New season, new thread. Happy Summer! And if in Canada, happy Indigenous People's Day. If you'd like to see where we came from, go to:
The thread "Support for a Healthy Lifestyle in Spring 2022" in Sandbox forum

Well, summer got here nearly two weeks ago and it's coming in like a blast from a furnace! I'm already tired of the heat and humidity.

Summer has been fooling around here since April. Summer weather is unpleasant, but I'm going to try to have a better attitude about it and not wish away half of the year. Summer is not really our season of growing and life. We have some garden, but out in the wild, most of the plants will be snoozing soon. The wild grass has been dead for probably a month. Plant-wise, summer here is a lot like fall for the rest of you. We have plants that are drought deciduous. That is a real term.

My pants were looking terribly baggy, so I got a new pair, 2 sizes smaller and they fit! (I hope they don't shrink in the wash, knock on wood.) Although it is hot now, I wear pants to physical therapy and certain other indoor locations.

Nothing to report, except today will be a "Hell's Front Porch" day so I am going to hibernate on the Barcalounger for a bit. With the fan on.

I have Music Club tonight; we're having the annual picnic and it's just down the road at my friend Tracey's place. We're co-hostess. I have some baked beans with bacon, hamburger, onion and BBQ sauce in the crockpot. May take out a little dab for the SU for his lunch.

Thank you Ann, for the new thread, and welcome back, hopefully you will have more time to post.

Long cool spring here, quite a bit of rain this past week, but I am not complaining after last year's summer from hell. It is supposed to really warm up next week.

Any kind of gardening has gotten very difficult for me with my back, I finished the pots, and yesterday I moved one Hosta that wasn't doing well to a new location, planted 2 new ones, 'So Sweet', and a smaller one, 'First Frost', both zone 2, I am 3A, hopefully they do well in that bed.

It is too hot here to do anything much outside after 10am. Even sitting on the covered porch can only be tolerated for 30 minutes or so. Then when sitting you see something in the garden that needs clipped or pulled and you venture out in the sun and get all sweaty and overheated.
We have settled into a routine of going to the gym 3 days a week for 40 minutes total on the elliptical,treadmill or combo. DH works out with weights and elliptical. I found that taking my iPad and watching downloaded videos on Netflix makes the time go faster.

And here I am in a long-sleeved T with a sweater on top. Cool and rainy today. But it's supposed to get quite warm on the weekend. We are due a bit of summer up here, other than the two days we had in the 3rd week of May. Still, it's pretty frightening, the temps that some of you are experiencing.

I go outside at 5:45 or 6:00 am, do what I can, then come in by around 9:00am. That's about all I can take. It's good swimming weather, though. The water in the outside pool isn't bath water yet. It will be by July. It's hard to believe, but my tomatoes are still setting fruit. Tough plants!
Ive been getting a lot of exercise by doing some rather vigorous gardening, either here at the house or at Master Gardner projects. I don't have much of an appetite, this happens every summer, but this year I'm mostly eating fruits and veggies, no bread, very little meat. The pounds are rolling off because all the shorts I bought last year are falling off! I'm not trying to lose weight, I'm about where I like to be, around 128. The fruit has been excellent this year, and a friend and I went to a u pick yesterday. Wasn't bad weather, we didn't get overheated. I came home with around 5 lbs of beautiful blackberries.

I have been doing yoga via YouTube. It's made me feel SO much better. I don't hurt like I did. The stretching must be helping lots.

I should be doing that! I've been plagued with severe sciatic pain this year. Yoga would probably help. When you're really hurting you don't want to think of exercising! The time to do the exercises is when you're not hurting. I do need to get on a regular schedule. Its on my right leg, and that hip is pretty bad, I've lost 25% bone in two years. Doing everything my doc says to, calcium, high amount of vitamin D, Boniva.

Kelli, how wonderful to have new pants TWO sizes smaller! You rock!

Lynda, sounds like you're doing well with the healthy eating also! Do be sure you're getting enough protein, especially with all the exercise you're getting.

I've been making some awesome smoothies with a frozen banana, powdered PB (low fat), homemade greek yogurt (yay instapot!), and Monin sugar-free dark chocolate sauce. So my "healthy snack" is more like a delicious dessert!

BTW. i highly recommend the entire line of Monin products. I use their website, Monin.com , free shipping on orders over $25. Their sugar-free syrups and concentrated flavors are great in selzer (I have a sodastream). I tend to not drink enough if I'm drinking plain water, but sparkling water with one shot of flavor (it's 4 shots per glass if you're making soda) goes right down. A friend of mine uses their no-sugar fruit flavors in her iced tea, says it's every bit as good as the fruit snapple teas (with sugar) that she used to drink.

Jill, what is used to sweeten those syrups instead of sugar?

They use a blend of erythritol and sucralose. ,As long as it's not nutrasweet, it works for me!

The sucralose (as in Splenda) is the second to last ingredient, between cellulose gum & potassium sorbate, so at least by weight the erythritol is the major sweetener. I've preferred splenda for years, and it looks like erythritol may be an even better alternative. Either one can cause, erhmm, digestive issues, but you'd have to consume a LOT of it.

Thanks for the website, Jill! We, my son and I, are trying to cut back on drinking cokes, and neither of us like plain water. These flavors sound as if they will be good to put in water. My water doesn't have to be sparkling. We do drink a lot of tea, which is sweetened with Krogers brand of sucralose.
Hot, hot hot! I was out watering at 5:30 am. I'm inside now, you just can't stand to be outside right now. And very dry. Yesterdays high was 98, and on the same day last year it was 81! We've had it good for quite a few summers, with temps below normal, but this year, which I predicted correctly, is going to be very hot and dry! Like over 100 degrees hot. It doesn't matter if you water every day, the heat affects the plants, they're suffering.

My preferred sugar alternative is Stevia although sometimes it's combined with erythritol. But still hard to find in commercial products.

Ann, check out Monin's line of zero calorie natural flavors. I'm not a fan of the herbal taste of Stevia, so we haven't tried them, but they are sweetened with stevia and erythritol. They are available in Canada -- just go to Monin.com and then choose Canada from the pull-own menu at the top (to the right of the site search)

We weren't impressed with the smoothie base we tried, not bad, just meh. And I haven't figured out how to use the umami concentrated flavor. Other than that, I've loved everything I've tried.

I use Sodastream's Dr Pete flavor with Monin's sugar-free chocolate syrup. Yum!!

I've only tried a few of Monin's concentrated flavors so far (basil, cucumber, pineapple, coconut), but those seem very promising, with no added sweeteners at all! Just a little of those goes a long way, like 2 drops of basil with a pump of raspberry syrup. I think they are more like essential oils, but in a form that mixes well.

Hey all,
Yoga- I have never done much but we have a new staffer who is yoga certified, and after talking to her, I am a believer. She knows so much about anatomy and what stretches to do. Practically a physical therapist (no disrespect intended to any PT out there).

I'm recovering but it's in week 4 now so I think still recovering, progressing/ups and downs is ok.

Cool, rainy morning then work later. Not much garden today! It's a jungle out there in the decorative areas. I can't do the pruning and weeding I want to. Just keeping up the vegetable plot and starting to pick squash, beans, greens.

I'm glad you're doing Yoga, Sally! Yes, the stretching helps tremendously. We have a little dance studio that offers spin cycling, Yoga, and other fitness classes, but the Yoga classes are at 7:30 in the evening, too late for me.

hahaa I'm not actually doing it, just hearing about it, and bits of stretching advice.
And I look at 6 am classes and say Who the heck...? Lynda and all retired grocery employees, that's who