Life is slowly coming back to normal. I'm feeling so relieved, so satisfied, and confident enough to say that spring didn't abandon us after all. There are still a few patches of snow around, but it is with great certainty that they'll disappear by this Saturday or Sunday. I worked four long days this week, and now I begin a three day weekend.
My weekend objectives are: to do some serious car shopping, finally begin some spring cleaning, and to get back into some strength and stretching exercises that build up the core and legs. The course of the past week has revealed to me just how inflexible I'm getting, so it should be neither a shock nor surprise that I'm becoming so prone to injury. Since it's the beginning of a brand new month, I started to schedule and execute my plan for cross-training. I'm ashamed to admit how weak and lacking in endurance I've become in general after this whole past ordeal. I'm left wondering if I should opt out of the race at the end of this month all together. I (re)started out on the first of this month, beginning to use walking poles around the Field House track, to pace my steps with a corrective posture, and to have something to support me on both sides rather than just one, to give me balanced movement. I achieved two kilometers until enough aching forced me to sit down. My other instruments of torture are: the yoga mat, the stability ball, my chin up bar, and a foam roller.
With the clean up plans, and the even brighter and sunnier weekend predicted ahead, my thoughts also turn to gardening, or rather just greenery in general. This long dreary winter has rendered me more appreciative of living plants. So, I've been daydreaming as I sit out here, giving thought as to how to completely transform my green space on the deck. That is: minimizing the footprint and waste of space on the floor plan, while maximizing the growing space off of it. I've been researching vertical gardening methods, and dreaming up of ideas for including planters along the deck railing, fence bars, and window sills,* and creating a rain water collector/reservoir and drip irrigation system, with a hydroponics system operated by a solar powered pump. It's rapidly turning into another one of those mad scientist thought experiments of mine. I'm imagining, given the shape of my building, that if all the exterior wall and balcony space was utilized like what I plan outside my own suite, the whole place would look like some sort of ziggurat, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The between-the-ears concept is getting extreme, and because I'm becoming really curious, I'm also getting too hyper-analytical**. A small sample of the general questions I'm generating for myself, and flooding my own mind with, are things like:
- How much plant biomass could realistically be generated on an average deck space like mine?
- How sustainable would this sort of system be?
- How much of my own food could I produce?
- Are there any real economic benefits and practicalities that would follow doing this?
- How much initial cost and work will there be for the design?
- What am I limited to doing by the current condo board regulations?
- What materials do I already have that I can reuse/refurbish/convert?
- What structure and drainage issues could I potentially have?
- Is there anything about it which I could enhance and make marketable?***
Some Interesting Search Results: Straw Bale Gardening - Not really an option for a condo, or other small space dwellers, but still quite interesting enough to note. It's too bad square bales are fast becoming obsolete, as farming around here gets more large scale and industrialized.
Here is a link for a cool idea for a solar thermal hydroponic system, using pop bottles.
All this was at least a nice little distraction away from reviewing car specs anyway.
*- I estimate that I'd have an extra three to four more times more growing space than if I had just used the floor space on the deck alone.
**- This is why vehicle shopping is such a pain in the ass for me.
***- And no . . . I don't mean starting up a cannabis grow-op. A guy who can't even play the Facebook game app, Pot Farm, shouldn't be messing with such a thing.
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