No Longer A Black Thumb!

How amazing do these freshly picked greens look???

If this is your first time reading a post from my blog, hi :-). And just as a quick catch up for you, I have made some pretty awesome life changes during the past twelve months and you can read about those here and here. This is one of those changes…

Totally in love with my “green space”.

The gorgeous area that you see in the above photo used to be a fairly vast expanse of nothingness. Just bits of cracked cement surrounded by dirt which would quickly turn into awesome muddy puddles that even Peppa Pig would be envious of. However,my clever, ultra-talented hubby designed all this for me, as a birthday present and as a reward for both of us quitting smoking, how lucky am I??? But honestly, I really didn’t know how it would go, so it was really an experiment. Luckily, because my partner is so handy and built the raised garden beds out of recycled timber, it wouldn’t be a costly experiment. You see, I have always seen myself as having a “black thumb” as opposed to a “green thumb”, I was just never blessed with being able to see eye to eye with plants, flowers, cacti, I have always managed to kill them all, possibly with kindness, rather than neglect. So you can see why I was dubious. The weather gods were kind enough to lay on some gorgeous weather on the weekend we planned to get all the seedlings in, and we did it all in one weekend at the end of. March this year, and it was such a satisfying feeling. Originally we planted out; dwarf broccoli, miniature cauliflower, English spinach, silverbeet, green mingionette lettuce, Tuscan kale, carrots, cabbage and white onion (that tested the memory a tad!). As we were heading into the second month of Autumn (I am situated in the southern-most state of Australia, Tasmania), these veggies SHOULD have been perfect for that time of year, but for some reason, despite watering just enough and not too much, they just wanted to wither, not completely,but they certainly weren’t healthy. Then, we had a week of cold, frosty weather, and the little seedlings started to take off, and within the next two weeks, the little babies that had started to wither away had doubled in size. There was hope after all!

I became a woman obsessed. Every evening before bed I even used to duck out to the garden to remove any snails or slugs that may have decided my veggies would be a welcome feast. I’m not sure whether I thought that if I watched the veggie plants enough that I may see them grow in front of my eyes, or maybe if I took my eyes off them something would suddenly come along and destroy it, but I began to realise that when I was having a tough time, I could step out into my “green space”, take a deep breath, and all would be well again. So my new-found hobby was also a form of therapy, who would have ever thought?? This garden was like my “baby” (well, not really, but you get the idea), so the day I decided to check on the progress of our carrots, I was devastated. I pulled out what I thought was one carrot, but it ended up being four or five carrots all intertwined with each other, they were like a form of carrot from another planet, and totally in edible. Hoping it was a one-off, but knowing deep down it wasn’t, I pulled up another, and it was the same. Tears sprang to my eyes and I ripped them all out, one alien carrot bunch by one, and threw them in the compost heap. After doing some reading, we found out that our soil was perhaps a little bit too good to plant carrots in, and that we should possibly plant in some sandier soil. Yep, great to know that NOW! However, the carrots have so far (touch wood) been the only real failure. The dwarf broccoli was just unbelievably delicious, tasted unlike anything I had ever tasted from the supermarket and it looked pretty darn awesome, too.

The taste of this broccoli was second to none

The plants we grew that were from the “Brassica” family (that is, the leafy greens), could not have grown better, they totally exceeded our expectations. I have managed to get my partner eating his greens (after quite a lengthy time of despising them!), my boys have become obsessed with “Kale Chips” (I promise I’ll do another post on these later if you would like, hands up???) and we are just eating more and more healthy in general. The silverbeet is still going great guns, I’ve only just completely taken out the spinach plants after they fed us for well over three months, same deal goes for the kale and the cabbage and onions are still growing away, doing their own thing while I patiently wait. Of course since March we have done a lot more to the garden. We have added additional garden beds, we have re-done our front yard to accommodate some pea and broadbean plants, we have hanging baskets which are now home to a vast array of strawberry plants, we have a work farm, we have just gone all out really. But as I say, if you’re going to do something you may as well do it well ;-). Although I’m sure there will be a lot more stumbles along the way, everything in the garden seems to be full steam ahead for the Spring season, which has begun in glorious style in this neck of the woods, and I can’t wait to see what Spring will deliver to my garden.

My gorgeous boys, so excited with their pea picking efforts today, bless them

Take Care,

Lara xxx

I’m Happy To Admit That I’m A Quitter!

People always seem to link the verb “quitting” to failing, to not being able to complete a specific task to its entirety, as if quitting is a bad thing. The day that I “quit” marked a huge turning point in my adult life (possibly the biggest turning point, even bigger than becoming a mother!) and one that I still can’t believe I actually achieved. I believe the day I quit was the beginning of a whole set of changes in my life; the food I chose to put in my body, choosing to exercise every day, having a hell of a lot of spare money to undertake new hobbies, reducing my anxiety levels remarkably… I could go on forever. I am incredibly proud to announce to the whole world that I quit smoking on March 12, 2014 at 7.30am. I had been a smoker for ten years (I am now 31) and when I started I was into the whole “I must be thin to fit in” belief. Then somebody at work decided to tell me that smoking cigarettes speeds up your metabolism, so you can eat whatever you want, have a smoke and you won’t put on weight. *Slap Forehead* moment if ever there was one! How ridiculously stupid can you get??? Yeah, let’s not only clog up our arteries with greasy, oily junk food, but we’ll add some toxic carcinogens and lung cancer to the mix as well, geez…. At the end of every year I would say to myself, “this is the last one, this is the last one,” but of course, it never was. I managed to give up while I was pregnant, that was easy. What wasn’t easy was staying off then once I came home, had a newborn who didn’t sleep, AT ALL, suffered severe post natal depression and anxiety, and then found out said newborn was starving hungry because I had no milk, enter feeling like a massive failure as a new mother and back to leaning n the old friend cigarettes to “help” get me through. What I didn’t realise at the time, but that I realise now, was that my “old friend” was in fact one of my biggest enemies when it came to my mental health.

Honestly, I can’t say it was ONE single thing that led me to eventually kicking the habit, it was a chain of events I think. Since having my two boys, my greatest fear has been something taking me away from them, so while I was smoking, I felt guilty that I was possibly slowly but surely making sure that I would be taken away from them prematurely. Still, I would think of that, and the anxiety of it would make me want a cigarette. Ironic, isn’t it? Secondly, our dear elderly neighbour passed away late last year from chronic emphysema and advanced lung cancer, it wasn’t pretty. She was only in her early 70’s and a wonderful, caring lady, her only downfall was picking up a cigarette when the dangers of them weren’t known. A couple of her final words to my partner and I were, “Please, please, give up. Don’t let this happen to you.” Thirdly, those two things continued to swirl around in my mind, yet, I continued to smoke. But the want to quit and the will to quit just weren’t working hand in hand. I went to a reflexology appointment (that is some amazing stuff right there) one evening and just broke down in tears out of nowhere rambling about my smoking and my fears, I didn’t see it then, but I do now, I was literally PETRIFIED. I made an appointment with my doctor who agreed to work with me on some strategies for quitting and advised me to purchase some nicotine patches, which I never actually used, I had a little plan of my own.

It wasn’t a total bed of roses, and yes, there were times I probably should have had this stuck to my forehead…

I’m sure just about everyone out there has heard of The Easyway To Quit Smoking, written by Allen Carr and like me, if you’ve heard about it, you’re probably a little bit sceptical, ok ALOT sceptical. But, I was now in the right mindset, I WANTED to quit and my willpower was catching up, I had nothing to lose, AT ALL, as I could borrow the book from my library, win/win! I started to read and instead of rolling my eyes, it all actually made sense, this guy knew his stuff. But was it enough to convince me to quit? I was due to finish the book, and therefore my addiction to the habit, the same day as my doctor told me that he suspected I had gall stones. Okay, so they don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but it was enough to give me a kick up the butt. That very night I finished the book, went to bed knowing that the following morning I would stub out my last cigarette EVER!! If I was quitting, it was to be for good. None of this “one every now and then”, no “social smoking”, it was all going to be over, and I actually felt good about it.

At 7.30am the next morning (I know, I know, the thought of it now makes me want to vomit), I lit up the final “cancer stick”, whilst downloading an app to assist me in the process. I didn’t even finish the whole cigarette, it tasted vile to me and I began to wonder if the book had some sort of brainwashing power. Throughout that day, I didn’t even have to try and resist the urge to head to the local shop to buy another packet of cigarettes, it seemed all way too easy. That night my partner said, “do you want this last smoke?”. To which I simply replied, “no thanks, I’ve quit”. He was shocked, but had known of my wanting to do it since our neighbour passed away, and he joined me in the quitting process.

So far, after 172 days smoke-free, we have not lapsed once, nor looked back. My app (which, to anyone in Australia, is available on the app stores of both Apple and Android, is called “My Quit Buddy”) tells me that I have avoided 19,271mg of tar (and that’s without all the other nasty chemicals) and have saved $2271.00au. And those figures are just based on my smoking alone, you could almost double that to include my partner as well. The money that hasn’t been wasted on the 2753 cigarettes I would have smoked on my own has been spent around the house putting in a veggie garden, building a house to keep some chickens, renovating our bathroom and purchasing better quality foods to enhance our newer, healthier lifestyles. I’m not here to preach to anyone the evils or dangers of smoking, as I don’t believe that works anyway. I simply just wanted to share my experience in that if you want to do something, not just quitting smoking, anything at all that you want to achieve, you can do it if you put your mind to it. And if you do want to quit smoking, DO IT! I can’t say that it will be as easy for you as it was for me, but once the initial three weeks are up, you’ll be feeling a hell of a lot better within yourself and your bank account will notice it, too. And please, if anyone wants to share their experiences on quitting, or attempting to quit, or anything else you have set your mind to and achieved, feel free to share, I just love hearing others stories of success :-).

Take Care and remember, never give up on giving up 😉
Lara xxx