I've decided.

I want chaos! Why should I succumb to the organized, color themed, uppity, perfectly structured ways of fellow gardeners? I won't. I won't I say!

I WILL have an unorganized, colorwheel-be-damned garden! I want the plants I want, where I want them, flowering at the time they see fit and where they suit themselves most.

It so aggravates me when someone points out that my purple salvia most definitely should NOT be planted with my blazing red bee balm. Says who? Maybe I like clashing colors. Maybe just to tick these people off a bit more I'll plant orange calendula right smack-dab in the center of that bed next year and call it the 'tie-dye' garden! Take that Miss Nose In The Air Upper-Crusty Garden Maidens!

I sigh heavily and know that come spring I'll still worry about what my fellow hands-in-the-dirt peers will say. There's just no getting around it. It's a hopeless, yearly, spring garden dilemma.

This year I will simply do as I please. I will not give in to the norm. It's boring. Who likes boring? The butterflies, hummingbirds and hummingbird moths who visit daily could care what colors I put together, and neither does mother nature. Thus - neither do I!

My purple will stay snuggled next to the red, and maybe, just maybe...I will add some orange to my chaotic cottage gardens.

Fabulous!

I tripped over some very cool beginner 'how to' gardening video today:

http://www.videojug.com/category/house-and-garden/gardening

Awesome, or what?! Ok, so I'm easily amused...

That's what I get for staying out of the garden and on the net on a rainy day. ;-)

Drizzle?

Angry gray clouds are moving across the sky today, dumping bucket upon bucket of uneeded rain. Our tiny little creek has turned into the rushing Colorado river once again, bringing back nightmarish memories of the June flood. Thankfully, they said the flooding won't be quite as bad this time.

It is a rather depressing garden day. The ravaging winds have stripped the maples bare, the ground is littered with dropped pears. Everything is yellowed and drab, preparing for it's long winter slumber. The corn across the road is brown and dead. I wish they'd cut it.

One lone holdout of color left: dianthus. They are insistant there is still time to bloom and show off their beautiful points of blaze pink.

I brought in the spike plants and transplanted them into containers I can just stick outside in the spring. They aren't happy about it (really, what did I expect?). There are a few volunteer sprouts of pink vinca emerging in the pots with the spikes. I'll baby them and just maybe they'll make it until spring.

Even in all the depressing grayness my mind turns toward planning spring plantings and WSing.
Roll on winter, roll on.

Data and more data

I decided a while ago to look around for some data on what will WS well and what won't in my zone. Ooo, might have been a mistake, but I am definitly now 'in the know'. Information overload! I'll still be doing a lot of experimenting of my own along the way, but I found an excellent database of just that very topic. I figured, "Hey, if it'll WS in zone 0, I shouldn't have a prob in zone 5, eh?"
I now have a nice little hand written booklet of what and when sitting on my desk awaiting winter thanks to this:
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/mamrudd/wsdbtext.htm

It still doesn't mean my kids don't think I'm nuts, but hubster seems to be getting a bit more interested as time goes by...like we need another hobby...

Though the database doesn't list this, interestingly enough, the times for putting certain seeds out correlates pretty well with most of our birthdays! Guess it'll be a very good thing that it won't be hard to remember.

In case everyone just reading about Winter Sowing for the first time actually does think I'm nuts, this is the best site ever to learn about it:
http://www.wintersown.org/

So go ahead and get your free seeds from Trudi and give it a try! What have you got to lose?

I give in...

Actually, I give up. Why can't people just take a comment as a comment? There always has to be some deep seeded snipe or insinuation meant? Ugh! I just give up. I'll stay in my hole, make my quilts, grow my plants, and shut my mouth. None of these things ever seem to think you meant something other than you actually said when you said it to them! (Maybe the fact their inanimate has something to do with it?) lol.

It's continually cold out now, so it's almost puzzle season. :-) Yay! Though I really, really, really hate winter, there are some redeeming qualities.The report on pumpkin crop loss for NY is in: 25%. Bummer. But the apple harvest was more than doubled. What a weird growing season we've had. The fruit and veg farms around here are almost all closed due to the flood damage. I feel really sad for the loss of all that produce. Thank God they all had insurance! (And will be getting extra money from FEMA).

This weekend seemed to fly by. I got quite a bit done on the new Cathedral Window quilt. The last one took 2 years, but this one is sort of a 'do it as I feel like' so will probably take much, much longer. Besides, I hate ironing all those muslin squares. Des and I started a quilt for her teacher. I decided on a Bears Paw since it has a simple enough pattern for her to grasp. I'm secretly pleased that she wants to do this. Shhhh! Don't tell her I said, or she'll decide to quit just to spite me. Ahhh, the joys of being 14.

All the leaves have been off our trees for about a week now, yet the rest of the state is at peak color or just past. Kinda ticks me off that the valley has such wacko growing weather: first for some things, behind in others. A few of my plants have decided it is definitely winter while others are soldiering on as though it's going to warm back up soon enough. Maybe they just didn't get the memo. One stand of purple phlox faded almost a month ago, and yet another stand about 20 feet away decided to put out new blossoms this weekend. D just pointed at it confusedly and said, "Ummm?" Yeah, weird.