Seed update, the coleus has sprung, and the echinacea (coneflower) is on the verge. I think I had my sunflowers way too far from the light source, and the ornamental cabbage too, so they’re kinda wacky. Now that I can actually move around a bit better I constructed a super-large platform atop the ironing board, to bring eveyrthing closer to the light. Hope it’s not too late to fix them. If it is, well, live and learn!

It’s so NICE to be able to move and do stuff. You have no idea. Or maybe you do. :-) pictures after the jump Continue reading »

OK so here’s a cool thing that happened to me. The guys who are rehabbing the house next door asked me if I minded if they painted my foundation white to match theirs. Um… nope. Knock yourself out there, bub. Paint away.

Then a few days later they said they were going to have their contractor up on the exterior of the third floor, removing some kind of rotten fascia board and lining it with copper and replacing it and painting it all white. Did I mind if they did my side too? Again I say “Yeah, go for it.”

Then I was making conversation with this peddler of free services and asked what he paid for his new windows, mentioning that I needed new ones in the front because they both leaked. He said “Oh yeah, our new ones leak too, it’s because of that rotten fascia board right there. That’s why we’re fixing it.” And lo and behold he was RIGHT. Not only does his newly-painted board thing look nice and neat, but it’s raining like all-get-out* here and these windows are not leaking! Now, I still need new windows there, but this buys me time and takes them from a priority 2 project down to… say, priority 5. Sweet huh? Continue reading »

OK so after a few weeks of my shuffling down to the basement and peering down at plastic trays while making “Hrmmmm…” noises, the seeds have decided to sprout, AND HOW.

It’s actually damn cool to see. Now, I did read a thing this week in Fine Gardening that I should have read BEFORE I started this, which is that you need to put your lamp only a foot above your seeds (mine is maybe 3-4 ft above) so that the seeds don’t strain toward the light and therefore get “leggy.” Some of my seeds are looking a little leggy. But then, my legs are stumpy, so if my seeds are somewhat legalicious this will all even out in the wash. Or something like that. But anyway! I am quite excited about it all and I present to you…THE SEEDS. Or maybe THE SPROUTS.

OK, so six weeks today was when I decided to hurl myself down the stairs for attention and sympathy. And I have to tell you, the attention and sympathy are lacking and the pain and inconvenience are more than I bargained for. So I will definitely think twice before I try that trick again.

SIX WEEKS. Damn. It seems like longer. I go back to the doctor a week from Monday to see how I am healing and if I get the robocop leg off or not. I don’t know if there’s an intermediary step between robocop leg and setting me free to walk on my own, so some kind of mini-robocop-leg may be in my future too.

In the meantime I have gained much skillz in:

• cast-condom donning
• monkeying my way up and down the stairs
• finding the cripple entrance to the building
• putting up with people’s asshole “Oh I had the same thing but twice as bad and for twice as long!” stories. (Thanks fuckwad, that makes my personal hell of pain and disability SO MUCH MORE BEARABLE.)

I have not become any better at:

• learning my limits
• taking it easy
• counting my blessings
• suffering fools
• kneeling down to do things when one leg don’t bend too good

It’s getting particularly annoying now that the weather’s perking up and I want to be out in my garden. Gardening is mostly kneeling-down, and it’s just not happening with this thing on. I have raked some stuff up and cleaned some leaves away from plants though. Also, I have a SHEDLOAD of bulbs coming up. I remember planting what seemed like 796,000 bulbs this fall, and it’s paying off now because I have little leaves poking through the bare soil in many many places! Excitement. Pictures tomorrow, mayhap.

Now I am off to a late dinner and midnight movie, and to remember what it was like to be a night person, before working for a school turned me into some awful hybrid non-night-and-also-non-morning person. I had a meeting this morning at 7:30 in the AM, people! There should be a law. Enforceable with affliction of boils.

Well, not yet seedlings. But soon!

So I blogged the other week about the nifty pot-maker that I ordered from burpee.com. It came last week and I set to making itty-bitty paper pots. I didn’t have any newspaper because I don’t get the daily paper (waste of time, ink, paper, resources in general - especially my limited mental resources) but I did have an old copy of the New York Review of Books that I didn’t mind sacrificing, and it’s printed partly on newsprint-weight paper, so that was perfect. (OK, I admit that it makes me feel curiously cerebral, recycling that particular publication and growing my organic seeds in it. Sue me.)

Behold the pottage!

Here’re the strips of paper you need to use to make the pots, along with the little pot maker and an apple, for scale.

Of course, you don’t know how big that apple is. It could be gargantuan, or minuscule. Such is the mysterious aura I enjoy projecting around myself and my activities.

OK, here’s the whole mess next to the gimp work-station (laptop set up on first floor so I don’t have to go upstairs to compute) Note the OSHA-approved extension cord that strings along the table, chair and floor because the fuckwits who rehabbed this place (may a sandbag fall on their heads) did not think that someone might, you know want to ever plug in something that is sitting on a table in the ONLY POSSIBLE PLACE to put a table in the kitchen. But I digress.

So I needed something to set the little pots in so that when I watered them they were still supported and wouldn’t sag and melt all over the place. So today at Home Despot I got these cheapie plastic liner things which are the perfect height and hold 16 mini-pots apiece. I got six of them and some extra bags of seed-starter potting mix.

And no, I won’t leave them stacked like that, obviously. That’s just for storage until I figure out if I am hanging a light and planting in the basement or finding somewhere up here to put them.

OK that last one is partly to show my official Stuff White People Like, KitchenAid™ stand mixer. I love it like it was my shiny stainless steel baby. Sue me again.

ANYWAY, I am very excited. I had to make some more pots tonight but I will finish them tomorrow I think and then get to planting mah seeds!

So, it’s cheering me this week to start planning for my garden. It reminds me that eventually winter will have to end, and that I can get out grubbing in the dirt and making things grow again - with this year hopefully being more impressive as some of last year’s perennials will have had a chance to take hold. I am hoping for great things from my hydrangeas and roses, especially.

However this year I have also vowed to start more things from seed. It’s really fun to go the nursery and buy the pretty plants they have, but holy god is it expensive. Starting things from seed is more difficult, but I had some stellar results last year— from my Amish Broom Corn and my sunflowers (before the powdery mildew got them, dammit) particularly. So I have been ordering seeds from TinySeeds.com. They carry ‘Botanical Interests’ seeds that I very much like, many of which are organic. I am going to focus on a lot more vining plants this year, as I loved the ones I had last summer. I am also going to plan better for them and try not to end up with the hot mess of blob-like Moonflower like I had last year.

It lives! It grows over everything! Eek!
I am going to try to cover most of my fence in climbers, if I can. I am also going to try a few fruits too, particularly strawberries. And this Love Lies Bleeding looks as if it’s going to be cool. I am going to get a table set up in the basement with some lighting over it, and do a huge batch of seeds.

And I also bought this very cool thing which is not a sex toy, but a seed-starting pot maker. Apparently you can make biodegradable pots with it, out of strips of old newspaper. It’s all kinds of triple happiness since you:

• save money by not having to buy pots
• save the earth by recycling newspaper
• save more plants since you can plant the whole paper-pot and everything, thus reducing transplant shock and keeping more seedlings alive

I am very excited about it and the whole “getting seeds started” thing. I need a fun project like this, I need to be around things that are happy and alive and growing and not covered in some kind of of evil cosmic sludge, like I feel the rest of my life is.

I also vow to take many many more pictures this year to mark my progress. I’ve joined this garden site: MyFolia.com where I can track the progress of my plants and keep a record of what I have planted and if it’s working out. Last year the mosquitoes were so bad that they kept me out of the garden many evenings, and this year I am going to figure out how to battle them. I don’t want to use chemicals, so I will be planting some anti-mosquito plants and using lots more citronella candles and stuff - I need to find some natural repellents to wear too, I hate spraying myself with DEET - bleh.

Anyway, so the planning is making me happy, and when my orders start arriving in the next week or two I think I will be even more happy. OK, so I have to go down in the horrible basement for this project, but perhaps this will make me not hate the horrible basement so much?

They said the trees wouldn’t be pretty this year, and they were oh-so-wrong. I drove the long way everywhere I went today, just to look at how gorgeous everything was. And it was a gray, rainy day too. The kind that makes all this vibrant color seem even more magical. Check out how cool my little outdoor breakfast nook is looking! Oh, and broom corn after the jump.

fall1

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

fall2

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

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So I got the grass seed down and watered it twice. I was able to get the parts of the yard I wanted to cover, covered, and only used a bit less than 1/2 of the bag. Also, I didn’t have one of those seed-spreading gizmos, and in the current state of broke-assness that I find myself in relation to all things household I didn’t feel like spending any money on getting one to use one time.

But while I was doing other yard work I emptied a hanging basket and found this handy little thing at the bottom, which was pretty perfect for spreading the seed! Dip it in the bag, hold it flat and then just shake it gently back and forth, the seed disperses evenly through the slits at the bottom.

Rock on me and my sensible spending + re-purposing!

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My grass seed arrived yesterday, so today is going to be all about raking a lot and then getting it down, hoping that it has time to take before we have a hard freeze. This grass seed is supposed to need very little in the way of maintenance, and even better: none in the way of mowing! I have been wondering for years why no one has come up with a grass that doesn’t need mowing, I just supposed that the lawnmower lobby was strong enough to quash research :-p

(example above of non-mowed eco-lawn)

Wildflower Farm Inc. Eco Lawn: The ultimate low maintenance Turf Grass Seed!

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Salvia1

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

These salvia and ferns are the last of the things I will be able to harvest from my garden before our first frost, I think. But aren’t the colors beautiful? I feel so spoiled, having fresh garden flowers in November.

So, eucalyptus obviously can’t survive a St. Louis winter. I wanted to harvest mine and dry it to use on wreathes and things, since I love the way that dried eucalyptus smells. I researched via Google how this is to be done, since most dried eucalyptus isn’t really “dry” so much, it’s very pliable. Turns out that this is accomplished via soaking the cut stems in a solution of 2 parts hot tap water to 1 part glycerin.

I scored some glycerin today at Whole Foods and harvested my eucalyptus when I got home. Behold the bounty:

What I had read was that you should crush the bottom inch or two of the stems so that they would absorb more of the glycerin/water mixture. I didn’t want to pound them with a hammer on my tile counter top, obviously, so I used my marble rolling pin and that seemed to do the trick of crushing them quite nicely. (after which I threw said pin in the dishwasher, because isn’t eucalyptus poisonous to everybody but koala bears or something? I don’t want to kill anyone on accident with my Christmas cookies.) Continue reading »

I now have almost a whole separate load of laundry (no, not “things that Jake threw up on” but close) which is “pink”. That’s a lot of pink.

I re-did my blog theme again, I hated the other one with the passion of a thousand fiery suns. Let me know what you think of this one, as long as what you think is “Nice!”

I worked for 2.5 hours this morning in the garden, hauled my 15 bags of gravel in (yeah, owwww) and FINALLY got the paths finished! w00t! I still need edging stones for part of them, but it looks so much nicer now, I am really excited. I planted my burgundy mums, the pink crape myrtle, russian sage and the toad lily I bought yesterday. I cut down some weeds, and I’ve had to cut down all of my sunflowers due to a nasty case of powdery mildew. Eww. The Amish Broom Corn is awesome though, I am drying seed heads from it to make some kind of fall centerpiece. Hopefully that will seed itself and come back next year. I was chilling out there, wearing my iPod while I worked and some guy from Ameren came to cut a tree in the alley, and I didn’t even stop singing. Eff you Ameren guy, you will not curtail my good time. Anyway, I feel basically like I have been hit by a train, but it’s worth it to get all that stuff done. Plus, 2.5 hours of exercise does a body good, so I hear. Continue reading »

Abraham Darby, Lantana and Basil
Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

The end of the summer hasn’t really been too conducive to gardening, since the bugs, the heat, the humidity and my bank account have conspired against the last of the projects that I wanted to get done. However, several things are still very pretty, and I am still enjoying bringing cut flowers inside. Since I am here the most I set them on my desk. And yes, they’re all pink, and yes, you could have predicted that. Ain’t nothing wrong with being predictible in some things. ;-)

Also, this flickr auto-post to blog thing is pretty darn handy, I must say.

Celosia, Basil and I forget the name
Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

I pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster to tell me why, oh why this person would feel that this image was something to post on a dating site. So far the answer is not forthcoming. Which, I almost feel is some kind of pun, based on this image, but I am not sure, it could be sleep deprivation talking. Picture is mildy NSFW and even more NSF your sanity. Continue reading »