Limitations and Germinations

My shadow and my shadow's shadow, out walking.

My body has been feeling relatively strong for the last two weeks so I ramped up my walking distance and time.  But now I'm ramping back down for awhile and applying ice because the tissue around bursa in my heels and Achilles tendons is irritated and hurting.  One thing that has really sucked about have inflammatory and immune diseases is the intermittent nature of it all and the difficulty in building fitness.  I have a week or two where I feel good so I increase my exercise but there will be some weak spot in my system that can't handle that increase so I have to ramp back down.  And regardless, after a few weeks my overall health declines and I have to cut way back.  This makes it hard to slowly increase my strength and endurance.  Which really sucks.  I guess what I have to think about exercise differently from healthy people; for me, the point is to be as fit as I can be, given the constraints I face, and that may mean that I can't build my fitness level in the same way that others can.  Sounds nice, I can live with that.  But damn, it's frustrating.  Today I went for my usual afternoon walk and I had to really force myself to turn around because I knew that I shouldn't overwork my ankles.  But I had the energy and physical stamina otherwise to keep going.  I've never come across anyone addressing the specific issues associated with getting fit while chronically yet intermittently ill. 

In other news, one bed of the new batch of onions is germinating.  I can't remember whether they're red or yellow; I didn't mark the beds.  I guess we'll see when it's time to harvest.  The red leaf lettuce is growing and I found a pea sprout this afternoon.  I purchased a sprinkler so I can water just the one area of the garden that is currently planted.  There is a timed sprinkler system installed, but it covers the whole garden so it hasn't been useful yet.  And it's difficult to effectively water beds with a hose; things get flooded and the water sits or runs off rather than penetrating down to the roots and seeds.  And the standing water forms a crust on the top of the soil that is hard for seeds to penetrate, which I think may be the explanation for the failure of my green leaf lettuce to germinate.

Red Leaf Lettuce

It has been beautiful for the last week, temperatures in the mids 70s and low 80s.  Tonight though, we're supposed to get down below freezing again.  Still not time to put anything tender in the ground.

Latest batch of onions germinating

Oh, I almost forgot.  There's a new tarantula den in the front yard!  I caught a glimpse of him or her this morning, in that brief moment between walking up next to the hole and my shadow crossing over the hole and scaring it into going deeper inside.   I don't if it's the one I know who already lives in the front and who has now just changed den locations, or if it's an entirely new tarantula.   The insect life has been steadily increasing with the warmer weather.  There's some kind of spider who lives on the wall right next to my side of the bed, and there's another who lives on the wall and in the bookshelf on the immediate right of my chair.  I'm not inclined to put them outside.  They eat the flies and I don't like flies. 

A pea germinating!