On a Walk-about

For those of you who don't know my husband, let me introduce you to him:

He is a nutter. And I say this with love in my voice, and the shaking of my head whilst smiling.

You may think that it's the long flowing hippie hair, the use of a bandana, or even possibly the wearing of light-colored jeans with sandals is what makes him goofy.  Let me assure you, it is not.  This is an old photo: his hair is shorter, he doesn't usually wear sandals with his jeans, and he doesn't wear those light jeans any more.  What makes him crazy is how obsessed he gets over things.  He obsesses over a bunch of things, but the one that he's been obsessing over for the last few years is exercise.  When he got into CrossFit in 2011, he purchased an Olympic weight bar, bumper plates, installed some pull up rings and got Bob at Draco to help him weld a pull up bar/squat stand contraption.  You can read about that here.  We did CrossFit pretty consistently until earlier this year.  It's a great workout, and I totally got muscles from it, but it also isn't usually a great cardio workout - at least, not the kind of cardio workout that your doctor wants you to do.

He has, for the most part, stopped doing CrossFit and instead decided that he would like to participate in triathlons.  He does not like running, he didn't know how to swim well until earlier this year, and he detests road biking.  I'm not exactly sure why he decided that triathlons were for him.  Nonetheless, he has started training for them, and I'm being taken along for the ride.  This means that on any given night, you'll likely find us running, biking, or swimming.  I'm not planning on participating in any real triathlons, but it does get me to exercise which is a good thing.  Except when it's a bad thing.

I don't know what I did to my ankles the other week, but I jacked them up.  Not horribly - just bad enough that they hurt for a few days so I couldn't do any running (I could have done running, it just would have been a very bad idea), so instead I went on a walk about.  I did the same distance I would have if I had run, but instead I walked.  I decided to go on a walk through the neighborhood, on streets I'd never been on before.  While on the walk I did what Pam at Digging does - I decided to take pictures of yards that have reduced grass.

 

I'm really digging the spiky plant at the front.  I probably would add a small tree to the bed, maybe a desert willow (God I love desert willows now, I don't know why, it's just like "BAM! Desert Willow"), or prune the bush to be more like a tree.

 

This yard was awesome because it didn't have grass.  All the green groundcover was horseherb.  I'm not sure if that was intentional.  The lot has quite a few mature trees, but not a whole bunch of younger trees - I'm a fan of trees, so I'd say add more understory trees/bushes, maybe more little pathways, too.

This is one of those yards that you can just tell that someone spent a lot of time getting it to the stage it's at. It's the type of yard that you can see on a garden tour (though I'm sure the owners would probably heavily prune back some of the understory plants).  This yard had it all - I only took one photo, and it wasn't even of the lighted Christmas Moose. This is definitely one of those yards that I'd go by over and over again if it were closer.