Container Gardening

This year I'm going to grow my tomatoes in Topsy Turveys hanging from the roof beam of my deck. I want to know how well the system works. If it works well, it frees deck space for containers full of other plants. Also, high up in the air where he can't reach them, Larkyn will not be able to eat my tomatoes before I harvest them, as he did last year. I think I'm going to choose the variety called Celebrity which is a good container tomato, but I've got time to change my mind if I find a different variety I'm curious about. I'm not planting them until the week of Mother's Day.

Growing in my recycled Monrovia containers I collected last year, I currently plan:

2 5-gallon containers with broccoli plants

3 2-gallon containers with peppers: a green bell, a banana, and a jalapeno

5 1-gallon containers with herbs: two kinds of basil, rosemary, thyme, and chives or parsley

1 2-gallon pot of pickling cucumbers

I'm still thinking about whether I want to try bush beans and summer squash. Since I want a little room for flowers, I may not have room for everything I'm thinking about. Although my deck is large for an apartment deck, I also want to be able to go out there to eat and read and write. If I am out there, Larkyn will be too. I'm wondering whether I could grow summer squash plants in a Topsy Turvey.

Right now, all I've got is the two fancy pots full of arborviteas from winter (the ones that weren't supposed to survive). I had hoped to get a garden plot in a community garden and I am on a waiting list. But my desire to grow ornamentals only on my deck is probably not going to be fulfilled. I am trying to tell myself that I'm better off with containers that are immediately to hand and so very manageable. I try to tell myself that I'm lucky to have a big deck at the price I pay in rent. I try to tell myself that many of my customers are yardless and growing anything they can in containers and that my experience helps both them and me. But the last time I had a community garden plot about one-third of the plots were abandoned as soon as their owner realized how much work vegetable gardening is. I already know that.

But I expect I'll container garden this summer and enjoy doing so. The most arduous part of container gardening is keeping all the pots uniformly moist. With a water faucet in the kitchen twenty feet away, that's not too difficult.

Driving

I love to drive. Well, maybe not when the roads are icy or in a storm of any kind or at night. But none of those weather conditions have applied this spring when I have driven in a leisurely manner down Highway 101 through Minnetonka, Wayzata, and a bit of Hopkins down to Eden Prairie. Today I went to the Hennepin County Extension Office in Eden Prairie to get soil sample kits. I gave out the last one I had last Saturday and I'm sure I'll want a number of them this coming Saturday, and maybe sooner. The weather favors busy garden centers as much as it favors my driving pleasure.

Highway 101 is windy and potholed, but passes through lovely, Arcadian estates, formerly the lake homes of wealthy Minneapolitans around Lake Minnetonka. Today the trees and shrubs were budding out in a thousand colors of green. Here and there a professional gardener was cleaning out a flower bed or raking out old mulch, wearing jackets with company names written across the back. Tulips are about three inches high and fluffy-looking but promising some vivid color soon. I drove as slowly as I dared, with Lexus SUVs and Audi sportsters on my tail. I guess if you live there, you don't need to look.

Of course, driving fast on narrow, bumpy, winding roads is a skill too, the more so in a powerful sports car, I suppose. I drive a 1998 Ford Contour. It has been such a big part of my life as a single person that I cannot imagine wanting a different car. And I've been very loyal to Ford over the years, previously driving Escorts. So when I finally have to get a new car, it won't be a Lexus or an Audi. I'm proudly middle class, but I'd be happier buying a new Ford if I thought it was really American made the way Fords used to be.

When I get through the Lake Minnetonka lake estates and reach Minnetonka, I turn off Highway 101 onto Minnetonka Boulevard going east. I turn south again on Williston Road or Baker Road. Both go into Eden Prairie west of Prairie Center Drive where the Extension office is located, so requiring one more jog on Highway 5 or Technology Drive. All this way I'm driving through the back yards of very nice suburban homes. These are the yards that most of my customers have and I like to familiarize myself with how they look coming out of winter.

They look good. All the trees and shrubs are leafing early this year. We've been exceptionally warm for several weeks, bringing leaf bud and bud break, a hazy swarm of greens. Wonderful! On my car's radio I listen to two DFL governor candidates discussing education funding, the yards and all their plants are greening spectacularly, and my car handles smoothly. I could whiz down to Eden Prairie in 20 minutes on Interstate 494, but why do that when I can enjoy, no love, driving the back roads, seeing the landscape of my community.

Warmth

March, 2010, is ending warm. Some might say hot. My bedroom window and the living room slider are open as wide as they'll go during the day and last night I only closed them half way. I think rain would turn the grass green and I can see the buds enlarging on the ash just beyond my deck. This is late-April weather!

I'm considering planting some lettuces in a pot and maybe even some basil and parsley. Ordinarily, I wouldn't even think about trying to grow warm season plants until May. But what have I got to lose? A few bucks to buy seeds that I can replant if I lose the first planting. Even a cheap-skate can live with that expenditure.

And here's my comeuppance: after many years of telling people that arborvitaes will not survive a Minnesota winter in a pot, the two I had in my greenery pots on my deck all winter are now green and thriving, waiting to be under planted with petunias, or some creeping, flowering annual now the spruce and pine boughs are removed. How many winters can they survive, I wonder. I wonder if roses would make it through the winter. What about a hydrangea?

Summer, summer! Seeming so near when the temperature is late-May warm and the sun is bright and the birds are busy and the grass is almost green. I'm afraid April will be cold and May colder this year, but today I don't want to think about cold. I'm thinking about roses and hydrangeas and petunias and fresh lettuce.

Spring Arrives

The first day of spring 2010--sunny and cold. Just a week ago the temperatures were toying with hitting 60, the dirty-rocklike snow was melting and evaporating, and spring seemed to be with us already. Now the temperature is 24 and the wind is strong enough to mention wind chill. But the sky is an intense blue, the sun is high and bright and warm, and the grass is turning green, not just in warm areas next to buildings, but out in the open.

In Minnesota, we want the colder temperatures to help slow the rise of rivers that are close to flood stage. Almost everywhere in the state, there is a dangerous river right now and all Minnesotans have vivid pictures in their minds from the last few years of spring floods--roofs of houses seeming to float on the surface of seas of dirty, swirling water. SUVs swirling in the powerful river current. Trash everywhere. The flood's aftermath, with teary, bereft victims who have lost every material possession. While we may like the camaraderie of the sandbag makers, the Grandmas bringing hotdishes, and high schools and colleges sending students to help the volunteer firemen and all the business owners and homeowners fill and stack sandbags, the devastation of floods frightens us.

Before the Iraq war, the governor would send in the National Guard to do this kind of work. Now the National Guard is in Iraq or Afghanistan and kids do it with middle aged men and women who might otherwise exercise in a fitness club. Grandmas brought hotdishes for the National Guard too, the kind of food farm families eat during harvests, high in carbs and dairy products. Newscasters marvel at the the generousity--neighborliness is not dead in our too frequently uncivil community.

In spite of flood threats, spring's rebirth is literal, not symbolic, in a climate like Minnesota's. We change from dead monotones of gray and brown, to vivid blue and green, to a carnival of lively primary, secondary and tertiary brightness in a matter of a few weeks in late April and early May. By Mother's Day (or the Fishing Opener, if you prefer) even the humblest dwelling sports a pot of flowering annuals sitting by the door or hanging from the roof or lining the windows. The plants may be dead by June 1st, forgotten and unwatered, but May is the festival of blooming annuals in Minnesota and only the evil-minded would fail to participate.

On the first day of spring, we can note the pending season. It's not really here yet, but it's coming. It's coming soon. In just a few more weeks the buds will swell in the tree branches and shrubs, and the earliest tulips will poke furled and pointed leaves out of the soil. Hearty, attentive souls will put pansy bowls out, prepared to lug them in to the garage most nights because the temperature will get too low even for pansies. But pansies are colorful, their flowers like smiling faces, and everything dreamed about spring. They are like wanting a puppy so much and then getting one.

The Birds

I've been feeding birds all winter. I have a tube feeder that I fill about every five days with a shell-less bird food that's less messy than food with shells, especially sunflower seed shells. The blend has a little bit of everything from two kinds of sunflower seeds to niger thistle seeds so I've attracted several kinds of finches, sparrows, juncos, robins (yes, all winter in Minnesota), cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, several kinds of woodpeckers, and a pair of mourning doves.

Never before have I seen robins, juncos or mourning doves at a tube feeder, let alone one on the second story of a building. I find it interesting and slightly humorous to watch cardinals argue over the birdfeeder with juncos, both of which are ground feeders in the normal course of things. The mourning doves sit on the deck rails and wait politely for finches and chickadees to leave. The robins are down right clumsy--not that I blame them. Why aren't they in Mexico? I didn't know they liked birdseed, but then, winter in Minnesota drove my ancestors to eat lutefisk, so maybe it drives robins to eat safflower seeds.

This evening I put out some dry bread cubes. I had a few old, stale slices and made a bread pudding with half--my own treat--and, not wanting to waste the rest, I made a tin foil bowl and placed it under the tube feeder on the floor of the deck, filled with the remaining bread cubes. Now I'm worrying that the wind will blow my nice thought off the deck before any birds find it. I should probably also be concerned that a squirrel will find it. Usually the birds patrol the feeder for squirrel interference without my help but I think most squirrels would go to war over bread faster than birdseed.

But I don't see any birds or squirrels in the yard though it is dusk, a prime feeding time. I do see two heavily bundled toddlers waddling up the hill. Maybe one of the larger dogs that live in my complex is lying in wait, too, hoping to snag a squirrel. Birds don't care about toddlers or dogs, though so maybe the birds are eating somewhere else this evening.

I hope they find the bread in the morning.

The New Library

When I first moved to Plymouth almost a year ago, I searched for the library but failed to find it. I found a huge and beautiful one down the road near Ridgedale and went there a few times, fighting a dozen others for each emptying parking place and usually ending up walking a quarter mile from the parking place I got. I even had a mocha there one time and considered ordering a panini another time. I looked at interesting art work and admired the views from the huge windows. But--bottom line--the books were the same old weary public library best sellers, chic lit, and Clive Cusslers with a few classics dotted here and there.

Then I realized that the building project I drove by on my way to work every day was going to be a library. This week it opened and today I visited it for the first time. What a pleasure.

I walked by the New Fiction shelf on my way to the fiction stacks. New Fiction means newly published fiction in this library because, when I got to the fiction area, I found that every volume was new. Three new copies of Jane Austen's Persuasion. Brand new copies of all of Saul Bellow's books. A shiny-jacketed copy of Laurie Colwin's Family Happiness. On down the stacks I went, marveling. A new library with new books.

I decided to allow myself to be the first to read two, but what to choose? I decided on a perfectly public library sort of book, a family saga by Marianne Fredriksson called Hanna's Daughters which was originally written in Swedish and first published in 1994. My second book is a new work by a writer I've been meaning to read, Lorrie Moore, who is famous for a book of short stories called Birds of America, also the title of a 60's novel by Mary McCarthy. This newly published book is called A Gate at the Stairs.

Now I have until April 7 to read them. Several rainy days would help, though I think I can read them in that time even if the weather is like today, warm and sunny. Ten degrees warmer and I'll be able to read on my deck comfortably. But that is a great deal to ask for.

Twittering

140 characters, including spaces. That's what you get with a Twitter. It's like writing a haiku. What can you say in 140 characters? What can you say in a haiku?

I usualy tweet in the morning, after I've read the online NY Times and whatever email I've gotten over night. I'm looking out my slider to the east where the sun is rising or risen or the clouds are so heavy I can't tell if there's a sun or not. Regardless of cloud cover, birds are feeding at my tube feeder. I may be going to work or not. I'm usually eating yogurt with fruit and nuts. Sometimes the Times has irritated me. Other times the CBS Morning Show, on TV, is annoying me. Often Larkyn is sitting with me but sometimes, especially the dark mornings, he has burrowed himself into his blanket and gone back to sleep.

Sometimes I read a lot of the twitters I'm following, some political, some educational, some weather reports, a dachshund twitterer, crafters and New Agers, would-be gurus of the social media, some celebrities, a couple baby-boomers, many gardeners and landscapers, and Twin Cities eateries. There's someone who is obsessed with Robert Goren, or Vincent D'onofrio, of Law and Order Criminal Intent, but I can't find Vincent himself twittering, which would be more fun. There's someone who makes and sells birdhouses but doesn't twitter very often.

These are the twitterers who follow me too. I give them an update on my weather, birds, dog and mood. Once in a while I say something ascerbic about political logjams. I never threaten violence against congresspeople, though I sometimes feel like threatening. But threatening always reminds me of feeling helpless as a parent and yelling something about cleaning your room at one of the kids. Like they were going to grab some rags and a bucket of hot, soapy water? Like congress is actually going to deal with a problem?

Those are my twitters. I apparently got one guy from Michigan to check out my blog. He kindly told me about a pink-blooming Annabelle hydrangea. Fun. And so are 140 characters, including spaces.

My Favorite Plants - Littleleaf Linden

When I was a little kid, there was what I thought of as a basswood tree on the boulevard of the house next door to mine. The tree didn't interest me much, not like the maple on my own house's boulevard, or the oaks around the corner. But the seeds--quarter inch, perfectly round, dark brown balls--fascinated me. Like little beads, they rolled into the cracks between sidewalk blocks and into the street's gutters, millions of them, apparently. I didn't think they were messy, I thought they were cool. The tree was messy because of the suckers the neighbors never pruned.

When I started working in the garden and landscape trade, and selling trees, I became aware of lindens as a tree that grew at approximately the same rate as maple, important for potential tree purchasers who already had six or seven maples and couldn't be talked into a Kentucky coffeetree or an oak, trees most people think their great-grandchildren might get to enjoy. I hadn't fallen in love with trees at that point. I liked trees, but I didn't know them very well, thinking of myself as a perennialist, which was actually my job title too.

So it came as an epiphany (one of the only true epiphanies like in James Joyce that I've ever experienced) when I realized that the lindens in ten gallon pots that I blathered about to customers were, a few years on, those wonderful emerald green trees with the spade-shaped canopes. Littleleaf lindens, that is. Not American lindens, the basswood of my childhood. American lindens are huge and sprawling trees while its more civilized cousin, the littleleaf or European linden, doesn't begin to sprawl until it is almost in old age.

Lindens also bloom, and when they do, they produce a marvelous aroma that I associate with early summer. The blooms attach to those round, bead-like seeds that I got such enjoyment from as a kid. Definitely millions of them. I don't mind sweeping any more than I mind weeding, so once all the seeds are down, sweep them up and go on with life. It's not like weeping willows that drop whips every day so you can never keep up with them. If you prune the suckers a couple times in the growing season, you have a beautiful and shapely tree suitable to even a small yard.

Diet Update - 2

I stopped getting on a scale when I was able to get into my favorite dark blue jeans and wear them comfortably all day. That made me think that I look thinner and I don't want a scale to tell me it's all in my head.

I've been eating a lot of barley. I'm basically making fried rice only with barley instead of rice. I like the nutty flavor. I think barley combines really well with a wide variety of vegetables, whether onions and garlic or carrots, broccoli and various greens.

I'm also eating a lot of fruit, mostly citrus this time of year, but also bananas and blueberries.

Finally, I'm eating a lot of beans and lentils which are warming and filling.

What I'm missing the most are potatoes. I love potatoes, fixed any way it's possible to fix them. My favorite though is the simple baked potato, the lazy cook's best friend. I can't even write about them this briefly without longing for one.

I think I'll go eat a handful of pecans.

My Favorite Plants (Autumn Joy Sedum)

I love most sedums. Among trouble-free plants, sedums must top the list. Autumn Joy tops my list of sedums because it tolerates any soil, has low moisture requirements, combines beautifully with a multitude of other plants, is extremely hardy, is easily propagated, stands up straight in full sun unless overwatered and has a new character for every season, including winter.

The last point is the most significant because, while most perennials look great when they are blooming, and many provide excellent foliage interest much of the growing season, Autumn Joy looks great even in the winter landscape. Turning a pretty brick red in later fall, Autumn Joy stands out spectacularily againt snow in winter.

In spring, Autumn Joy emerges from tightly furled buds into a seafoam green plant, setting buds in early summer. The buds turn pale pink which brightens through the summer. In late August the buds open to glowing magenta flowers. Then the whole plant--flowers, leaves and stems-- turn the magnificent brick red that pursists through winter.

In very early spring the plant's stems are hollow and can be pulled out just before the soil warms enough for the plant to reemerge into a new season.

The new "improved" Autumn Joy cultivars, with names like Autumn Brilliance, look like Autumn Joy on steroids. If you like that Amazing Hulk quality, maybe you'll like the improved upright sedums. I question why such a fine plant needs improvement. I'm all for improving the resistance to rust of phlox, or to apple scab of crabapple trees. Improvement that merely puffs up an already excellent plant seems to me unnecessary, at best a marketing ploy. How about Japanese Beetle-resistant roses?

My Favorite Plants (Annabelle Hydrangea)

Hydrangeas are really hot the last few years. Breeding cold heartiness into colored hydrangeas is one of the biggest money-makers in plant breeding. Endless Summer hydrangea has made millions for nurseries and garden centers since its introduction early last decade. It's still a big seller.

But for my money the hydrangea to cherish is old fashioned Annabelle with her many good-sized white flower heads that turn bronze in the fall. Annabelle is not a fuss-budget like Endless Summer, dying back to the root unless the winter is both snowy and mild. Annabelle will survive and thrive following the most miserable winter Minnesota can have, a dry, cold, windy winter. All hydrangeas are water lovers, but Annabelle will survive dry summers much better than even PeeGee, let alone Endless Summer. And while all hydrandeas will appreciate acidic (low Ph) soils, Annabelle will still bloom profusely in higher Ph, alkaline soil, producing lovely white flower heads sometimes as much as six inches in diameter.

Annabelle makes a fine accent plant on its own, a spectacular hedge, and a lovely addition to a mixed border with perennials such as heucheras, digitalis (foxglove), hostas, hemerocallis (daylilies) and alchemilla. In fact, I've always treated hydrangeas the same as perennials, cutting them to the ground either in the fall after a killing frost or in spring once the ground stops being spongy, just as I cut back perennials.

If you are the kind of gardener who likes to mess around, you should know that Annabelle can be propagated quite easily too. Propagation is a subject for a different day, but frugal gardeners and those who enjoy a little extra work will further value Annabelle hydrangeas. Endless Summer is still under patent making it illegal to propagate, though how anyone would know you had is beyond me. But since both the mother plant and the babies will probably not make it through a hard winter, the feeling of accomplishment will be short-lived, and the money spent to acquire the mother plant will be wasted too. That's one of the reasons that Endless Summer has been such a money-maker, unlike the more economical and egalitarian Annabelle.

Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer

For the last decade I have said that Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver's 2000 novel, is my favorite book. I read it in 2001 when the paperback edition came out. I loaned that copy to someone who failed to return it and bought another which I also loaned out. I loaned both copies to people who returned the book to me too. Everyone who said anything to me, that is, the people who did return the book, said, "I see why you like it," a comment that seemed to be more about me than the book. The book has an "ardent commitment to the supremacy of nature," to quote a San Francisco Chronical review cited on the back cover of my paperback volume, and so do I, in the eyes of many of my acquaintances.

But nine years is a long time, and many changes have taken place in my life over those years. Is Prodigal Summer still my favorite book? I decided I should reread it. Of course, I had to obtain a copy first so I went to Half Price Books to get one.

And I was amazed by how little of the book I remembered.

The book has three distinct story lines: Predators about Deanna the forest ranger and her love affair with Eddie Bondo and coyotes; Moth Love which is the story of Lusa, her in-laws and goats; and Old Chestnuts about the battle between Garnett and Nannie. I remembered Deanna and Eddie pretty well but had almost no recollection of Lusa's story, and remembered only that Garnett and Nannie served as comic relief.

This reading, while I found Deanna to be interesting, it was Lusa with whom I identified, her story I found the most interesting. She is the one who gets rocks and makes them into diamonds. And while Garnett and Nannie, especially Garnett, are humorous, they are also the uniting forces, pulling the three stories into one.

The over all story is about inheiritance, handing forward land, knowledge and a life's work. The life's work in Nannie's case is breeding apple trees and in Garnett's case trying to restore the almost extinct chestnut tree to North America. Usually such work is perceived to take place with government grants in top Universities. Garnett is a retired high school science teacher and Nannie is a woman with a little piece of land. They are neighbors, surrounded by hard-scratch tobacco farmers, in the mountains on the Virginia-Tennessee border. They have no grants or formal trianing and have taught themselves how to cross-breed trees, not for commercial success but from love of the trees themselves.

Lusa is a city kid who falls in love with a farmer and then must run his farm while staying true to her own values. She finds solutions using heart and ingenuity more than formal education too.

It isn't book-learning the people from Prodigal Summer hand forward. It isn't knowledge that can be condensed into a resume or that will impress much of anybody. It's practical and very specific knowledge: where in the forest a chestnut tree still struggles to survive, the husbandry of goats, how to track a coyote, which apples make the best pies. Since these are the things I most prize knowing, I still love Prodigal Summer. And now I've got a copy of the book again, I can loan it to someone again. Maybe it will be someone who loves it as much as I do!

My Diet (update 1)

First, the good news: I did lose my two pound weekly goal. Thirteen pounds, seven weeks to go!

The bad news is that I was hungry a large part of the week. I know I won't stick with a diet that means I'm hungry. When I'm hungry, I start fantasizing about donuts and chocolate sundaes and 16 ounce slabs of well-marbled beef steak. I do not think about getting out the hand weights or going for a swim. Pretty soon, I won't think about self control and a tidy, disciplined life either.

Worst of all about night hunger is sleep irregularity. I wake up after a couple hours, toss and turn, sleep briefly, awaken to toss and turn, sleep briefly and it's time to get up. Poor sleep undercuts all efforts to accomplish anything.

So I'm going to raise the amount of protein I eat, even if that slows the weight loss. I've actually got thirteen weeks until spring arrives in Minnesota. Maybe I've got fifteen. But I hope not.

New Years Resolutions - 2

The second part of losing weight is exercise, which can be problematical in the winter in Minnesota. My preferred manner of exercising is gardening, followed by walking my dog, Larkyn. At the moment, we have about a foot of snow where we don't have eight foot high piles of snow from sidewalks, streets and parking lots. Gardening is out of the question. In the winter, Larkyn doesn't like to walk outside any farther than he must to relieve himself, so walking him is less arduous than walking to my garage to get in my car.

I can do exercises, though. The two parts of my body I want to improve are my abs and my upper arms. A good abs exercise, suggested by Self, consists of pressing a playground ball between my knees while lying on my back with knees bent. I then raise my butt and lower it. Try it. I definitely feel the pull where I want to. Handily, I have a playground ball for playing foursquare and kickball with Abigail.

I also have three pound hand weights, excellent tools for toning upper arms. There is an exercise called a curl that many people are already familiar with, and any number of other possibilities for using the hand weights.

I also have an indoor swimming pool in my apartment building. While I most enjoy the pool when playing there with Abigail, a half hour to forty-five minutes of swimming and marching in the water each day should tone my body as well as burning off unwanted weight.

As an added benefit, maybe I'll be in such good shape by the time gardening season rolls around that I won't suffer first week in the garden aches and stiffness. I wish I could take Larkyn to the swimming pool to get him in shape for the walking season.

New Years Resolutions - 1

I have to lose fifteen pounds. I have to get back down around 130 pounds. I have to change my eating habits. I guess that's called going on a diet. That's my New Years Resolution: lose 15 pounds. I'm giving myself until spring to do it because Minnesotans look fat all winter from dressing in layers regardless of their weight.

I plan to lose the weight by eating much less meat and cheese. I'm going to drink much more water. I'm not going to eat very much bread. I'm not going to drink any beer and I'll drink very little wine. I will not eat cookies or ice cream or doughnuts or cake or pie or...

Chocolate is allowed as long as it's dark and one half inch square at a time. Fruits of all kinds are a mainstay--fresh mostly, but dried and frozen, especially in my oatmeal. Oatmeal, vegetables, beans and lentils, rice, nuts, yogurt, pasta, honey and maple syrup.

A typical day would start with a breakfast of Irish oatmeal with raisins, honey, almonds, some ground flax seed, and milk. For lunch I'll have a pasta salad made with lots of vegetables and an apple. For supper I'll make a soup, perhaps spicy red lentil, and a green salad dressed with a fruity vinaigrette.

Larkyn loves vegetables, fruit and yogurt too, so he'll be perfectly happy to share the diet with me.

I suspect it'll be a cost saving manner of eating too, with splurges being marinated artichokes rather than a slab of meat, or pomegranate juice instead of a roasting chicken.

I'm excited to find out whether I'm happy eating a largely vegetarian diet. I'm excited to start losing belly fat. I'm curious whether lower weight translates into a higher energy level. I'm curious whether I'll stick with my new diet or be one of the majority of resolution makers who stays with the new behavior a week or less. I want to be one of the minority who succeeds. Wish me luck!