P. Allen Smith's Garden2Blog Adventure: Part 1

Earlier this month I was lucky enough to be invited to P. Allen Smith's Garden2Blog Retreat. The Arkansas-based garden guru invited some of the top garden bloggers from the region to come tour his Garden Home Retreat, meet his sponsors, learn more about blogging and gardening and make new friends! As Allen writes an amazing monthly garden column in AY Magazine, I — not a garden blogger by any means — was beside myself with glee to be invited to this two-day event to learn and try my best to keep up with all the super talented garden bloggers. Here are some highlights from day one of my adventure!

On day one, the bloggers met at the Capital Hotel and were bussed out to Scott, Ark., to tour the beautiful Marlsgate Plantation a beautiful Greek Revival Mansion owned and operated by David Paul Garner, Jr. Marlsgate is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and widely known as THE place to have weddings and other events in Arkansas. 

Rear of the plantation home.

Statue in the greenhouse.

The most interesting room in the home, unfortunately closed to visitors. Where did all these animal heads come from?!

Beautiful boxwood garden and fountain.

After a hilarious tour of the home by Garner, and delicious treats and punch, we bussed back over to North Little Rock's Argenta Arts District for a bloggers' seminar by Jay Baer — one of the country's top social media consultants — and lunch catered by Starving Artist Cafe. Then we were off to Allen's "city home" in Little Rock's beautiful historic Quapaw Historic District. He purchased the home for $1 and moved it to its current location for renovation. 

Allen strikes a pose/leads the tour of his beautiful garden home. Each "room" is unique and always changing.

The vegetable garden was packed with lettuce for the bloggers' salad-making competition! We cut the leaves, sprayed them with BioSafe Systems Sanidate Ready-to-Use Fruit and Vegetable Wash and got creative preparing dinner salads for all the bloggers!

Beautiful flower beds.

Taking a salad-making break at Allen's Little Rock home.

 

As nearly every sponsor presentation became a competition (which I LOVED) we broke up into teams for a container garden contest using super-rich Black Gold soil. Here I am with team "Edimentals." We used a mix of ornamental and edible plants for our lovely container creation. These are my talented teammates Linda Tyson, Monica Milla and Carri Stokes.

Go team Edimentals!

For more info on great gardening products, check out these Garden2Blog sponsors: Berry Nurseries, BioSafe Systems, Sun Gro Horticulture/Black Gold, Bonnie Plants, Conard-Pyle Company, Easy Gardner/Jobes Organics, The Garden Patch GrowBox, Laguna Ponds, Purina Mills, Proven Winners, Le Creuset and Mountain Valley Spring Water. 

**Meals and transportation were provided at G2B, and some sponsors supplied bloggers with free samples of products with no obligation to endorse. These opinions are my own. I promise. Thanks for reading!

Click here for more info on Garden2Blog and look for my account of Day 2 (involving more pictures, chickens and The Grumpy Gardener serenading us with Johnny Cash) coming soon!

(Occasional Blood), Sweat and Tears

In the July issue of AY Magazine I was asked to write a story about fitness fads, and always looking for an excuse to get up and out of the office, I decided to give some of the workouts a shot.

TRX

Can you trust a workout that is known only by letters? And that was invented by Navy SEALS, used for training by firefighters and police officers, and consists only of nylon cords and rings? No, I would never trust it but you will get your fanny whipped into shape if you try it, and if you take the class at CrossFit Little Rock, the cutest, most innocent-looking, blonde lady you have ever seen will be doing the bum-whipping. 
We tried this class taught by the lovely Tracy McNeil at CrossFit Little Rock and loved/hated every minute of it. TRX is a great workout that you can take anywhere (if you buy the kit), that lets you use your own body weight as resistance to work all areas of your body. This workout is awesome because it really challenges your balance and you can increase or decrease your workload by just slightly altering the position of your body.
I would definitely recommend TRX to anyone, any age, any fitness level. On the day I tried it, my co-worker Ashlee and I were the only beginners, but there were a few pros and regular Crossfit athletes. My boyfriend is in the Crossfit class, which calls on Tracy to give them a workout from hell once a week or so. He described TRX as, “The single most comprehensive and exhausting workout I've ever tried (and all through the use of one simple, misery-inflicting band of nylon.)” He keeps going back though...

The TRX area at CrossFit Little Rock

Tracy showing you how it's done.

Serious TRX

Not as easy as it looks.

  

 

HOT YOGA

This is one of those classes that is absolute torture but you find yourself coming back for more. I (very cautiously) jumped right into this class with my adventurous and yoga-experienced sister. Hot Yoga is classically performed as a series of yoga poses done in a heated room, usually set between 95 to 100 degrees for 90 minutes. The idea is that the warm temperature and profuse sweating that occurs (very profuse, trust me) warms up the muscles and lends them to become more flexible. As soon as I walked into the yoga room at Floating Lotus in Little Rock, the words “God, it’s hot in here” came out of my mouth (a little too loudly).
With the thermostat turned well above the 80-degree mark and TWO space heaters blasting, we began the class. It was hot, obviously. And I got sweaty. Like pouring sweat, never been that sweaty in my life, sweaty. As gross as it all sounds, it actually felt pretty cleansing and the yoga poses really forced me to focus, balance and clear my thoughts …  all of my thoughts except “God, it’s hot in here.” Don’t forget to bring your own yoga mat, a towel and a bottle of water. (I’ll spare you the sweaty pics from this adventure.)

Check out "Fitness Fever" in the July issue of AY Magazine at aymag.com for more fitness trends!

DIY Bird Feeder

Something tells me we aren't quite home free yet for nice weather in Arkansas...it was probably going to sleep with the windows open in my home last night and waking up this morning to the stark, 38-degree reality that IT'S STILL WINTER.

I created this homemade bird feeder for AY's "How To" feature a couple of years ago and thought I would post it here as a fun "almost-springtime" project to do with kids, or just for yourself if you really like birds. It's cold out, they are hungry.

Materials:

1 block of floral foam

package of wire wood picks

a bouquet of evergreen branches

1 package of cranberries

popped popcorn

1 orange

1 bag of birdseed

pine cones

peanut butter

needle and thread

  

• Take a walk around your neighborhood and collect cedar, fir, magnolia, holly, pine, spruce or juniper to name a few. Cut branches down to 2 to 6 inches.  
• Attach branches to wire wood picks by wrapping end of branch to top of wood pick, letting the two overlap for added strength. Wrap wire around branch and insert wood pick into floral foam.
• Go around the outside edges of the foam; first with longer branches, and work your way to the top of foam with shorter, thicker branches alternating plant types for variation until foam is mostly hidden.
• Double-thread your needle and begin stringing cranberries on about three feet of thread. Repeat using popped popcorn or alternate for variation. Drape cranberry and popcorn strings around branches. Slice orange into a few round slices and coat edges in peanut butter.
• Cover pine cones in peanut butter and roll in a birdseed mix. Roll peanut butter-covered edges of orange slices in birdseed.
• Place oranges and pine cones in the arrangement using wood picks if necessary.
• Place arrangement on a patio table, porch banister or in a hanging basket to attract beautiful winter birds to your yard. Spray evergreens with water to help them last longer and replenish your birdseed and fruits when necessary. Happy birding!

-From AY Magazine, January 2008