Category Archives: house

gardening, photos 1 Comment

Growing Things

This weekend, I drug Aaron out with me to purchase some planting supplies — most notably, a seed starting kit. I’d purchased several packets of seeds last year, and decided that this is the year I start my own plants from seed.

I ended up starting five plants each of hollyhocks, lemon basil, sweet basil, parsley, and catnip. Well, each peat pellet pot has two or three seeds in it, but they’ll be thinned to one per pot, so we’ll just say it’s five plants apiece.

I’ve never done this before, so I had no idea how peat pellets worked. It is SO COOL. They start out as little flat discs. You water them with warm water, and poof! They become little miniature biodegradable pots! How cool is that?

And what’s cooler? My hollyhocks and my basil are already starting to germinate, after only two days. There are little, pale green stems curling up out of the soil. I opened up the lid of my mini-greenhouse, and it smells like those bean sprouts we planted in first grade. *squee*

So, what’s my diabolical plan? Well, I’m planning to plant the hollyhocks close to the fence that borders the neighbors. This will hopefully act as a bit of a privacy screen, as I understand that hollyhocks can grow pretty tall. Beside the hollyhocks, farther away from the fence, I’m hoping to plant one or two of the potted Rose of Sharon bushes/twigs I’ve been trying not to kill for the past two years. I’m hoping to manage this in a way that doesn’t complicate Aaron’s lawn-mowing mojo.

In the NE corner of the backyard, I’m planning to plant a little herb garden, with my basil and catnip and parsley and maybe some store-bought plants. There’s a decent little patch of sunshine by the fence and the gate, so hopefully I can nestle a little corner of herbalicious goodness there — and, again, not complicate Aaron’s lawn-mowing mojo. I’m hoping that my strategy will reduce the amount of edging for me to neglect.

As much as I’m tempted to go buy myself a nice climbing rose, I know I should hold off. I’ve already just about killed one rosebush from neglect; I don’t need to continue my murderous rampage of flora until I can take care of what I’ve already planted. Plus, goodness knows how much I’ll be able to take care of any of this once we pop out a kid. I can’t help but assume that infant care and gardening are not particularly compatible.

But that’s not for some time yet. For now, I’ll be content in watching my baby plants germinate and make condensation inside their little greenhouse.

gardening 2 Comments

Pre-Gardening

I wonder what will come back.

I planted some perennials last year. Some did well. Others failed miserably. I’m eagerly awaiting the return of any plants that survived the winter.

See, I’m a very beginning gardener. I also have the unfortunate habit of getting disinterested in various hobbies at various times, which is not good for living things. My houseplants are a prime example; I tend to forget to water them during the winter, and a few plants that I had intended to transplant outside have died during their dormant season as a result of my neglect.

I also am unsure about simple things, like when to mulch and when not to mulch, or how to prepare a flower bed and with what, and so on. Some of these things I can learn online or in books — still, though, it seems like so much to remember! This isn’t intuitive to me as it is to some.

Anyway, let me give a rundown of what may or may not return for the Spring of 2006…
Continue reading →

gardening

Spring Daffodils

The two bunches of daffodils I had ordered from the American Cancer Society for Daffodil Days arrived this morning, delivered to my desk at work. I wasn’t sure if they were going to arrive in pots or cut — turns out they were cut flowers, which was a slight disappointment. (The ones from the University were potted bulbs, as I recall.) This morning, they were completely closed buds; by lunch, half of them had started to open, and by the time I left work today, all but a few were starting to open.

That made me wonder how the mini daffodils I planted last year are faring. Once I got home, and after Aaron left for work, I went outside to take a peek — and they’re growing! I had planted them in six or seven clumps, and it looks like all but one clump have a good inch of leafy growth popping up. Yaye!

I feel all springy and excited now. I have the windows open, even though it’s cooling down outside, and I’m pumped to do my new Push workout that arrived today. Yeah!

Too bad it’s going to be 30’s and flurries for the next week. 😛

house

Dancing In The Dark

I had spent probably an hour or so fiddling with the new LSM site, saving to the server every few minutes.

Thank goodness for my particular choice of workflow, because shortly before 9pm, the power went out. I had been listening to some Oakenfold (generally my soundtrack of choice while doing webstuff), and suddenly I heard a popping noise outside as my monitor winked out. Then silence. And frustration, until it occurred to me that I’d been saving every two minutes. 🙂

I got up from my desk, walked over to the cabinet o’ candles, and pulled out a couple. Lit one for the basement, one for the living room, and one for the dining room. It wasn’t actually dark yet, but I like to be prepared.

Anyway, it was too dim to really do anything indoors, even with the candles lit, so I went outside to see if the neighbors’ power was out, too. (Yes, I left the candles lit like an irresponsible Diana.) Sure enough, the neighbor lady was outside, and so was the one a couple doors down from her. Our whole end of the street was out.

Went back inside and located the old-school phone that doesn’t need plugged into a power outlet. Not the cell, although that would have worked, too. Anywho, I dug out the electric bill and called the 24-hour Emergency / Outage number I found listed there. I was expecting some surly switchboard operator, but it ended up being one of those automated voice recognition systems. At first, I thought it would be voicemail hell, but once I figured out that it was that voice recognition shit, it wasn’t bad. Just weird.

Once our power outage was reported to the nice computer, I grabbed a book and sat out on the front step to read for a while. After about 20 minutes, though, even the light outside wasn’t sufficient for reading. So, I went inside, blew out the rest of the candles (I’d extinguished the one downstairs before I went out to read), put on socks and shoes, grabbed my keys and my cellphone (it has a built-in flashlight) and went for a walk. Hell, nothing better to do, right? And maybe by the time I got back, my power would be back on. Right?

Wrong-o. Got back half an hour later, and still no lights. Not even any streetlights. Went back inside, re-lit the candles, and got out the Palm IIIc to write this entry. Thank goodness for backlit screens.

So, here I sit, at… *checks watch in glow of Palm screen* …10:45pm, covered in a thin film of perspiration thanks to the impotent and powerless box fan—

Holy shit. The power just came back on. I’ll be goddamned.

Two hours without power. Could have been worse.

Now to go upload this entry, and see whether my computer’s fried…