One Tomato, Two Tomato – Doing the Hard Stuff

I’m a great gatherer of information. I seldom put them to use. It’s no wonder that I’m stuck, finding myself in the same ruts, year after year. I mutter and moan the same old, same old. I set goals, I write about them but somehow the doing gets left behind. Here I am again, at my keyboard. This time, it is a little different. I am doing, using information gathered from B.J. Fogg’s Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything. It’s working for me. Hooray!

I’m applying the idea of doing small to my gardening. I am struggling this year. I still have alot of tomato seedlings to plant and it is still cool. I have kosy coats for them but it is very labour intensive when you have to do dozens of them. So using Fogg’s example of flossing one tooth to establish his habit, I decided that I could just plant one tomato with a kosy coat. It didn’t feel so daunting when it is just one. It wasn’t hard and I ended up doing two. I felt pretty good after. I’m confident I could do it again tomorrow. Maybe I could do 4 tomatoes.

There’s nothing like success to make a person feel good. I like it. It helped me to seed another raised bed with more lettuce, spinach, Asian greens and radishes. I’m hoping successive seeding will keep us in salad greens all summer. I finished my day of gardening by spreading 4 bags of manure on 2 raised beds. Enough for one day. I am happy.

JAVA MORNINGS

Have I told you I’ve given up my Orange Pekoe cuppa? I’m making some changes to the way I live. I’m starting small with a cup of coffee in the morning, a very small cup. It holds 125ml, just a swallow. That was all I needed. I surprised myself with a burst of energy and a flurry of hard-to-do activities.

I warmed up with my usual pushing the damp mop around the floors and a little dusting along the way. I’m getting quite good at it now. Having limbered up, I used my hula hoop, what Amy Tan call the gym for seniors. I’ve already achieved the 1 minute mark, so now I’m working towards 2 minutes without stopping. Took a few tries but I got it! By then I was in a good sweat. I had to do a walk around the house to cool off before doing 3 rounds of 20 seconds of planking. I stretched by doing my qigong routine.

I probably over did after 2 months of potato couching. It was so nice to have the energy. It was hard to stop. I went for a little bike ride after lunch before taking Sheba out for her walk. Then I finished raking the leaves in the front yard. Now I’m all revved up. I hope I can sleep tonight. I did have another small cup of coffee after lunch. I was tired of being a wet noodle. I hope to repeat my day tomorrow but maybe a little more moderate. I might have to skip the 2nd coffee.