Biking . . .

. . . through Wisconsin.

The day started with a walk around the yard to check on my gardens and to deadhead the day lilies. Why oh why do these beautiful flowers only last one day. Couldn't someone develop a day lily that lasted more than 1 day? It can be called the several day lily!

Day Lily

Front garden

Bee balm

I took today off. It is probably the first Monday I have had off from work since the end of February, not counting Memorial Day. Another big project at work is making to hard to take much vacation. This totally sucks because the same thing happened last summer and I and my staff were hoping that this summer would be different, but it isn't much different. Dang!

On my day off we decided to bike to New Glarus today. I love this little town. We made a day of it, first stopping at the fudge store, then Fat Cats for a latte and sandwich. Finally ending up at The New Glarus Brewery for a beer and tour. We have never been at the brewery when they were bottling, so were quite excited to see the operation.

Spotted Cow

The weather was cool but breezy. There were 15+ mile winds from the northwest - since New Glarus is southwest of Madison, the wind was over our right shoulder heading to New Glarus, but seemed almost head on when we returned. I knew the ride back would be windy and didn't complain. Last year we had a ride to New Glarus that I swear was into the wind both ways, which is highly unlikely, but I swear that is what happened.

Bridge in Bellville

A great day and a great 42 mile bike ride!

 

Last Thursday's bike ride

Adder: this is from last weeks bike ride.

Enjoy the moments!

 

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Life gets . . .

. . . in the way!

I don't know about you, but this summer is flying by. Does time really go faster as you get older? Or are you just more aware of all the things you want to accomplish and feel like there is not enough time to get it done?

My goal, my want, my dream is to post about life, work, running, biking, gardening, cooking each and every day. How hard can that be? A few words typed onto a screen, a few pictures from the day. Obviously I am a bit lackadaisical regarding that goal. I say I want to blog every day, yet I don't. No one is stopping me. Most evenings I should be able to devote 1\2 hour to writing and publishing a post. Seriously what is up? Kids are out of the house and Todd is retired as of July 1 and is doing quite a good job doing work around the house. Enough complaining . . . .

Saturday morning started with a little 2 mile run with Sophie, then I biked to a 1 hr Pilates class. Honestly the rest of the day was relaxing, pulling weeds, watering the gardens, doing a little cleaning.

Sophie relaxing on the deck after her run.

Recipe challenge update: I continue to work on making recipes from Jenna's blog, Eat,Live, Run - here. Slowly but surely I cook. So far I have made 46 new recipes including tonight's dinner zesty crock pot chicken and potato stew. (Green beans added from our garden) Do you realize how hard it is to cook new recipes all the time? Will I complete my challenge before year end? Who knows, but almost each and every recipe has been great. At a minimum I will have expanded my go to meals and I have used a variety of new ingredients!

Stew on the 27th of July! Not your normal summer dinner? Well, the weather was anything but 'normal' today. I don't think it could make up its mind. Sun, clouds, wind, rain, wind, clouds, sun. Back and forth all day long.

This is what it looked like when we came off the water.

Windy days generally mean great jet ski weather. I think I was a little hesitant to head out on the lake because the temp's were only in the mid 70's, not the warmest weather to get wet. But we did anyway and we were rewarded with white cap weather and hardly a boat on the water. Because of the cool air temp's the splashing water was a bit of welcome warmth, albeit short lived. Because as soon as you got wet the winds chilled you down. But we were constantly getting soaked, so it was a balanced day on the water!

I want to write about my biking and running and Pilates - but in an effort to keep this short and because other than a quick spin around the neighborhood on my bike I did neither of the other two activities today. And after all, I want my blog to be about today, and maybe just a little of yesterday because that is when I started this post!

Enjoy the moments!

 

 

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Going . . .

nowhere / or somewhere - it doesn't matter, because today was the type of day that we deserve after putting up with winter.  Oh my - it was beautiful.  Sunny skies, a little breeze - a perfect 71 degrees.

Blue sky

Running: I started the day with a 2.6 mile run. Many of my running friends are running half and full marathons and I am struggling to work my way back up to 5-6 miles.  I will do it, I know, but it will take awhile. People can talk about how great walking is, and I am the first person to talk about the benefits of biking, but nothing - NOTHING compares to running. If you haven't been running for awhile, 3 miles is a long way.  Case in point, last weekend we were in New York for a long weekend and walked 8-10 miles per day - Friday, Saturday and Sunday - that is a lot of walking. Last week I biked to work Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and yesterday biked to pilates class for a week total of 56 miles this past week.  All that exercise and 3 miles is tough.  Needless to say, this has made me recommit to running. As an exercise nothing compares!

Planting: Later in the morning I went to the flower shop to pick up some annuals.  My gardens are full of perennials, but the burst of colors that annuals provide is a must have.  I focused on purples, oranges and yellow as color choices.  Hoping for pops of color in those specific colors will look nice.

Veggie garden planted

We also planted our veggies, which included carrots, radishes, spinach, onions, peppers, tomatoes, beans and beets.  I left space for more tomatoes and area's to plant more radishes and spinach in a couple of weeks to spread the yield out over a few weeks.


Menu:  On tonights menu, compliments of Jenna's eat,live,run blog was Beef Empanadas, HERE.  I should have started making these earlier in the day, but it was worth the 7:30 dinner time.  The dough came together easily. I took Jenna's suggestion and combined the butter and flour with my hands. I usually do it with a fork, but actually it was easier to get it completely mixed together using my hands.  Empanadas can be made in a variety of sizes, I looked through the cupboards and found a 5 inch bowl and used that as my dough cutter.  It ended up being a perfect size!  The beef filling was good and a bit unusual, since it included a chopped hard boiled egg.

cut dough

ready for the oven

fresh out of the oven and ready to eat

As always . . . Enjoy the moments!