Happy Halloween! Nice gourds. The neighbor behind me has 11 acres and grows a huge garden every year. I tell Tom every spring that he isn't a gardener he's a farmer. Which is more accurate considering he works with a Massey/Ferguson tractor and he also raises layers so fresh eggs are always in our fridge. We also benefit by a few weeks of corn on the cob as it comes in. Sadly I BBQed the last 2 ears yesterday.  

 The pictures of your piece of the plant are interesting to me always. I can relate to much of what you are doing as I try to keep things going on my little two and a half acre patch. I wish I had you energy sometimes. It comes and goes but seems to get a little better all the time. It is therapy for us. My BP was an issue that I took care of myself. In the past few months I was feeling lightheaded often while reclining even and getting blurry vision occasionally. Fatique, stomach ache, short breath, pounding heart, off and on. My Doc likes the typical 120/80 #'s and is ok with the senior #130/90. I know it's a person to person thing too. These symptoms had me using my monitor regularly and my BP was mostly low. Mid August I decided to buy a pill cutter and cut the 2 different pills I was prescribed in half and continue to monitor a few times a day. Well what do you know? The BP barely changed at all and after a couple weeks the other things either went away or became very minor. A week ago I went in for a flu shot and quick check up. I kept track and printed close to 3 weeks of BP#'s and showed the doc. I'm happy to say he was on board because he said I did the right thing by keeping an eye on my BP. He said if I didn't do that he would have scolded me. He prescribed the same meds at half the strength and said we will discuss stopping the meds altogether. Music to my ears!

 When I was put on a BP med over 10 years ago, I was still working, weighed about 25 more pounds and didn't have a fine tuned diet let's say. He felt that was all good but said the ticket was me being committed to riding my stationary recumbent bike almost daily. Walking is something I can do if I really have to but too hard to be of any value to me exercise wise. The bike lets me sit back slide my feet under the straps and on to the peddles. My left leg is mostly numb one and I spin it around and around with 4 separate rides of 5 minutes whice adds up to 20 minutes and about 3.2 miles a day.         

It is good that you have come so far along the recovery trail. Reminds me of the blogs of GeorgeLesley as he trained his muscles to carry his canoe. Whatever the motivation it seems to be the regular struggle to get a function back that gets you there in the end.