Monday, April 30, 2012

Magically Growing Plants!

Look at how much my little plants have grown! They're all so tall!

Magically Growing Garden

Uh, okay, it's really not all that amazing because these are not my seedlings. My seedlings were either stunted or killed by dampening off. Blah. So Saturday, Dan and I ran out to the local(-ish) nursery and picked up all sorts of goodies.

We got:
  • Okra x2 (Spineless of some type or another)
  • Tomatoes x6 (Roma x3, Rutgers x1, Marglobe x2)
  • Peppers x2 (Jalepeno and Hot Banana Pepper) [added to the Cayenne x4 remaining from the peppers my parents gave us that the sun didn't cook before I repotted them]
  • Squash x2 (Crookneck and a white majestic or something-or-other that sounded interesting) [these were our unplanned impulse purchases... much better than the lime tree we were eyeing earlier (which is the result of a joke made a while back by Dan, but something I'm seriously considering apparently, which is absurd, but hey, that fits with everything else I do!)]

Those all got added to some cilantro that I had already planted [and whose growth has yet to be stunted... maybe] and two pots of Fordhook lima beans and one pot of Golden Zucchini that I planted today.

Honestly, if I had found either limas or a fun zucchini at the nursery, I would have gotten them instead of going with the seeds again - once bitten, twice shy and all. Hopefully this seed attempt will go better than the previous since my poppa came by last week and checked out my set up and gave me some advice, which Dan and I implemented Saturday before planting the new plants.

So fingers crossed!

Thursday, April 26, 2012

I Forgot!

I meant to post about this a couple of days ago but I spaced it. But I remembered it tonight, so yay! I have good craft-related news!

Earlier this month, I got involved in a contest held by a totally awesome designer, Linda Browning, on Ravelry. For each completed project of one of her designs, she gave the knitter a free pattern of their choice and an entry into a raffle to get some yarn goodies. The designer has a lot of lovely lace patterns and since I was attempting to understand lace mysteries, it was right up my alley!

So for the last two weeks of March and first two weeks of April (the time of the contest ran), I made lots of fun lace!

More Lace!
Candle Coaster

Tulipe Doily
Bedside Doily

Assemble Lace Shawl
My First Shawl!

See, busy! (I'll admit, while I love them all, the Tulipe doily (the middle one) is my favorite.)

Honestly, the free pattern thing was enough to make this whole thing worthwhile for me. I loved knitting the projects and learning more about lace. And then getting some more lovely lace patterns for free? Total win! But guess what? I won something else - yarn!

Alpaca Lace

It's 437 yards of delightful lace-weight alpaca! Squee!

I already have a pattern picked out that I want to make with this. Now I just have to find the time (because I have about two dozen other things I want to make, too)!

Meh and Yay!

I've got a bit of a 'good news, bad news' thing going on in my yard.

First, the bad news: my veggie-type plants are unhappy. My one okra outside is still alive (though a bit nibbled on) however my tomato plans are dampening off. Basically, they are weak little seedlings and couldn't fight off fungus and are now dying. Sigh. I thought my okra was having the same issue, but this morning when I looked again it appeared to be okay. So I went ahead and planted the remaining two seedlings in the pot to see if they will all live (or die) together.

As for the tomato issues, Dan and I are going to run out this weekend to get some more grown up tomato plants to give it another shot with something a bit sturdier than a seedling. Hopefully that will get us back on track. I still have to plant the zucchini and butter beans. I'm waiting until it's a little warmer since it still has been dipping into the low 50's at night.

Overall not horrible news but the dampening off is particularly discouraging. Still unfun growing news.

So now the fun growing news! Another of my Clark Garden irises is blooming!

Not a Snake

This one is labeled as Anaconda Love, but it looks nothing like what Google says Anaconda Love looks like. Not that Anaconda Love isn't a pretty flower, but mine, whatever it is, is much prettier. Look at that little glowing purply-blue in the middle of the petal? LOVELY! When I get sad about my tomatoes, I just look at my not-a-snake iris and have to smile.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

No, Seriously. I Hate You.

Something is eating my okra. And it isn't me.

I planted 6 little seedlings earlier. Now they all look like this:

My Okra

Boo! Something (that I hate very much) is eating all the leaves off of my okra babies!

So yesterday I (okay, Dan, but it was at my request) got some worm/caterpillar/larvae/etc killer (Dipel Dust) to hopefully take care of the problem. Fortunately, I have a few more seedlings on the porch that I was saving, just in case. Well, in case happened. I've planted one of the remaining plants outside as a buffet invitation for my okra-eaters and sprinkled it with the Dipel Dust. Hopefully, there will be some dead okra-eaters out there tomorrow.

In better news, some of my Clark Garden irises are blooming. Okay, right now it is just one of them, Brilliant Performance, but the iris-that-isn't-actually-Anaconda-Love has two buds on it, so hopefully in the next day or two I'll get photographic proof that it is something other than what the bucket is labeled. And then maybe I can figure out what it is. (Though I'm a bit doubtful on that since there are so many freaking varieties of iris (and I want them ALL!) and there are a lot of ones that look alike, so yeah, my chances are probably not good.) But until then, look at the pretty peach and orange iris.

Brilliant Performance

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Floral Adventures

I bring you pictures! Quite a lot of them, actually. Yesterday, Dan, my parents and I all went down to Clark Gardens since their claim to fame is irises (my favorite flower) and right now is the peak of the iris blooms.

Y'all, it was fantastic. So fantastic, that I took about 400 pictures. Don't worry, only 140 of them made it to "share-worthy" status. And worry even less, because I'm not going to post them all here. If you are so inclined, you can see all the share-able ones in my Flickr Album for the event, but here are some of my favorites.

Irises

Water Lily

Iris

Irises

Clark Gardens

Innocent Devil

Iris

Daisies

Butterfly

Iris

I also bought 4 irises while I was there. I didn't get pictures of them before the travel made the blooms unhappy but here's what I got (with links to other sites for pictures): Anaconda Love (which I actually question because my blooms look rather unlike what I find via Google for that name - mine is like the light bronze version of Cantina), Brilliant Performance (peach with a vivid orange tongue), Cantina (purple with a glowing blue center bit) and Color Me Pink (pink like in the picture I linked to, I'm assuming, but I haven't seen it bloom). Hopefully I'll be planting them next month or so (you should do it about four to six weeks after the last bloom) when I'll remember to mark them so that whenever we move, I can easily dig them up and take them with me!

Friday, April 6, 2012

Still Growing!

Okay, first off, totally don't except (or fear) every-other-day updates for the entirety of the vegetable growing season. I'm sure things will taper off, it's just right now, lots of things are happening!

Tomatoes

My tomato seedings are coming up (above), the radishes are being very enthusiastic (they are the tall things in the background of the pictures), my onions are very prolific (they look like a lot of tiny green snakes) and I even have a few spinach seedlings poking their heads out.

It looks like one set of radish seeds have decided not to do anything while most of the others have decided that at least two of them will sprout. (It does make me a little sad to know that I'll have to thin them out, but oh well.) I'm hoping the three spinach that are popping up are just the early ones and the rest will get their act in gear soon. I have zero complaints about the onions so far and I am already looking forward to thinning out the tomatoes (because I do not need the fruits of that many tomato plants).

I'm hoping that this weekend I'll be able to put the radish seedlings into their full-size pots (apparently I could have initially planted them in there but eh, live and learn) and get some other seeds started. Herbs maybe? We shall see. I'm sure I'll post about it!

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Day 3 of Insanity

Things are starting to grow! Dan excitedly informed me this morning that green things are beginning to appear in my little mini-greenhouse I planted my veggie seeds in.

Day 3

So far it looks like the onions are the early starters, but there is a tiny bit of green poking out in one or two of the radish spots so things seem to be going well so far!

Monday, April 2, 2012

Garden Weeds

I was outside weeding my iris beds when I found the weirdest weed ever.

Garden Weed

Who knew those grew in this area?

The Insanity Builds

Maybe I have a bit of spring fever because I think I've descended into madness. First off, let's look at the cause of my issues: things are blooming like crazy.

Lady Banks

Scarlet Gaura

Indian Hawthorne

Even my irises are getting into the display, including the super-shy white and pale lilac ones.

Iris

Yellow Iris

Iris

So what has this delightful and intoxicating display of color caused? Yeah, that's where the insanity comes in. This is what we picked up this weekend.

Preparation

Yes. Do you see the insanity now? I'm going to attempt a vegetable container garden.

I've got a number of seeds (12, I think?) but I only planted four this morning, specifically the ones that I thought were the biggest risk/least likely to be able to deal with our heat: bunching onions, radishes, spinach and tomatoes.

Day 1

Okay, the tomatoes aren't a high risk thing but I am getting started on them late since I'm growing from seed so I figured I had best get cracking. I'm most hopeful about the onions but I'm thinking the radish and the spinach will be very unhappy since things are already so hot. But I did save some seeds so I'm going to attempt to grow them in the fall, too, which I think might have happier results. Wish me luck!