Green Things

Sometimes I feel like one - like a hearty little green plant - endlessly growing regardless of substrate or rainfall, sometimes a little brown, sometimes struggling with fungus gnats, or root rot, but overall endlessly growing - like it or not. Call me kudzu. Unstoppable. Take your glyphosate and shove it.

I finish my eCornell Plant Based Nutrition certificate in a couple more weeks. I don't know what the direction is with this, but the concept of Lifestyle Medicine keeps cropping up. If that personality test thinks I should be a drill sergeant, and I am "stuck" as a nurse by education and circumstance, and I feel like an advocate down to my toes, and I need a "thing" that pulls together all the things that I care about - environmental issues, social justice and advocacy, health and wellness, and all the things nearest and dearest to my little heart, then...really Lifestyle Wellness Coach pops to the top. Heal the planet, heal your body, heal the babies, heal the world.

Eat plants. Move your body. Be mindful. And I can help you do all of that. One step at a time.

I was up this morning at 5:20. Not by choice, but by cat. Sometimes this makes me want to live cat-free. But today I was grateful - even if it took a little effort on my part to become so. Thank you, cats, for quiet space to meditate and do yoga before a busy day of errands and hiking. We have been putting off registering the cars here, waiting for some tax paper from NC that just never showed up. And there was banking that needed two signatures, and filing some paper at the registry of deeds.

But once that was done, we went to Superfresh! Organic Cafe in Brattleboro for lunch, then headed into the woods in Wendell State Forest. We are participating in the New England Trails Hike 50 Challenge this year, in part to ensure that we get out, and in part because I am a patch whore. I am hoping for 100 miles by the end of the season. This trail encompasses parts of the Metacomet Monadnock trail which we hiked extensively in the 1990's to early 2000's. It is odd for Mr. W to have a weekday free, but today he had one. And I think we maxed it out.

The hiking was beautiful, if chilly and less than sunny. It is nice to be back in native air, and surrounded by native flora and fauna. A little strange - we saw a couple of woodpeckers, but no other wildlife. Not a deer, bear, squirrel. Not a bird other than the woodpeckers. Two mosquitoes. That was it. I don't think we have ever been out and seen nothing - not even a scat. 

We have been listening to the Food Revolution Summit which we learned about last year and gained a huge amount of knowledge from. Each day they broadcast three interviews at 11am, 12pm and 1pm eastern standard time, then are available for 21 hours as replays on demand. Give it a look and a listen. I have learned a lot, and found a lot of things to think about and research. Plus? recipes! I made Heart Beet Hummus the other day. Delicious. Of course...you can't really do much wrong with hummus. But maybe that is just me.