The Lazy Gardener

21 Sunday May 2017

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My strategic delay in planting this year looks brilliant given last week’s heavy spring snowfall. The wine I drank this weekend was in celebration of my gorgeous tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, kale, spinach, leeks, lettuces, chard, strawberries, melon, and a mix of florals to bring the bees; not the pity party so many of my fellow growers wallowed in as they assessed the damage to their crops. Sorry guys but second mouse gets the cheese.

I have to share with you the tremendous energy I have after planting. The mud, deep under my nails, gives my fingers satisfaction they can’t find hammering away on a keyboard. Like a walk in the woods, despite the physicality of it, I’m sitting on the porch, drinking a cold one, feeling recharged. Gardens give life. I get so excited just thinking about sautéing those greens. This is going to be a good summer.

Bridal Wreath

26 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Storytelling

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garden

Mom’s Bridal Wreath started to blossom last week. She has been repeating this fact everyday from her bed in the ICU – stating how pretty it is. She talks about this annually on phone calls and honestly I never really knew what it was. She described it to me as a shrub in the back yard so I took a picture this morning to show her how it’s coming along. I can remember us always having these bushes in our backyard and I know they eventually blossom a great deal more than this to where it’s a seven foot tall wall of white. I used to think it was a white lilac bush which we always had in Iowa before relocating to Texas.

Mom didn’t get into gardening until she moved to Texas in the summer of 1976. As she relates in this video interview, sure she grew vegetables when she had a young family because one almost needed to in order to feed a family of seven children back in the day. But she picked up gardening as a hobby she truly enjoyed in Texas with its super long growing season. She had a tremendous vegetable garden, as one could with a half acre lot. I can tell you though she clearly prefers flowers over vegetables. If you garden, then you know this is like cats vs dogs. I garden myself – to the extent possible in my eighth of an acre lot. I love growing tomatoes, peppers and giant pumpkins. And I enjoy talking about it. My mom’s face lights up when she mentions a blossoming flower in her yard. Her description of the beauty of a single flower is like a summation of the grandeur of the entire universe within the bloom of a single plant. When I think of my mom I think of her surrounded by blossoming flowers.

Garden of the Gods 10 Miler

13 Sunday Jun 2010

Posted by Ed Mahoney in Running

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10, eagles, garden, gods, Plantronics, REM, run

Nice run today in Manitou Springs. I under-estimated just how mean the hills would be. I couldn’t count all the runners vomiting during the first two miles. Reminded me of when I ran my first marathon at 16 in Dallas. I drank beer the entire night before with my buddies, Mike O’Neill and Rob Graham. I made it 15 miles before spilling my beans. Finished in 3:10 though.

I finished today in 1:25 – an 8:30 pace. It really surprised me because when I was crawling up some of those hills I expected to finish closer to 2 hours – if at all. There was not a single mile of that course that didn’t contain massive hills that would have been impressive at sea level let alone 6000 feet. By the 3rd mile though, the torment of the hills and grandeur of the vistas coalesced into oblivious forward movement while REM lost their religion on my Plantronics 903 Bluetooth for iPhone headset.

The half way point marked the top of the terrain where we went off road to run on a paved trail. The setting was spectacular, like running on top of the world. It was even relatively flat for a half mile. I nearly forgot all about the hills while the Eagles sang, “You’re losing all your highs and lows. Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away?”. Then I became disoriented around mile 7 when I was certain that I was running downhill; but it felt as if I was running uphill. I determined there was a strong wind assaulting my chest. It kept me cool though. The weather was actually quite nice for running.

I’m happy my neighbors talked me into running this event. It gave me a great sense of what I need to do to prepare for Imogene Pass in September. I like to joke that I’m considering a medicinal marijuana card; but what I really need to do is lose about 20 pounds. That should keep my knees from hurting. More importantly, running 10 miles up to 13,000 feet will feel much better at 165 pounds than 185. I need to schedule a few more events to prep. The Georgetown to Idaho Springs half marathon sounds good. And I want to run up the Manitou Springs Incline. Probably run back down on the Barr Trail. The summer is shaping up nicely.