me: "Oh, my, God!"
dh: "What?"
me: "Do you see what he's doing?"
dh: "Who? You mean (name omitted to spare the otherwise innocent)?"
me: "Yeah. Look at that!"
dh: "He's spreading crap. So? It's not like you haven't seen a crap spreader before."
me: "He's throwing half of it in the road. What a waste."
dh: "I suppose you want to go out there and shovel it off the road and onto the compost heap?"
Yes, my husband is a master of rhetorical questions.
Again. I've had to deal with them before, but that was in the fall when they were scouting for winter homes.
Yup, mouse (or mice? Ugh!) in the house.
~sigh~
Though I do adore living in the middle of nowhere, I don't enjoy living with much of the wildlife. We sort of draw the lines and tolerate each other. Although they seem to just smirk at my lines as they waddle/slither/bounce across them.
I woke up to trashed seedlings on the bottom level of the plant stand. Grrr!
The little b*****d chewed the top leaves off. And of course, he had to be picky about which seedlings he chewed.
Only stems left on 1/2 the pansies and impatiens.
A third of the peppers Hungarian Wax and Jalapeno M) are chewed right to the soil. He left the poor severed, wilted leaves just laying there.
:(
And (of course) he dug the moonflower seeds right out of the soil. Yes, the chewed and discarded remains of seeds were left in an obvious position on the tray of coleus seedlings right next door. I had a slight disaster last year with the moonflower and only ended up with one flowering survivor last summer. I'm hoping the little SOB overlooked a few of those seeds.
Lilies - about half left.
Thank goodness I put the cole crop sprouts on the top level of the plant stand where they can't be reached.
This is war - now I just have to decide on my weapon of choice. It would be my bare hands...if I could catch the little f-er!
I heard a flock of robins singing yesterday, but they sometimes stick around all year, so I ignored them.
But, right now there is a (very loud) flock of a good 250 to 300 Red-winged Blackbirds in the tree right outside my sliding glass doors!
Yes!! They're back! Spring is here!
In about an hour I'll be wishing they'd shut up.
Wow, I have a lot to say today!
The hubs (perfect man that he is) brought home some black five gallon pails. He thought they were recycling them at work, but found out recently that they're just chucking them! I can't believe it - how wasteful. :(
Anyway, he knows I've been yakking about growing some veg in containers of some kind on the patio to have more room in the garden and once he found out they were just throwing the buckets away he asked if he could have some. Yeah, like they'd say no, eh?
So now I have stacks of buckets for trying some vegetable container planting this year. Oh, man! I can already picture watermelon vines spread to their hearts content across the stone. Hehehe! I know they'll look kind of ugly, but I don't care. I sure hope it works or I'm going to be majorly disappointed.
It'll still be quite a while until they get this far north, but they are on the way. Yay!
Here's the Migration Map for spring 2008. It might be time for some of you to get your feeders ready!
No, not from me. lol.
Linette Gerlach, writing Mother Earth's Garden for b5media, is giving away $30 to one reader.
"Entries will be accepted until midnight on March 31st."
Go read how you can enter - there are 4 options.
I don't have a paypal account so am not going to bother.
Hmmm, but I guess I just did with this post anyway! lol.
It's one of those days - post ice, gloomy, rainy, dreary and all around depressing.
And then Dave Neads has to go and add to my misery. He has a very excellent blog called Chilton Ark. He built his own home by hand, lives in the middle of nowhere, is worried about (and quite in tune with) what's happening to the environment, and I envy his lifestyle. He doesn't post often, but when he does it's always a worthwhile, excellent and informative read.
I mean, what is one gardener to do? Yes, there are millions of us all trying to do our part, but I still get the feeling that no matter what we do, it'll never be enough. The majority still refuse to see the 'big picture'. So does what I do on my tiny speck of the earth really matter? Some days I know it does and some days I want to throw up my hands and just announce (to no one in particular) that it doesn't matter what I do with my speck if everyone else really doesn't care that their actions are null and voiding mine.
Two small sentences on Dave's blog really crushed my organic gardener side today:
"Even if we were to level off emissions today, there is enough CO2 and other gasses in the atmosphere to cause a rise of nearly 2 degrees C by 2040.
It is unavoidable."
That is what we're leaving to our children and our grandchildren, no matter what we do. The damage is already done. And that scares me.
So, on dreary, low garden morale days like today, I pull up my bootstraps, straighten my spine, grab a pack of seeds and say, "Yes, damn it, the actions I take on my speck most certainly DO matter!"
Even the smallest ant helps sustain the colony.
Plan to 'flush' Grand Canyon stirs concerns
Los Angeles Times
"Federal flood control managers plan to unleash millions of cubic feet of water from behind Glen Canyon Dam to "flush" the huge canyon bottom with a simulated springtime flood this week, but National Park Service officials who oversee the natural wonder are worried.
Water releases meant to renew the river's bottom are ill-timed and serve hydropower firms, park officials say."
Personally, I don't think they've gathered enough data from the first 3 to know if it's doing more harm than good.
They're talking 3/4 inch ice accumulations and power outages.
~sigh~
Urgent - Winter Weather Message
NORTHERN ONEIDA-YATES-SENECA-SOUTHERN CAYUGA-ONONDAGA-STEUBEN- SCHUYLER-TOMPKINS-MADISON-SOUTHERN ONEIDA-CORTLAND-CHENANGO- OTSEGO- 428 AM EST TUE MAR 4 2008 , WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 PM EST THIS EVENING, A WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 10 PM EST THIS EVENING. RAIN WILL CHANGE TO A MIX OF SNOW, SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN OVER THE WARNING AREA THIS MORNING
PRECIPITATION MAY BE HEAVY AT TIMES, AND A SIGNIFICANT ACCUMULATION OF ICE IS LIKELY ACROSS THE SOUTHERN FINGER LAKES REGION, AND THE NORTHERN HALF OF THE SUSQUEHANNA REGION. TONIGHT MIXED PRECIPITATION WILL CHANGE TO JUST RAIN, AS TEMPERATURES WARM AND THE STORM CROSSES THE AREA. A WINTER STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT BECAUSE HEAVY AMOUNTS OF SNOW, SLEET AND ICE ARE EXPECTED IN THE WARNING AREA
ROADS WILL BECOME SLIPPERY WITH SNOW AND ICE, AND DRIVING VISIBILITY MAY BE POORIF YOU MUST TRAVEL THROUGH THE AREA, SLOW DOWN, LEAVE PLENTY OF ROOM BETWEEN YOU AND THE MOTORIST AHEAD OF YOU, AND ALLOW EXTRA TIME TO REACH YOUR DESTINATIONAVOID SUDDEN BRAKING OR ACCELERATION, AND BE ESPECIALLY CAUTIOUS ON HILLS OR WHEN MAKING TURNS.
Well, that's just peachy...
OK, I'm sure everyone is done laughing at my Lavender faux pas by now.
I have about a dozen lavender sprouts on the plant stand (different type).
Now, I realize it's going to take them some time to even reach decent size, but I want to eventually plant them (yeah, if I don't kill them) at the end of the driveway, at the front edge of the patio - south facing (No, there isn't a flowerbed there as of right now, but come spring...) I want it to have an open-closed-in feel. As if it's a seperate space but still part of the complete picture. You gardeners will get what I mean.
I don't know what to plant with them. Anyone have any ideas? It's got to be flowers of some kind - no shrubs, Spirea (pink and white) will be on the west side, but come to think of it, I have no idea what to plant with those either! I do have some weirdo bushes that were given to me last summer. They look sort of like a mock orange and I looked them up, but don't remember what they are. Maybe I'll interplant those with the spirea. I'll figure it out eventually. Maybe portulaca.
On the third (back side) will be Pampas grass, giant sunflower, dahlia and whatever I can't fit in somewhere else.
Maybe this whole planting situation I've got going sounds completely wrong? Well, maybe it does. Ugh! If it does, quit slapping your foreheads, smack mine and help me!
The bed will be about 2 foot wide and 16 (I think?) feet long, but I have to leave an entrance somewhere. I've been keeping an eye on the foot traffic to decide where that opening will be and I can already tell that the oil delivery guy is gonna be a problem. :( You can't see anything under 3 foot of snow and I really hate fences, so I don't know what to do about that. Maybe containers on pedestals of some kind? He might be more likely to walk between them than around?
The bed will be well draining and mounded (per wishes of picky lavender).
But I have to figure out how not to over water (yeah, it's a habit) and I need something in there that I can pretty much ignore. I thought blue salvia (mainly because I can't kill it!) but I think not having any contrast would suck. I might put some variegated thyme in there and some basil (see a theme here?) but I want some color. I'm not adverse to pink, people! Suggest away. Something tall? (but skinny - I don't want to block off the front view) Really short? Lavish? Skimpy? Annual? Perennial? Ground cover? Something I can start from seed would be great!
Please suggest something. Anything.
It's making me nuts! I have never been this bothered about where to plant what. OK, I've never been a planner before, I've just let things 'happen', but this seems entirely different for some reason.
Oh, Caren! Kim! Yoohooo! Anyone?
The first week in March is National Procrastination Week.
Hmmm, does that mean I should be doing things I've procrastinated about or that I get to procrastinate all this week and not do a darn thing I wasn't planning to do anyway? 'Cause, ya know, the list is pretty long in either case.
;0)
Sown for 'seed starting weekend'. Since no one wanted to play, fine, I'll play by myself ;)~
On the plant stand
Broccoli
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Brussel Sprouts
Head Lettuce
Bell Peppers
Sensitive Plant (I have one seed left - I think the lady picked the pods before they were mature and the rest just sat in the soil and eventually rotted)
Moonflower
Coleus (more-can you ever have enough?)
Asarina (in hanging basket)
Thunbergia alata (in hanging basket)
Wintersown in milk jugs
Balloon Flower
Canterbury Bells
Cosmos (sea shell)
Larkspur
Butterfly Weed
Petunia
Sweet William
Forget-Me-Not
Helichrysum
Gloriosa Daisy
Datura (The package says lavender, but I think it ended up being just plain old Jimson weed. But did I mark the package? Nooooo)
Coreopsis
Portulaca
I think I'm forgetting a few...
This brings my wintersown jug count to 42. Not many this year, but I tend to forget what a race it is in the spring to get thousands and thousands of seedlings into the ground.
I accosted some poor guy in the seed area in Waldeath yesterday.
:)
Well he started it! He was browsing through the expensive seeds (those display areas I won't even go near) and noticed me thumbing through the 10 and 30 cent packages. He kept picking up packages, raising his glasses to his forehead to read them, them sticking them right back. I'm not sure if he was reading the price, the flower descriptions or the sowing instructions.
Anyway, after scouring about the tenth pack, he popped over and pointed at the cheapies. "Do those grow OK?"
Oh boy! The perfect opportunity was plopped right in my lap! Of course they do and I told him so. (I really wish people would stop buying expensive seed when they can get the same for cheap, because YES, they grow just as well. And in most cases, better!)
And obviously, as he seemed a bit clueless and lost about growing things, I had to pass on the wintersown and gardenweb websites. I hope he'll visit. He seemed honestly interested, and even wrote the info on the seed packages he was buying. Yeah, the cheap ones.
And where does my husband suddenly appear from? He'd been in another section of the garden area chatting about bulbs with the guys wife!
'Twas a good day.
Oh, and the hubs found a package of popcorn seed! I guess we're growing it this year after all. Yay!
Interesting. Need a gift for a gardener?
Clothes off our back is auctioning off celebrity Custom Created and Signed Pure & Natural® Brand Gardening Kits
"Proceeds from the auction benefit the Earth Pledge "Seed Blitz" program, which teaches urban children the value of growing and using plants to help them connect to the earth. "
The auction runs until March 10th.
