.
I’ve managed to save some money towards a potential holiday, but it’s only enough for half a short city break at the moment, excluding spending money, so still a long way to go.
Sadly we had a mini heatwave recently and I did not realise that plants in a greenhouse would cook to a crisp so I lost all my seedlings, and some brand new tomato plants that someone else had successfully raised. This dented my confidence a bit but thankfully the weather has turned into lovely rainy sunny weather and so everything that was already planted outside is doing really well. The red onions, sweetcorn, beetroot and beans have had a growth spurt. My salad containers are still doing really well and providing us with a useful amount of salad so I haven’t had to buy any in weeks and today my first strawberry has almost ripened!
I did manage to get down to 8st 5 last week after half an hour a day of nonstop DDR and salads or soups for lunch and dinner. But then I went out for dinner and my boyfriend has been cooking for me the last few days with much bigger portion sizes and tasty food that I can’t leave on the plate AND the dance mat activity was much harder to get motivated for with a full stomach so it has also fallen by the wayside. But I am going to a wedding at the weekend and need to fit into a dress so I will make a really good effort for the rest of the week! .... Starting tomorrow :)
I did manage to get down to 8st 5 last week after half an hour a day of nonstop DDR and salads or soups for lunch and dinner. But then I went out for dinner and my boyfriend has been cooking for me the last few days with much bigger portion sizes and tasty food that I can’t leave on the plate AND the dance mat activity was much harder to get motivated for with a full stomach so it has also fallen by the wayside. But I am going to a wedding at the weekend and need to fit into a dress so I will make a really good effort for the rest of the week! .... Starting tomorrow :)
I’ve now managed to eat my own grown spinach and mixed salad leaves, which was very exciting. We have one out of three vegetable patches dug and some onions, leeks, beetroot and sweetcorn planted. Also the container potatoes are flourishing and I can see how they would have taken over the garden if I had planted them in the small vegtable patches do I’m very glad I didn’t.
I’ve bought 4 things on eBay now to get some improved feedback scores. I’ve also looked up the various things I have to sell and they don’t appear to got much, if at all. So in the end this may not be such a viable idea.
I don’t really have an excuse for my lack of exercise but even though I thought I was eating relatively good food and in good portion sizes I’m still the same if not fatter.
So far, I have realised that the job I have been holding onto for the last 7 years is probably not giving me as much job satisfaction as I could be getting by doing something else do I am now looking into alternative jobs or careers. I’m not sure how far i will go with this though as work is the least important area of my life…. But maybe that is because I have been stuck in an unfulfilling job.
Im not doing very well with this. I have managed to put weight on instead. I now have 5 pounds to lose, which is back to the heaviest I have ever been, and not a weight I feel comfortable at. Admittedly I have been I’ll for the last week or so so I have been laying around eating comfort food mostly. This week I hope to fit in a bit of exercise each day and cut down portion sizes a bit
To begin, I have read a guide on how best to go about making money selling your stuff on eBay. I have now created an account, set up a paypal account and made my first small purchase to start gettingmy feedback score up a bit.
I spent some time this morning looking at cruises and the new fancy hotels that Thomas Cook have been advertising lately. But I don’t think I got any closer to choosing. :(
Today I drilled drainage holes in all the plastic containers I had bought and now have planted some potatoes, spinach, lettuce and spring onions as well as some strawberry plants (the only thing I’m not growing from seed/bulb) in their own strawberry planter. The weather is finally starting to look reasonable as well so hopefully the plants outside should be ok.
We have spent the last few days marking out and digging over the vegetable patch. Apparently there is still a lot of work to do sifting the many many stones out and removing all the grass and weeds before we can mix in the compost let alone plant anything but it’s a start. In other news my Morning Glory seeds are the first to sprout and I have now bought all the pots I need.
I have managed to sow some seeds in trays and pots in the greenhouse now and have almost finalised plans for a raised bed system in the garden border. Pretty sure I should have prepared the ground last autumn bug hopefully things will grow ok in freshly turned soil mixed with compost. I also bought sons troughs ready for the salad leaves and herbs to be sown into or transplanted to.
Last year I bought my own house and fancied growing my own food. Unfortunately I only managed a few herbs and a sad attempt at tomatoes that resulted in 1 edible tomato. This year I want to do better. I have bought and set up a mini greenhouse and lots of seeds and seed trays. That’s as far as I’ve got.
I took a beginners course in Japanese and finished book 1 of Japanese for busy people. I went to Tokyo and then I signed up and paid for the JLPT exam before but didn’t study enough to make it worth attending so I chickened out. That was about 5 years ago. I keep picking it up and revising the basic knowledge I gad but not getting much further. Recently I found a good iPhone app which has helped me learn to recognise the kanji for level 4 (now called level 5) but now I need to study vocabulary and grammar more.
