Queen of Procrastination, I have avoided writing this post for 19 months A record? Hah. But now, after lying dormant, the Suburban Gardens blog entombed perhaps and clinging to a reed like a sleeping caterpillar, now emerges transformed! And from henceforth —-
Wait, let me start at the beginning.
Two summers ago, HUGE CHANGE plopped into the Simons Gardens world like a massive chickie poo. One of our doctors suggested an IgG test for food sensitivities. In our constant quest for optimum health, Wystan, Edward, and Oskar (yes, we cudgelled the poor lad into it) pressed a stabbed finger onto a special paper card in six places and the doctor mailed it off. When this IgG test came back from the lab it showed a fairly high level of antibodies to chicken eggs.
And eggs isn’t all, as you can see from the list above. Oh drat.
I had heard that some doctors suggest low level sensitivity to eggs is more common than many people realize. Dr. Terry Wahls, for instance, (Wahls Paleo) But I had ignored this advice, like any normal person would do. Eggs are awesome! Most of my life I ahve eaten an egg or two a day. In 2018 in pursuit of better health, Edward and I had ditched sugars & grains, and had filled our plates with veggies but also LOTS of eggs , butter, meat, and nut flours. I often ate 4 eggs a day. I didn’t feel that well after 6 months of eating “Paleo,” but it was hard to say why… I had unexplained stomach aches. And Edward never did lose weight the way you would expect, considering how many carby things he cut out.
So, we gave up the almonds, and the eggs….
AND , True Confessions (this hurts dear readers, sob) we gave up our hens. It just made no sense to keep them. With Edward and Oskar’s help I packed up my chickens and drove them to live on a mountainside in Middletown MD. Our friend Ben Friton, of the Reed Center for Ecosystem Reintegration took them in. He tells me they seem very happy.
Photo credit Ben Friton
There is more to the diet quest, if you have the stomach for it (couldn’t resist). Those stomach aches didn’t really stop with removal of eggs and almonds. At summer’s end 2018 we tried out live blood analysis, at the insistence of a friend and just to prove how healthy we now were. The magnified image of a single drop of blood on the screen revealed parasites, bacteria, and undigested food particles in my blood. Nearly every red blood cell had a PacMan like creature inside it. Our holistic nutritionist proposed I focus on well-cooked veggies, stews, soups, and cut back on harder-to-digest foods, like butter, oils, nuts, meat. Many of the very foods that the paleo diet had us tanking up on, to avoid carbs and sugars. Waaah what’s left?? I whined. I admit, I was bitter.
But finally, after sulking a while, I noticed that on a mostly well-cooked veggie with some meat, + fruit eaten with raw veggie diet my stomach aches were gone. I felt better. My chronically bloated stomach is gone, as long as I can stick to it. Which I am not so good at doing. Nothing wrong with healthy fats as long as you have the chops to digest them — I wish I could! I loved the keto/paleo thing, and it really does cut my sugar cravings to eat fats.
But where does this leave the blog Suburban Growing? Admit it, you only loved me for my chickens. Chicken-less Gardens lack sex appeal, somehow, but then even the gardens were hacked apart following the torrential rains of fall 2018, dug up to accommodate sump-pump drainage pipes and so on.
The new year breathes fresh ideas and exciting change. The Simons Gardens will be relocated this summer to a tiny borough in Pennsylvania: Bryn Athyn, my husband’s hometown. This time we will living on the top of a hill, on 2 acres with a southern exposure, tons of sunshine…and also colder winters and a two week delay on springtime, my husband points out. He would have preferred the challenges of Florida gardening I think. But Bryn Athyn brings us closer to family.
I don’t want to get carried away, just because we have more land than before. Remeber, we are older now. But, might there be a few just a few chickens in our future? well. Maybe a small orchard?… a composting toilet perhaps in the garden shed? and certainly reforesting the edges of the large lawn so there is less to mow….right?
There are green building issues to consider too, to make this house right for our family. Is there such a thing as a sustainable that is low-impact way to renovate a house? I hope so. The renovation shows I watch at the gym are terrifying. Heave ho and off to the landfill with piles of tiles and granite counter tops, to be replaced with other tiles and granite counter tops… What is the point in eating organically if we are filling the planet with the leftovers of our insatiable consumerism?? So, the quest for ways to grow food, put up food, and live sustainably will take this blog into 2020 and beyond. t revealed that I am highly s
Suburban Growing, like the phoenix (or the caterpillar) rising from ashes (chrysalis please!) is ready to fly again.
Get inspired people!
