• Priscilla Nason Shartle

hearthealthyboomer

~ Living healthy after age seventy.

hearthealthyboomer

Tag Archives: garden

Boomer Mindfulness

25 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by prisnasonshartle in Mindfulness

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Tags

eating healthy, garden, granddaughters, high blood pressure, hysterectomy, life, Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh

I think it’s been two years since my last post.  Not a whole lot has changed on the outside, but a lot on the inside.

Since my hysterectomy three years ago, I’ve put on 25 pounds, lost a tooth and started taking high blood pressure pills.  The weight gain was expected and a direct result of the hormones I lost from the surgery – information I could have used had my doctor accurately prepared me.  The tooth loss was a misnomer other than the actual surgery which was the worst experience of my entire life in many ways.  And the blood pressure was just a “fact of age,” I’m told by my doctor of record.  But complications from the two surgeries were determining factors that brought the issue to the forefront.

However, I do not want to be one of those people who spend all their conversations talking about their health and tribulations related to their health.  So I want to share with you the good news.  My two young granddaughters moved down the street last year and I am loving every minute of their presence in my life.  It has been a learning experience for us all as they get to know their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins which they have never been around on a regular basis.  All this while their mother learns to be a single mom and they go back and forth every other weekend to be with their dad who lives about two hours away.  Everyone is working kindly to make the change a smooth one.

I’ve been focusing on mindfulness and really enjoying Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s book “living Buddha, living Christ.” His approach to mindfulness is simple and empowering at the same time, with tips on how to be mindful when brushing your teeth to walking on the earth to preparing a meal and so on.  Thich-Nhat-Hanh-books-stack

 

The best part is that I’m finally beginning to become mindful without trying!

Now that our backyard garden is producing, I am eating healthy foods and picking them and then eating them immediately which is an amazing experience.  But when done so mindfully, it becomes a spiritual experience.

Like the other day:

I decided to make a squash casserole to contribute to a family dinner to celebrate my great-niece’s first birthday.  I needed at least three pounds of squash and so went out to the garden and picked some.  Inside I gently cleaned the squash and then began to peel them.  As I held the squash in my hands I felt the warmth of the sun and the squash became alive in my hands.  Tears began to run down my cheeks as I blessed the squash for providing the nourishment we were about to receive. It didn’t take long for me to become aware of the beautiful casserole I was preparing nor did it take long for the guests to taste and appreciate the dish I prepared.

first 2016 garden crop

 

Being mindful, reminds me that I am part of a whole and that whole is Life.

 

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A Divine Pattern of Perfect Life

28 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by prisnasonshartle in Pattern of Perfect Life, Uncategorized

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blue print of my life, Fitbit, garden, God's pattern of perfection, portion control, walking, weight loss, wine

I recently took up walking at the local mall.  Walking 30 minutes at a fast pace, I seem to average 1.7 miles a walk.  My Fitbit tells me exactly how many “active” minutes I walk which is nice that when I make a pit stop at the restroom, it doesn’t count against me.

My goal was to lose weight.  I have not.  I have, however, dropped one size in my jeans; so that is nice.

Two months ago, I started using portion control and have pretty much trained my stomach that a bread and butter size plate is all I need.  I decided that it didn’t matter what I ate as long as it fit on the plate.  That may have been a mistake in thinking.  So two weeks ago I gave up drinking my few glasses of wine each night, mainly because of the sugar content.

I did not start drinking wine until my children grew up and left home.  But I have found I sleep better, feel better and except for one after a very stressful Girl Scout meeting, I have not even wanted to have a glass.  (And I did not on that particular evening either.)

My inherent wholeness is embodied in every cell of my body.  I give thanks for my body and that I can choose to take care of it as I see fit.  I avoid sweets and eat balanced meals that are healthy.  I enjoy quinoa, lentils, healthy fats, and garden greens from my backyard such as kale, beets, lettuces, arugula and herbs, year round.  I also enjoy seasonal foods during the summer such as tomatoes, squash, okra, strawberries, cucumbers, zucchini and squash.

God’s pattern for perfection is the blueprint of my life.  I am whole, well, and happy.  I plan to continue on this path, one day at a time.  And so it is.

Good Food, Good Drink, Good God, Let’s Eat!

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by prisnasonshartle in Bountiful Raised Garden

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baking, Braggs Organic Apple Cider, calories, eating healthy, family, friends, garden, Huffington Taste, organic, raised garden, vegetables, vegetarian

vegetablesGone for five days and it rained for four of those days.  Lucky days for our garden (and for our son Brian who offered to water both our garden and his brother Daniel’s garden.)  We came home to brand new vegetables and an abundance of others that had already been producing.  Always grateful, we love sharing and my new neighbor mentioned she was a vegetarian (for 55 years now) and she got a large brown bag of assorted vegetables right after I cleaned them. Included in yesterday’s pickings were cucumbers, squash, zucchini, lettuce, beets, purple hull crowder peas, bell peppers, okra, and three varieties of heirloom cherry tomatoes.

Yesterday for lunch I made a green salad with three varieties of lettuce, the cherry tomatoes, avocado, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, boiled egg, chopped broccoli, cucumbers, and quinoa.  It was delicious.  We had a half a grilled cheese sandwich to top it off.  For dinner, I made cheese grits from organic polenta and because we do eat meat from time to time, I sautéed some chicken and then added a cold salad I made early in the day which had cucumber, tomato, and onion soaked in my homemade dressing of Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, olive oil, and honey.  For lunch today, I stir-fried slices of zucchini and veggie burger (which we split), deviled an egg for each of us, sliced some cold cumbers and tossed on a few cherry tomatoes and topped it all off with a couple of spoons of my homemade bread and butter pickles that I made last week.

Tonight I am making a zucchini risotto with sun-dried tomatoes and lots of other herbs and greens from our garden.  I’ll grill a slice of pork loin topped with garlic, grated lemon, red pepper flakes and some Louisiana seasoning.  And we will finish off our dinner with a flourless chocolate cFlourless-Chocolate-Chip-Banana-Muffinship almond butter muffin.  I found this recipe at the Huffington Taste website. Every once in a while it’s nice to not know the calorie count on something.  But eating healthy the majority of the time allows for a few hiccups and I do love chocolate chip anything!

But most of all, I enjoy taking advantage of the bounty from our raised gardens in our little back yard.  When I think about all the years we didn’t have one, I say a prayer of gratitude for what we have now.  Growing our own vegetables helps with our budget and it helps us know that what we are eating is organic and good for us.  And we get to enjoy new foods, create new recipes, and share our bounty with friends and family.

My Leafy Green Garden

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by prisnasonshartle in My Leafy Garden

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cognitive skills, garden, herbs, leafy greens, Spirtuality and Health Magazine, Survival Essentials, vegetables

lettuce 1In the April 2015 publication of Spirituality and Health Magazine, Traci Pedersen writes about how eating leafy greens make for a sharper brain.  She states, “A new study has found that eating leafy green vegetables – such as spinach, kale and mustard greens – can have a dramatically positive effect on our thinking abilities. In fact, older people who eat one to two servings a day of leafy greens have the cognitive skills of a person over a decade younger.”  – See more at:  Spirituality and Health.

I am most pleased to be reading this.  My garden is based on the plants we like, and each year we add more raised beds and include new and different plants.  This year our son built raised beds in his backyard.  Being a vegetarian, he was most interested in choosing quality seeds and so ordered them online from Survival Essentials.  They claim that their seeds are, “the finest Non GMO, Non Hybrid Heirloom Seed Bank anywhere on the Earth!”  In fact these seeds, if placed in an airtight glass jar in a freezer, have an expected shelf life from 10 to 20 years.  And he got enough seeds to share with us.herbs

In addition to our kale which survived summer heat over 100 degrees and three snow storms and temperatures below 10 degrees this winter and our two rosemary bushes that never die, our flat leaf parsley, curly parsley, lavender, sage, and mint all came back or survived the winter.  We had to replace the spicy oregano and sweet basil in the herb garden and added amaranth; however we are now ready for our leafy greens to sprout.

Returning are Crowder peas, okra, cucumbers, yellow squash, green squash (zucchini), sweet bell peppers, tomato plants and lettuce.  But this year we planted red-tipped romaine, butter crunch, and Prizehead lettuce.  We also planted arugula, beets, radishes, and not just for the vegetable but also for the greens.

lettuce2For fun we created a corner for strawberries.  But the first rainfall we realize the runoff from the neighbor’s yard runs directly down the center of the strawberry patch.  We laid some small gravel and that didn’t work so added a stone wall to guide the water away from the strawberry plants; so far so good.

In total, we have sixteen raised beds.  Waiting for the ground to be warm enough to plant was hard because it was only a few weeks ago when it was close to freezing at night.  But having a garden filled with leafy greens is worth it.  I’m not sure if it is the work involved in taking care of a garden or if it is eating the leafy greens that keeps an older person young, but I’m willing to keep on enjoying our garden and all of its bounty.  Eating healthy and liking what I eat and having the cognitive skills of a person ten years younger sounds great to me!

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