Ok, so it might not be the smallest, but it is pretty tiny for a Rutgers. I waited and waited to see if we ever got a small one and yesterday, bam, there it was. I was excited to get to play too! :)
So, Carol, I'll see your tiny tom and raise you 3 teensy carrots!
I wonder what other unusually teensy veg everyone got. Hmmm...maybe I should check the peppers...
I'm one of those people who dislikes change. Very much.
I've gotten used to getting up, grabbing a cup of coffee and wandering around outside with that steaming cup while, with the other hand, fingering flowers and leaves and jabbering to the koi (yes, they can distinguish between people) as the sun peeks over the edge of the horizon, throwing gorgeous rays of color over everything and the birds peep from the feeder while a warm breeze blows softly across the dew and tree leaves rustle. Ahhhhh.
Now...well, it's damn cold out there!
I have this awful twinge of regret and anxiety now that summer is heading off to ... somewhere.
Lordy, I need to move.
Everything in my house has a place, and it has all been it that same place for 25 years. (yeah, and probably some of that dust has had its 25th birthday as well). I still have the same dishes and silverware I had when we got married. New furniture is only aquired as a 'have to' because someone has fallen on the floor for the fifth time. Bills are always paid by check, none of this new-fangled online pay for me, by goobers! Cash at the register. Ancient, cracked and crumbling Christmas decorations hang on the same old, 'see the wire branches' tree, some held together with taped strings of lights. Hey, it is electrical tape! Maybe the cheap stuff, but still. And it comes in colors! Charlie Brown would be so proud.
Have I mentioned I don't like change?
Yet, I find it strange that the one thing I'm overly motivated to constantly change is my garden. I've just finished one corner and wham! I'll be darned, but the next bed has a few plants that aren't happy with their location. So, get out their little suitcases and move them and their dirt 3 feet to the left. Ahem.
Oooo, see, now there's a hole and a big empty spot there. Well, something else will just have to pack up their roots and move in.
Geeps...they're like bad, bad rental tenants with wanderlust. Heh, I wonder if I can start charging them rental space.
Nah, not worth it. Although, with all those wild parties they throw with the Japanese beetles and aphids, I bet I get to keep the security deposits.
Fall seems to be persistantly knocking at the front door with his suitcases piled on the steps behind. If he isn't careful he's going to bust out my glass with all that bangin' ... and then there'll be some-kinda-trouble.
I found some .99 clearance deals at Lowe's.
I actually won at bingo, so splurged a little, but still felt guilty. Of course, I had to reverse that by buying pants on sale for my youngest daughter. She needed them and they were only 6.99 AND buy one get one free. Hah, I love sales!
Anyway, I got 2 Ipomoea, Sweet Caroline Purple.
2 Setcreasea purpurea, Purple Queen
1 Mayapple
1 Trout Liliy
1 Virginia Blue Bell
1 Jack-In-The-Pulpit
And some packages of wildflower seed (for our wild patch) at the dollar store for .06! That's pretty much all they had left. The rest of the dollar stores were completely cleaned out. I don't know what I'm going to do about onion seed this year now. I have some veg seed left from last year and I've saved some of my own, so I'm hoping it'll be enough and they have a high germ rate or we're screwed.
The Purple Queen and the Ipomoea will go in the twin pots of spike plant. I'll have to 'pinch and poke' to get the pots full inside over the winter, (already in as it's 34 degrees!) but they both propagate pretty readily. I'm not quite as sure the Trout Lily will do as well. The packing media seemed really dry. Not good since they aren't supposed to be allowed to dry out - ever. We'll see.
My oldest daughter's ex-boyfriends grandmother (whew, mouthful) stopped up to collect some seed from the flowerbeds. Oh, I soooo hope the wintersowing goes well for her! She's such a sweet elderly lady. She's the one that asked if we'd like the plants from her mother's property when she finally had to go to the nursing home. The woman is almost 100 and was pretty devestated when a very young couple bought her house and could have given a rats a** about the plants when they plowed over everything to make an ATV and snowmobile track. And they cut all her lovely trees down. Ugh!
Anyway, I gave her seeds for everything in my yard that she didn't already have. Now I have my fingers crossed that all goes well for her.
I forgot to plant my peacock orchids this spring.
Grrr! What was I thinking?
Or, rather, not thinking? Sigh.
All that business about getting them to grow last fall and ... well, frig.
I wonder if those neglected little bulbs will be ok until next spring? Yeah, when I can maybe remember to actually plant them!
We finished the patio this past weekend. Yay! I'm doing the happy dance.
We ended up resorting to getting the red shale by bucketfuls. Ugh!
But yes, it's finally finished. It took all summer, but done. And all for free. How much better does it get than that?
Now, I can't make up my mind exactly what to do plant material wise. Dig beds right along the outside edges? Build planters along the inside edges (along the walls of the house) and leave the outside edges clean cut? Lots of pots spread all over?
Well, we must at least have something climby on the little shed wall that is the cellar entrance. That thing is squat and ugly and must be covered with something, but NO ivy. Ick. That'd be one of my additions to Kim's Not In My Garden list. Love it in other peoples gardens, just never in mine. Hmmm ... what to put there?
Now, if we could just get the foundation planters finished before winter. Me thinks we biteth off more than we can cheweth. But no snow drifts under the walls will be worth it!
We've left a piece of land to do as it pleases. It's on a very steep slope (ok, cliff) that is simply impossible to mow, nevermind that it drops to a boot-sucking bog at the bottom.
And right now it's in its glory.
All summer long it has looked like nothing more than an unmanagable briar and wild things patch with a few phlox and queen ann's lace poking around here and there, but we've refused to cut it as it's such a grand wild things haven. Good thing I don't have any of those 'Turn You In' sort of neighbors, eh?
But right now that little untended plot is spectacular! Drifts of goldenrod are interspersed with wild aster, both with outrageously deep color this year, and peeking through on occasion is a splash of bright, glowing white bind weed.
Oh, how I wish they weren't such invasive weeds. I'd have them smack-dab in a front flowerbed. Just because.
