Older Healthier

Can’t bend over and garden? Solution

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:03:54 +0000

Help others.

A lady I will have coffee with on Friday has a problem. She has a small plot of land, wants to grow tomatoes and has joint problems that prevent her from bending. She landed on a solution: she started an organization that matches people with land who want a vegetable garden and who will not or cannot do the gardening with those who do not have the land but want to do the work. That just rings with beauty.

She is in her mid-70s. What a way to think.

Walk well. J J

Seedlings

admin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:29:17 +0000

There are a number of ways to get plants started in a vegetable garden: direct seeding in the garden, planting seedlings purchased at a nursery, and starting seedlings inside or in a greenhouse. I use all three.

Planting seeds directly in the garden
The advantage of this is that it is quick and easy. Work the soil and insure it is the best it can be. I then scratch a shallow furrow for each line of seeds I’ll put down. Sometimes measuring with a tape, but most often just eyeballing. I plant carrots this way. And in order to insure that the soil stays moist so that the feathery leaves can push through, and to protect the new leaves from earwigs and other vile creatures, I put down floating row cover.

Buying seedlings at a nursery
I sometimes do this. Especially if I find a space I need to fill a space and don’t want to wait for what can sometimes be two months to grow seedlings. But I have to pick from what the nursery has in stock. And what others have left behind!

Starting seedlings inside
I do this for many vegetables. Especially those I want to start early in the growing season. Right now I have kale, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli (brassicaceae), and eight varieties of tomatoes in a seedling tray under a grow light. The brassicaceae popped up yesterday, and the tomatoes began showing their tiny new stems this morning. I have a 72 cell tray and put in sterile starting soil. I keep the soil moist and warm, using a heating pad specifically designed for this process. And a grow light. I had problems the first season I grew seedlings: damping off and leggy stems. Damping off, where seedlings are susceptible to a variety of fungus, can be prevented by removing the plastic cover of the seedling tray as soon as the seedlings first appear. And leggy stems (too rapid stem growth versus leafing) is best taken care of with proper use of a good grow light. The payoff? Early planting of the varieties of vegetables I choose. Not waiting for what the nursery will have. Oh. And the joy of watching them grow.

Lettuce seedlings from earlier in the season

Walk well. J J

Time to order seed

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:11:37 +0000

My uphill neighbor, Dr. Beth, says that tomato plants should be put in the ground in May. At the earliest. I like to plant them in March. We have not had spring frosts for some time, so I have been right. So far. But in order for me to put seedlings in the ground in March, I have to start them in January.

Seedling tray for 2009 planting

I ordered seeds the day before yesterday. Later than I had thought I would. Elaine and I had talked about what we want to harvest this year, and I created a layout of the beds and a list:

beans
- bingo beans
- cannellini
- maxibell
tomatoes
- black tomatoes
- brandywine
- English princess
- Japanese trifele blacks
- legend
- momotaro
- old German
- siletz
jalapeño peppers
early wonder top tall beets
fiesta broccoli
lady bell peppers
magenta sunset Swiss chard
Mexican strain tomatillo
millionaire eggplant
carrots
- yaya
- napa
Nero di Toscana kale
Orient express cucumbers
ruby ball cabbage
snow crown cauliflower
superpik squash

Okay. I went crazy with the tomatoes. But just wait until summer. The pictures of delectable meals, highlighted by the tastiest tomatoes possible.

Walk well. J J

Think clearly

admin — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:05:09 +0000

Land on the solution.

Often when I talk with others about making changes in their lives I get what I call the litany of excuses. You know some of them. We have all used some of them at one time or another. There are people who can come up with an apparently inexhaustible number of roadblocks to progress. And I have caught myself trying to counter each one. Fruitless. The point is to land on a solution; not the problem. Stop worrying and start moving. Making the simplest, smallest progress is progress. Make a decision. Act.

Walk well. J J

Exercise consistently

admin — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:14:14 +0000

We have the time. We can design our own programs. Of course it is essential to check with our doctors for guidance in this area.

I am a hiker. I started walking for exercise in my late 50s. I could walk only three blocks without getting fatigued. Yes, that is pretty extreme. But at the end of the month, I was walking a half hour each day. And when I was 60, I walked 1,000 miles from the border with Mexico to Lake Tahoe.

Others will want to swim, to bicycle, or whatever. The point is: get active. Move.

We will write about ideas for exercise, share the experience of others who have improved their lives by exercising, and list resources from time-to-time.

Walk well. J J

Eat well

admin — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:04:25 +0000

With the advent of urbanization, refrigeration, and rapidly changing technology, we began to separate ourselves from the production of food and its preparation. We lost flavor, freshness, and control over much of what we eat.

As older people, we have the time to get part of that back. To grow in strength and health by helping to provide our own food supplies. Not everyone can have a backyard vegetable garden, but most of us can grow something. Be it one tomato plant in a big pot, herbs, or whatever we prioritize for the space we have. We can shop for the best tasting, most healthful foods in local farmers’ markets, and we can talk with grocers to encourage them to provide the best that is available to them.

We will write about eating well in three general categories:

growing vegetables
preparing delicious food
sources of good food

Walk well. J J

Mr. D

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:51:29 +0000

“Another dream is now reality . . . and I’m going home.” So wrote Charles Daniels. Trail name: Mr. D.

Triple crown. To most people that evokes images of thoroughbred horses. For hikers, it is the description of those who have hiked the three crown jewels of the American outdoors: the Appalachian Trail (2,178 miles), the Pacific Crest Trail (2,650 miles), and the Continental Divide Trail (CDT – 3,100 miles). Daniels did this. He completed the last — the CDT this year. At age 70.

I read Mr. D’s journal as he hiked the CDT. There were three things that most impressed me: a clear focus on his goal, clear thinking along the way, and a steady progress.

Mr. D has agreed to tell us more of his story, and I look forward to learning more about dreams becoming reality.

Walk well. J J

The payoff

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:25:41 +0000

A healthy body is its own reward. But there is more.

The Mountaineers have published one of the best how-to books around: Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills. I especially like “the freedom of the hills”. As strength, knowledge, and expand the range of things we can do. They increase our freedom, our options.

When I began exercising, I could walk just three blocks. And I can now look out my window in Oakland, California and know that I can go anywhere within the range of my vision, including the mountains I can see. That’s freedom.

Walk well. J J

two time winner

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:03:28 +0000

Gardening is sanity provoking. A friend once told me that Tennyson said that. It makes sense. Tennyson loved gardening and wrote a lot about it. But I have been unable to find that this is indeed his words. The truth of the statement is not changed. In the original use of the base — sano — health, it is especially true.

“Men sano in corpore sano” is my point in this entry. That vegetable gardening gives strength to the muscles, health to the body and mind. And repose to the spirit. I know of few things so beneficial. It gives the gardener more control over his or her eating, as well.

Walk well. J J

The start

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:48:19 +0000

In April 2004 I stood at the monument marking the southern terminus to the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). Over the next few months, I hiked over deserts, mountains, and streams for a thousand miles to Lake Tahoe. At 62, I was not the oldest to hike the PCT, nor did I go the furthest. But. Four years earlier, the journey would have been impossible; unthinkable.

I was morbidly obese and could hardly move. I began walking three blocks each morning. Then for half an hour. I read Colin Fletcher’s The Complete Walker and took up backpacking. Hiking has become one of my passions.

My life is bigger now. Fuller. I did what I thought I could not do. And doing that is available to most everyone.

Walk well. J J