What's for Dinner?When will our heat wave break? When it's hot sometimes it's hard to find good things to eat that also cool us off. Sure, popsicles and ice cream taste fantastic and do the job. However, we still need to eat our veggies!
I love cold soups. I will be sharing some of my favorite over the summer. Cold soups are a snap to make, are an easy way to eat our daily fruits and vegetables, and just taste so darn good. Try today's #foodiefriday recipe for cold carrot coconut soup from Love and Lemons. Carrots are in season at the farmers market and this soup takes advantage of them. Be sure to let me know if you make this over the weekend:)
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Beneficial InsectsBeneficial insects are those helpful little critters that eat other insects that damage and attack our plants. There are far more beneficial insects than bad ones. Scientists estimate that more than 95 percent of the insect species we see in our landscapes are beneficial. Many beneficial insects are predators that consume other insect pests. Some well-known predators include lady bird beetles (lady bugs), praying mantis, and ambush bugs. While most of these insects are pretty easy to identify in their adult form, they are not as easily recognized in their juvenile or larval stages. Lady bird beetles, for example, are pretty scary looking when young. They look like little black and red alligators! It is important to correctly identify an insect before taking any action. If you need help identifying an insect, place it in a jar and bring it to your local Cooperative Extension office for identification. Spiders are pretty easy to identify, but are often overlooked as predators. They are invaluable at keeping backyard insect populations in check. Resist your urge to kill every spider you see. They are the top predators in your garden and you WANT them there! Many parasitoids are also beneficial. These insects lay their eggs inside or on top of an insect host. A parasitoid wasp must have been the inspiration for the movie, “Alien.” These tiny wasps inject their eggs into a host, where the larvae eat the host from the inside out. Many parasitoid wasps are no bigger than a grain of rice. Some species lay their eggs exclusively in aphids, infamous for munching roses and many other landscape treasures. Attracting beneficial insects to the garden is easy. Some gardeners even plant special “insectaries” near their vegetable garden to ensure good pollination and natural pest control. Two of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, were farmers and relied on their insectaries to pollinate and protect their crops. The best way to create an insectary is through plant diversity. Flowering plants, such as yarrow, black-eyed Susan, milkweed, Cosmos, sunflowers, and pincushion flower, provide nectar and pollen that attract many beneficial insects, while ornamental grasses and woody shrubs provide cover and ambush areas. It is important to note that predator populations often lag behind those of their prey. However, when nonselective pesticides are used to control pest populations, predators are also killed. The pests will usually recover pretty well, and can go through two or three population explosions before the next pesticide application. The predators, however, are usually less resilient and have a more difficult time recovering. Therefore, less toxic control methods, such as spraying water to knock off and kill aphids, are often recommended for additional control when predators are not quite keeping up with pests. That way, you keep the beneficials around to continue helping with the problem. Remember that 95 percent of the insect species in your backyard are beneficial. As you become familiar with the natural cycles of your garden, you can actually shape the ecology of your backyard, attracting and encouraging beneficial insects to work for you! Here are excellent resources from Montana Cooperative Extension on two very important beneficial garden insects. This is a reprint of an article I wrote when I was the commercial horticulture program coordinator for the western area of University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. For more specific gardening and horticulture advice be sure to visit your local Cooperative Extension office. Your browser does not support viewing this document. Click here to download the document. Your browser does not support viewing this document. Click here to download the document. Have you wondered why we give stickers for milestones like 25 and 50 classes or limited edition SWAG for making the Committed Club? It's because everyone REALLY does love getting a gold star and those milestones worthy of praise.
So many people believe that those of us who stick with an exercise program or a specific nutrition program must somehow have some magic well of motivation from which we can draw. The truth is that those of us who stick with a healthy lifestyle practice have learned (conscious or otherwise) how to celebrate our wins. Motivation ONLY comes after a win. It rarely precedes it. A win can be as simple as an acknowledgement (like big X on a calendar) of a the first day of a new habit. It doesn't really matter what you're counting down or trying to change, think about how satisfying those big Xs look. With each X you get feel more motivated to stay the course. Our stickers and 100 class socks, 250 class shirts, 500 class mugs, 1000 class sweat pants, and Committed Club swag do the same thing. They're an acknowledgment of your success. Speaking of success, these twenty people are on track on make the 2024 Committed Club. This will be our biggest Committed Club EVER! Do you want to make the Committed Club? All you need to do is log 12 or more workouts (even ones you don't complete at the gym.) All runs, walk, rucks, rides and other fun activities qualify. True Spirit Complete Fitness10 years ago when we decided to open True Spirit CrossFit & Yoga, we wanted to get back to the true spirit of CrossFit. Back then there was an explosion of CrossFit gyms in the Gallatin Valley and we didn't agree with the predominant go hard or go home mentality. We saw people getting hurt, getting burnt out and generally just going too hard too soon.
For us, the true spirit of CrossFit is skill development and progression. This means mechanics (technique) first, consistency (practice) next, intensity (going hard) last. It also means infinite scalability and personal training in a small group setting. We love knowing exactly what you all want to achieve and scaling (sometimes up!), modifying, and tailoring each workout for you. Where you are in your body changes every day, and we get that. That's why we always say, "We'll meet you where you're at today." The CrossFit environment has changed over 10 years and so has our place in it. This year we we forced to downsize into our original space. This shift allowed us to re-evaluate what kind of CrossFit gym we want to be. We talked with our coaches, many of you and each other. We've decided that being an official CrossFit affiliate is no longer important to us. What is important to us s continuing to provide an excellent coached environment so that YOU have the best hour of your day and you achieve the fitness you deserve and desire. We will transition out of being a CrossFit affiliate by the end of July. What will we become? The same thing we've always been, a small locally owned business that is committed to providing a safe. welcome and inclusive space where folks can get strong. We are a Bozeman gym filled with a community of folks who love to discover our own true spirit through training hard, playing in the mountains and having fun. Our new name, True Spirit Complete Fitness, TSCF, reflects the broader view of physical and mental fitness that we develop through our training. Coach Leslie has been programming the workouts of the day for the last 10 years and she will continue to program for the gym. She will continue to write a regular blog. From our perspective nothing changes inside the gym. The only change is our name. Please feel free to reach out to Coach Leslie or any of our amazing coaches with questions about our nominal change. |
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