beautiful flowers and bread

this is one of the pictures i took of our hibiscus before the massive storm we had two weeks ago. the storm caused a bit of stress and a lot of the leaves of the plant turned yellow and fell off. we haven't watered it for awhile to let the soil dry out. its blooming up a storm again but the leaves have not yet all grown back. i love the fuchsia and orange together.

i have been experimenting with bread again. this time i tried no-knead bread. it takes a fraction of the amount of yeast a regular loaf of bread takes and you have to let it rise for 18 hours before folding it over and letting it rise some more. the result is impressive. its very light and chewy. i think i went a bit overboard with the "liberally flour"-ing of the working surfaces, but hey, its a learning process.

this weekend was the first of two major mileage weekends of training for cactus rose 50 miler. friday i did a 4 hr run before work and yesterday i was out for 5 hours. i was pretty tired when i started out yesterday, but the last hour of my run ended up being on one of my favorite trails. it looked completely different this time though as the storm i mentioned earlier caused so much flooding, and subsequent damage. the trail is quite a bit wider now than it used to be and many of the trees that lined it were knocked down and carried away by the "stream" (which also carried a couple suvs away apparently during said storm). i might not be seeing as many spiders or snakes on those trails in the near future!