Naturalists Picnicking, Getting Back on dieting wagon, loads of cukes

    When you have something coming up, like a picnic or baking for the fair, then it is quite easy to dump all your precious dieting plans, in favor of, well, stuffing your face. I am afraid I had one piece of pound cake (someone tempted me with whipped cream to put on it and I gave in) too many, and we were sitting around talking and eating. As Master naturalists, we should have been also walking and hiking, though those who arrived much earlier also had jumped into the fast moving little river nearby before it started to rain. But we did have a canopy or two to keep out the rain.
    Fran(k) played a bit of ping pong with Will and Michael Williams, and I watched and stuffed my face too. I did talk to a few new people and I realized they had done a whole lot more volunteering than I did. I really need to get back to water monitoring and some other projects. And I am going to try to go back to my dieting!
    And my square foot garden is producing a lot of cucumbers with all this rain we've had this summer. I put them in the fair and they won nothing. But the zucchini bread took second place!

Are Hair Samples Accurate, Does Topsy Turvy Upside Down Planter Work

    As I mentioned earlier, I'd given a sample of my hair to a nutritionist/pharmacist to see what "elements" showed in my hair. Doctors at different websites have said different things about the accuracy of these results and maybe I should take them with a grain of salt,as they say (but maybe I shouldn't, as the test said that my sodium was way too high!).
    The test said my calcium, magnesium and sodium were off the chart. Is it possible one of these could be wrong? If I had too much blood calcium AND too much sodium wouldn't I be headed for a heart attack or stroke? The last few months, especially, I have been eating better and avoiding sugar. Though I had read somewhere (maybe it was Dr. Mercola) that table salt was okay and I was using it more. But then, maybe he meant that the "iodine" in it was good, though regular table salt could cause high blood pressure. And more than one site said that hair samples could be "askew" in their readings because of your shampoo or hair dye -- maybe that is what caused such a high sodium reading? Who can tell exactly? Are blood tests that much better, as they can degrade in the process of being handled too, I'm told. What is totally accurate, a salvia sample?
     Perhaps a blood test is good for certain things, like trigliseride (sp?) levels and cholesterol and insulin and thyroid readings. At least I hope they are. I need a thyroid/insulin test as well. The hair sample and information I gave Dottie H indicated I have a low functioning thyroid. And the diet (eat 70 grams of protein a day) is a bit much! I am aiming for half that as I don't eat much protein. But then I am eating a lot of nuts. Are they going to affect my cholesterol, I wonder?
    We'd bought one of those green topsy turvy upside down plant holders and planted tomatoes in it last summer. The plants never produced one fruit! Now, we have two cucumber plants in it and it looks like we "might" get two whole cucumbers. We didn't fertilize and the backyard gets too much shade from walnut trees, giving them only 5-6 hours of sunlight a day. So is it the lack of light or being in a glorified planter with side holes that is not working for us?