gardening

Initial Planning and Preparation

Want to see what almost $100 and several hours of yardwork will accomplish?

On Saturday, Aaron gave me my anniversary present of a $50 gift certificate to Gardenland. Yay! So, off we went on a plant shopping spree. First, though, we stopped at Lowe’s and picked up the flowers you see here (left).

The white flowers are Double Impatiens—they’re an annual, which means they’ll only live for this year, but I may try my hand at collecting their seeds and replanting them next year.

The pink flowers are Dwarf Hydrangeas, and those are perennials. They ain’t goin’ nowhere (unless I kill them).

The green patches of ground cover are Pearlwort. Although you can’t really tell yet, they have tiny white flowers that sprout from the green growth. I’d like to get some more of these and actually cover the entire area around the flowers (where there’s currently only dirt).

We planted these on Saturday afternoon, before the rain hit. We also trimmed down the shrubs in the right of the picture from being the size of small trees to being large bushes.

On Sunday, we tackled the rest of the planting. Actually, I tackled the back garden while Aaron hacked down the overgrown tree-bush next to the garage.

After preparing the flowerbed (which I did rather hastily, IMO, in a fashion that would probably make most gardeners and landscapers cringe), I planted the first round of herbs purchased at Gardenland on Saturday. Top row left to right are Lavender and two Sage plants. Bottom row left to right are two Coriander / Cilantro plants and a Sweet Basil. Yes, the plants are supposed to spread and get quite a bit larger, so don’t worry. I’m hoping to put some more herbs in as I get the money to buy them: more varieties of Basil, some Catnip, some Mint, Parsley, Oregano, Creeping Thyme, etc, etc.

I also planted the rosebush we got on Saturday at Gardenland (see right). It’s a Brandy, and will eventually have blooms of an interesting pinkish-coralish hue. It looks a little sad in this picture, but it’ll get more grand soon. Hopefully.

While I was at it, I decided today would be a good time to attempt to transplant the shrubs growing in the teeny patch of dirt next to our back door. One of them was thorny, like it could be a rosebush, and the other had some attractive small purple flowers. So, I dug them up and put them into some now-vacant containers (see left). Hopefully they’ll grow and thrive and I’ll be able to plant them alongside my other plants in the garden.

Overall, I feel like this weekend was particularly productive. I hope our work pays off, and that I can get some more herbs and shrubs to plant this season.

randomness

Gamer Lamer

*comes up for air after 2 1/2 hour Civilization III marathon*

*looks around*

*takes a deep breath and dives into a new game*

health & fitness

Yummy Crock Pot BBQ Wings

The wings were successful. All three pounds were gone by 3pm. I even got to eat some.

I was a bad Diana and cheated horribly on my diet today. Ate a couple sugar-free muffins, a couple small not-sugar-free cupcakes, one not-very-good chocolate chip cookie, and a chocolate-dipped strawberry, all in addition to the “real” food I ate. I was half-high for part of the day, half-asleep for the rest of it, and half had a headache while I came down from my sugar high. That’ll teach me, I guess.

In other news, I’m kind of bored. I’m going to go play Civ III for an hour.

randomness

Blogging

What’s with people who blog about their blog? If I surf to one more blog whose last four posts have been about how 6Apart are sellouts and are now charging money for Movable Type and how everyone should switch their blog over to WordPress or something… gah.

For God’s sake, people, blog about something! Blogging about your blog is counterproductive.

the ongoing saga of my job

Be afraid. Be very afraid…

…of Diana’s cooking.

Tomorrow is the First Annual Building-Wide Potluck at the Sky Service Center in BG. It’s a fundraiser for the Relay For Life team—they’re participating in the upcoming relay at BG City Park to fight cancer. The organizers had wanted everybody to sign up for the potluck last week, so they’d know how many participants there would be, but only four people signed up by the deadline. So, to keep the thing alive (hey, I like food, even if I can’t eat half of it), I asked Aaron what I could make, and he came up with crock-pot chicken wings with low-carb BBQ sauce. Good idea! So, I signed up.

Of course, as soon as I signed up, the event organizers took the list around to all the departments and specifically asked if anyone was planning to bring food to the potluck. Turns out that half the building actually was planning to bring something, but didn’t want to commit to a specific dish a week in advance. Now there’s something like thirty different dishes in the potluck. Hey, that’s cool.

So, I just got done browning the wings, and they’re now sitting in my spiffy crock-pot with the removable crock, waiting to be smothered in Carb Well BBQ and put on to cook overnight. I really hope they turn out OK.

I always have a “thing” about my cooking not being very good, even though most of the time whatever I make turns out just fine. I had a couple mishaps in high school (how was I to know the pasta pizza would keep cooking if I turned off the heat and left it in the oven to keep warm?) and during the beginnings of my relationship with Aaron (mental note: corn starch only thickens if the heat is turned on; and upon turning the heat on, all the extra corn starch you put into the sauce in your confusion will create a fascinating tumor in your chicken paprikash). But, for the most part, I do OK when I cook. I leave most of the cooking to Aaron, though, and he seems to be fine with that. For now, anyway. 🙂

I will return tomorrow with a report on the success of my crock-pot chicken wings.