Burgeoning

Spring, as you may have noticed, is a favourite of mine.  It's not so great in on the US east coast, where we get about four weeks of reasonable weather starting in April, then it becomes so hot one cannot breathe without sweating.  Pollen is abundant here, too - I read something (possibly nonsense; I don't have enough biological knowledge to discern that) about the type of trees that the city uses to avoid shedding too much blossom; apparently these have more pollen than the other kinds.  Either way, I understand why people here are not so keen.

But, as someone brought up in a city where March (at the latest) brings magnolias, crocuses, snowdrops, bluebells, and the glorious scent of hyacinths, it's so exciting to see what has survived the winter, and be pleasantly surprised by the small victories.  Our oak leaf hydrangea is back with a vengeance; miraculously, the wisteria seems to have gone from all brown to green shoots appearing and multiplying each day.  Even one of our hostas, which seemed a lost hope, have suddenly grown inches in the past few days.  Similarly, out of nowhere we have ferns coming back to life, shoots pushing up, with their tight spirals unfurling into those beautiful, ancient leaf formations.  These are just small beginnings, but after our plants struggling last year, our first growing season in this house, they are exciting to watch, and encouraging for more growth this summer.

Springing!

Now that spring finally seems to be coming to Brooklyn, I'm in a much sprightlier mood.  This may  be connected also to my having the week off work (although correlation does not equal causation, clearly).   The hydrangea is clearly back with a vengeance - buds everywhere! - the wisteria has buds, much to my relief, and one of my hostas is going to make it back, which is a surprise.  We have new geraniums in our boxes, the daffodils are springing up, and it feels like the soil under our feet is finally getting warm.  I'm not ruling out some snow before April departs - it's happened before and can definitely happen again - but, for now, I'm going to do some grading outside and enjoy the growth before the mosquitos arrive.

In accordance with my spring-induced enthusiasm, I am doing the Apartment Therapy Spring Cleaning Challenge - 20 minutes a day, one small task.  Number 2 (yesterday) was to clean the fridge.  I did not really do a... thorough job, it's fair to say, but the fridge looks so much better thanks to just a quick clean out and wipe down.  Hallelujah.  So it's definitely worth it.  Today: the shower head, something that I have genuinely never considered cleaning before.  

Some Resolutions: April Update

1. Eating Something Green.
1. I have enjoyed eating something green every day.  One day was really pushing it - a lettuce wrapped burger was my only source of green, three small pieces of romaine, maybe, covering a big chunk of meat - but generally I've been okay about it.  I've also been trying to eat more of the darker kale (thanks to this delightful breakfast that I've been making a lot) and food along those lines.  
2. I just read Eat, Sleep, Move, and it's fair to say that I was not greatly enamoured of the tone of the book.  The whole "small changes" lead up to a lot of different changes each day - 30 days to implement them doesn't seem much like small, incremental change.  But it did bring home that I need to eat more varied green things, too, and particularly a wider range of vegetables.  My green intake is mostly spinach and cucumber.  I should chop up a shedload of broccoli at the start of the week and take it with me; I need more collards and chard, too.  Time to get on this.  So that's how my resolution will adapt this month.
2. Reading toward Book Riot's 2017 Read Harder Challenge.
1. Got a good chunk read this month: Blacklands by Belinder Bauer was my debut novel; The Wangs vs. the World was my book with a central immigration narrative; Human Acts was the book set over 5,000 miles away (it's in South Korea), and Homegoing was my book for all point-of-view characters being persons of colour.  So I did well here, clearly! I really enjoyed my March books - all pretty great in different ways, all books by women, too.   I've taken a mini break since then, so it's time to get back on it after I clear some of my books from the borrowed from the library shelves downstairs... It's a constant battle.
3. Cutting down on screen time.
1. I wanted to keep my screen time below 2 hours per day.  I've generally stuck to that, although there were a couple of days where that did not work. Those were usually:
1. Work days when I was working out of the office and needed to check email / communicate with colleagues.  I suppose I don't really count those because I would be doing that on a computer anyway, but then that tells you that I usually spend a lot of time on the computer - i.e. in front of a screen.
2. Days travelling, when we needed to look things up / use google maps.  
2. Stats breakdown: 
1. I've apparently reduced my daily use by about 5 minutes per day.  As of March, it was 1h59m per day, already down, and now it's 1h55m per day.  That has saved me a massive THREE HOURS IN TOTAL.  IN TWO MONTHS.  TOTALLY WORTH IT!
1. (No, seriously - I think a LOT more about using my phone now, even if I'm not reducing the time as much as I'd like).
2. It's still 59 pickups per day - but I just had to do that twice because I'm on low battery mode and the screen locked, so I'm going with that being at least part of the reason... 
4. Walking.
1. My average in March was over 11.5k steps - 12,233!  Which is why I've upped my goal to 11.5k.  I've even won a weekly challenge at work! (Although it was a low standard that week, but still!). 
2. My new goal is to keep my average up at the weekends - I do the bulk of my walking during the week, then slack off.
5. Planning.  I've been a bit better about this, and got on with some work.  This week is spring break, and so I set myself some goals for the whole week, but didn't want to get into a daily task list so that I felt harassed or out of sorts.  
1. I'm really coming to the conclusion that the planner I got, while useful, is not right for me.  I need to see what I'm doing for the week, and the weekly section does not do that.  You list all the things you need to do, but there is not a way to easily assign that to a day for each week.  That is what I am going to look for in a planner next time.  I'm going to keep using this one up, but that's going to be the change, I think - this is just too hard to use.