One of the Empire’s wellness-program goals I have to meet in the coming year, to qualify for a discount on my health insurance premium, is to get 2½ hours of aerobic exercise in weekly—“aerobic” meaning heart and respiration rates move into the generally accepted range for aerobics. (The other goal I have to meet is to reduce my BMI by one percent within one year.)
At least in the short term, this won’t be a challenge. All the yardwork I have to do means that aerobic activity happens almost by default. Today, for example, I took the coal scoop and shoveled out three-quarters of the old compost pen: the top layer into the new pen I just built, to continue rotting, and the rest into a pile that I can move round to build raised garden beds, which is another project on the horizon.
And if it isn’t shoveling, it’s raking. I’ve raked a zillion leaves already looking for pecans, and have a ton more yet to go that don’t have any pecans in them. Incidentally, the pecan crop is poor this year. I’ll be lucky to get five pounds of shelled nuts, I bet. I was surprised the trees made anything at all, since this ought to have been an off year for them, but I guess the two years of drought in a row threw them off and made them try to put on SOME kind of a crop this year. Perhaps I can feed them more heavily next year and encourage them to get back onto their usual masting cycle.
And of course once I’ve raked the leaves, I’ll have to haul them all back to the compost pens, which will be a challenge, since both my wheelbarrows broke this year and had to be thrown out. I gotta think about how I’m gonna deal with that.
The fnord continues with the return of the black lantern.
