O Spring, where art thou?

I poked my head out today.  Poking head out for reals meaning, not just walking the dog or needing to go to the car.

I walked the garden and looked at Mother Nature's wasteland.  Is it possible to separate Mama Nature and the Arctic Cold that blew past here?  Can we say "it wasn't so" and it was an evil doppelganger of her or that the two are enemies locked in eternal battle?  Sorry, dramatizing.  Just need a little action here in my little brain.

So, walking the garden I noted the victims and survivors.

The kale was looking pretty dried out and sad, but I think it should recover or deal.  Some corn salad/mache nearby it was doing well as promised on the seed packet I got it from but proved to be a YEA slow grower.  Luckily its perennial and I will just let it spread in that small raised bed for year round deliciousness (unless it gets bitter in the summer and I will act similarly back at it).

The pak choy/bok choi/whatevers is one tough lady and has held up with no issues.  I love her so much.  Stir fries and soups for me!

(NOTE: Everything I am looking at has been uncovered during this entire arctic freeze, so I am "experimenting" by laziness to see what is good to grow in the cold for everyone's benefit, hurrah!)

Regular Indian mustards suffered a bit like the kale and will hopefully recover as it's always been hardy.  Tatsoi has no damage in the least and lookin' pretty and rosette-y.

Peas kicked it as I expected and the randomly broccoli plants are slightly wilty but we'll see what becomes of them with some upcoming warmth and sunshine.

Parsley seedlings looks like a cold and sun scalded mess, but the cilantro is fine and the dill said "forget this" and has flopped over and looks sad.

Amongst these items is a mystery plant that looks like it could be a parsley, but has tiny hairs on its leaves and grows in a bit of rosette/crown.... anyone have any ideas?

FINALLY, the crown jewel of the garden is some damn fine rambling patches of CHICKWEED.  It had the audacity to still have some lovely frost on it in the shadier parts of the garden (I am not growing this on purpose mind you) and still looked magnificent and in bud. 

A real tart of plant.  Little does she know I have plans for her.  BWAHAHAHA!  I took a nibble of a leaf earlier and found it to be quite sweet with a bit of an interesting aftertaste when you chewed for a while.  Still good, so I can't wait to try this with the Costco frozen sashimi grade salmon I've had in the fridge for too long. 

Other than my little jog, things are looking warmer, the sun feels like its out longer and my sanity level is slowly returning. Huzzah!

Seed starting.... ROIGHT.

.The dog and I have been making the best of the cold by taking luxurious sunbathing occasions together by the only large south facing window.

It's been hard really :)

Of course, my husband has to be the practical one and seduces me out of the warm sun by saying "It's 10am on the weekend, you just woke up! You don't want to fall asleep again already!"

Bah.

So I am attempting to be good (but not being very good) by blogging about my lack of seed starting so far.  I'm trying to be a little more financially savvy about my gardening (garden start up costs can always been a shock, but as start up is past already for me I just need to focus on plants/seeds).

As I've been stupidly whining about finances as of late, I've been taking a hard look at what I really need and thinking about putting the Soil Blocker thing on hold until maybe next year's gardening. 

I will be attempting as well to limit my seed purchases to my local mom and pop b/c they're cheaper, will save me in shipping and handling and generally have a good idea as to what is good to grow in the area.  As I have seed saved a good number of varieties from last year (though I still need to check viability levels), I hope this will work out well.

A few things that I might purchase outside of the mom and pop are particular tomato seeds because this is a matter of true garden happiness!  I want me some delicious tomatoes and mom and pop doesn't always have luscious heirloom varieties, so I might need go out investigate those further elsewhere.

A couple of other things I really want to grow would be tomatillas and luffa, but the luffa might need to be put on hold LIKE MY OTHER STUPID SQUASH (*note the annoyance here?) I probably would just be attracting vine borers AGAIN.  Damn, when will I be able to grow my own bath supplies?  Can you imagine how cool if would be to have a bubble bath bush? (Would that be like soapberry?)

The tomatillas I will hope I have no problems though and I am excited about salsa verde and tomato-y like things with their own wrappers and can keep relatively well.  It's like they're tomato candy :)  Think the kids will like that on Halloween?

A couple of plants I generally don't seed start are peppers and eggplant because they take so darn long to get going and I don't generally use much of.  I can usually get $1 or $2 plants started already at the mom and pop (and as much as I'd get more plants to seeds if I bought a packet, I don't think I'd use them fast enough), so I'll just tend to few plants of each and be happy.

Another plan to keep me mostly sane this year (gardening is all experimental, I'm just trying to figure out if this will be what's best for me for now or in the future) is to direct plant more, rather than seed start as much as I have in the past.

I've found that my okra, peas, beans, cucumbers (which I really shouldn't plant this year...), mustards and others do MUCH better direct planted and as I am in limbo about a million things now it would be hella better to not have to tend to these all winter to get them going.  Seed starting is tough as I have very limited lighting and can't afford kick-ass grow lights (I hear you can use fluorescent or Christmas lights though) or or heat mats or etc. so I'm going to rid myself of the usual pain, sadness and drama of taking care of little seedlings during the cold wee winter months in the awful indoor conditions of my home and focus on maybe a nice little tray of a dozen tomato plants to prepare for the outdoors. (and maybe a few tomatilla plants)

AND THAT's IT.

No fuss gardening for spring is the plan (and hope).  A little tomato and tomatillo preparation soon and a week or two of crazy planting in the spring and hopefully I can sit back, weed a bit and not go nuts and work on my writing and get that GAN (Great American Novel) out and make some money to afford fun plants again :P

ROIGHT?

Down South my ----

Yep, still cold.

I finally got my butt over to stare at my plants.  Slightly frozen-ish looking, frosty, wilty looking plants.

*Glint of optimism* Hopefully full of protective delicious sugars!

(Admission: I only went to the backyard today because I really had to empty a couple of WAY overdue compost pails.  These things can make a person much more motivated to exit the house.  That, and a whiny dog.)

All the houseplants are keeping me company but I think I may have lost my 2 year old jalapeno and Tricolore peppers as they got aphids and I may have been a wee bit aggressive in combating the suckers.  It was the third time I had to mess with them aphids and I got really frustrated as they migrated to the other peppers.  Result: leaves falling off and shriveled all over the place...

Maybe they'll grow back? (BTW, anyone have any success in growing jalapenos from grocery store jalapenos?)

Mystery begonia is relatively happy though will need to be repotted in the spring.  Kohlerias still blooming and the pops of orange they're producing lessens the annoyances of the weather. 

Other than that, I've got literally 7 layers of clothing on, 2 of those sweaters, a pair of leggings under my jeans, a scarf and have declared it to be miso soup and oatmeal (cinnamon/brown sugar and banana!) weather.

It's going to snow, and unless it dumps a foot of it here where I can build a snow fort, I ain't coming out.

COLD. I hates it.

What is that Mr. Weather Forecaster Guy from NPR?  Did you just say it's going to get colder?  And stay like this all week?!

It's been pretty cold here in Memphis the past couple of days and like a bad winter gardener I have not been checking the weather forecast because I'm being an AVOIDER.  The Great Avoider to be precise.  Running... running away from the weather sites. 

Well, to be honest, slightly frozen (not in fear) but in actual frozen-ness due to my house being set at 62 degrees (because I am cheap and trying to stick it to the energy companies in my own pathetic way).   So I'm feeling a GREAT dislike at the idea of even stepping outside.  This makes things difficult for the dog and she has to really work on me to get up and get dressed and take her out on her walk to do the biz of the day.

Haven't looked at the plants.  Terrible, I  know.  Too cold and too scared to see if the babies can survive the crazy 16 degrees F predicted for tonight.  I should probably cover them.   Only the strong can survive?  Here at my place, we're akin to Spartans.  Shiver it out and deal or you will be mercilessly taunted.  Actually we both hate it and wear sweaters like mad. 

I lived in Chicago for a while and survived their winters of WIND and SNOW and negative degree temperatures! How does the body forget so easily? 

Even the dog has found a blanket and makes a point to curl herself around it all day.  Is this animal cruelty?

Speaking of which, the joys of home ownership and living by a park has combined and we have squirrels.  AGAIN.  Which this time better not have babies because last time we had a squirrel in the attic and we evicted it we only realized later that it had a baby and I almost fainted when I found out what it takes to take care of a squirrel baby.  Let's just say, the literal stroking of its genitals to get it to do its biz (seriously, it says this!) was not what I had in mind and an animal rescuer/relocator was quickly found.  This current batch of critters has yet to be seen, but has been heard and leafy evidence is evident in the attic insulation.

I think I get cranky in the cold and this affects my writing.

On a happier note, I think my indoor citrus may be going to bud by being stimulated by the cold temps in here. 

I always find it so interesting how flowers go into fruit and the differing stages and appearance in closeness from flower to fruit form.

If you click on the pics and look close the flower buds almost look like little oranges w/segments even though it's a lemon tree really.

Old Year ending with some highs, lows, and woes/whoas!

(Warning: This entry contains some whining and ranting and great deviation from gardening, but gets back to it eventually in a hopefully entertaining fashion)

This year has been a year of ups and downs in my gardening and personal life. (What year isn't full of these things for anyone, you might attest?)

 I am terrible pessimist and often become so blinded by the bad that I don't often see the good, and sadly this year is ending on more bad than good (more on that later).

Good things this year include growing tomatoes rather well this time around and having a good bounty of them for once.  My summer garden was not as pretty as the year before but more plentiful if not as squash-full. 

I've been attempting winter gardening with some success and wished I had planned better and attempted more/had more time to plant before the fall/winter began.

I was introduced to a local magazine editor who is on good terms with me and has been the publisher of my first written articles, a big step for someone who aspires to be a full time writer.

I did an excellent job with my other silly very part time job with trouble shooting and making things work with teams of people in other cities and recommended by my manager to be a manager of an entire region.

On to the bad news....
....the squash vine borers are the bane of my gardening life (next to slugs who all ought to be electrocuted by powdered copper).

I have not published more writing than I like, but need to remember that receiving any money at all is still big step.

I was totally turned down for a potential managerial promotion because I live in the wrong city apparently even though I've proven that I can work easily on 4 different cities in different states at the same time via email/phone.  *sigh* Oh well.

My car broke down a few days ago.  It's technically somewhat driveable but utterly not safe and unreliable and the cost for the repair would be more than the car is worth and could be better spent on getting a new used car.  I would love to be all Rhonda Hetzel-like, and go completely single car-ish but car insurance is actually cheaper with two cars and I think it's good to have an extra one in the garage for an emergency.

So, my husband and I are on the search for a small truck (for mulch and compost hauling of course!) that we can use for only moving things around purposes around a 3 mile diameter of the house and ignore for the rest of time in the garage and reduce our car insurance immensely.  We'd use his car primarily (all the time) as it just sits in his work parking lot all day anyways.

Only problem is that we can only afford about $5000-$6000 for a used truck (with reasonable mileage please) and being on a single income (because I am a stupidly wonderfully pampered woman whose husband loves me way too much and supports this writing thing), this is tough.  I mean, we can afford more probably, but it's just that we have been trying really, really, really, REALLY F-ing hard to try to save especially in this economy, especially as everyone's taking pay cuts and etc.

We're the type who try to save by allocating paycheck money to be transferred immediately into specific savings accounts so we don't see it, we can't touch it, and will not be tempted of it from our regular accounts.  We know that Roth IRAs are important and if you want to max out on them we need to be putting in $450 APIECE per month in them, or $5,000/year.  Then there's the house, the dog (she's fat anyways and needs to go on a diet; just kidding), bills of every sort and etc.  We rarely eat out, we have no tv/cable, my husband makes freakin' excel tables for the groceries and calculates cents per ounces for food at the grocery store and is a double coupon freak...

Ack.  We're not poor.  We're just very frugal and very much want to avoid being poor, and can afford seeing friends (via car of course) and eating out with people we rarely get to spend time with, but it's just so frustrating when your Toyota at 109,000 craps out of you when it should be able to go for at least another 100,000 miles.  It won't kill us to get another car, it just will sting like hell.  We're not the paycheck to paycheck type of people either, so we won't get anything new at this point in our lives because it's not really viable with the way we want to save.

I've become a little nervous and have been sorting through my seed piles and hoping I have stockpiled a good amount to start me up and think I will have to be more discriminating and sadly pass on interesting exotic vegetable seed purchases and be very careful with my potting soil purchases.  And I so wanted to try soil blocking this year.

ANYWAYs, this end of year story ends a little funny.

So today I went in to see what options I had available with my crapped out car and was told that it could be traded in for a good bit of money, not grand but some to take a dent out of a used car.  I sit down with my sales person and he goes out to find a car for me.  I take out my little netbook to start an excel file and get some spreadsheets going for prices and etc. when this guy all in black, who clearly works there sits down next to me and asks me about my netbook, what I'm up to, why I'm here and what I do.

I talk computers a little, chat a bit and tell him that I garden and write about it and he talks about how he could never garden because he has no patience and I tell him he could, it's not that hard! (My usual, everyone can garden thing, I can't help myself)

Next thing I know, he tells my salesperson guy to hold on, tells me to follow him and he leads me to the backroom of the Toyota dealership to an internet sales manager.  Who then proceeds to tell me all about the business they do, what they do, the system they use and everything!

I think I was being sort of interviewed???  Turns out the guy who led me to the room was the dealership GM and he wanted to introduce me to the internet business manager.

This proceeds for 2 hours.

Finally, they let me go after they realize the insane amount of time they've held me and I'm given a card and told to contact them if I'm interested.

(I get to look at a car later, but this bizarre interview-y thing clearly topped my day)

A sales position would entail lots of hours (retail) but could potentially lead to great earnings, is what they kept espousing.  Money that we could totally use now.  No free Saturdays though and crummy hours are assured.  Husband and I are talking and he won't push or pull me in any particular direction, but I get the impression he think I'd find it soul sucking and all the time I get money -wise would be ironically unhappy because I would not be able to find time to garden or etc.  (Granted one might say you always have time to garden, but I get it).

So, potential job to solve sort of money issue that might eradicate some degree of happiness.

Hmmmm.

Then to top off the year I dropped my cell phone in a part full of water dishwasher tonight as I was putting a dirty dish quickly in.

While my husband worked busily to try to salvage my phone and dry it out entirely, I went into screaming at my self in self-loathing mode and cleaned like a mad woman.  While I vacuuming I had an epiphany and started laughing.  I realized why the GM tried to interview/potentially hire me.

I was totally selling plants/gardening.  The GM would talk about how he couldn't garden and I would say of course he could and explain how.  He would say he didn't have the time, and I would say it isn't so bad and some things re-seed themselves.  And so on and so forth.   I was overturning objections all over the place, one of the most important thing sales people do.

And I thought he just saw my netbook and thought I was tech savvy.


ANYWAYS, BRINGING THINGS BACK TO GARDENING....

Resolutions I'd like to make for this upcoming year:
1) PLAN BETTER! (sheesh, I need to delineate, and label, label, label my plants more!)
2) Combine pretty gardening with the edible gardening! (I do it somewhat, but could do it better)
3) Try to do more cascading plant things to look nice and hide stuff (like ugly water barrels)
4) Seed save (even more)
5)  Try not to fall into temptation and plant squash because the borers will just get to them
6)  Use more cover crops
7)  plant even more densely
8) Time my planting better so there's little blank parts of my garden period
9)  Combat slugs better so that I can get a serious strawberry harvest
10)  Eat more weeds (I might as well use them!)
11)  Learn more weed identification (I don't want to kill myself)
12)  DO NOT take my citrus trees in too early.  Cold helps them blossom and I always get antsy at the first sign of chill.  They're really hardier than I think they are and I want limes/lemons dammit!
13) Give away extra house plants to combat the winter fungus gnats woes
14) Keep a cleaner "potting shed" (sunroom) and garden area (I want to show it off without some embarassment!)
15)  Stop the perilla before it attacks with purple waves of crazy!

and I am sure I'll think of more things!

Have a safe and wonderful New Year and may your gardening (and finances!) be healthy and well in 2010 (well, and always!)

Mustard Snow Cones anyone? (posted yesterday really, but I accidently saved rather than posted..?)

It seems that the Minnesota snow decided to follow me because tonight/tomorrow morning Memphis is expected to have snow and sleet enough to close things down.

Snow fell just before I left earlier in the week and I was amazed to see all the tatsoi mustard, collards, regular mustard, broccoli, peas, pak choy, little beet seedlings and chard babies all still doing fine despite my negligence of not covering them before I left.


So.... I'm thinking about not covering them again.

A little gamble. But I'm a gambling woman!

I like my tough little plants.  Sort of slow growing in the winter but I planted a bunch so I can take a little from each.

Tatsoi mustard and so tasty!  Beautiful rosettes! I planted them all too close and had to heavily thin and they are doing ok with it despite this weather!

It's just as pretty as an orchid isn't it?  Pak choy turned out to be so much fun and they say it's cut and come again...  had it in soup yesterday, put it in a little too early and so it got a little mushy, but still A+ to me for getting my veggies!

It's weird seeing pak choy bolt in the winter, but sort of uplifting that something is working so hard to flower/seed in this weather.  Hardy things.

PS update: no snow/sleet thus far, yeah! NPR and their bad weather forecasting

Holiday Haiku Time Warp: (no day but) Today!

And I'm back to present, with my presence!

A holiday haiku or two more to get me firmly planted and garden updates and info will be back in order.  Luckily I have boring New Years and do nothing, so I'll probably have garden resolutions up the wazoo to share because there were a LOT of issues that I need to address for next year's garden.

From: Minnesota
Snow on car refused to melt.
To: Memphis

Holiday Haiku Time Warp: One Day ago

"Happy Holiday What the Hells" again!  Another time traveling post for my holiday haiku of one day ago:

Fourteen hour drive:
Python skin clouds overhead,
Swallowing the sky.

Haiku Time Warp: Two Days ago

"Happy Holiday What the Hells!"  Here's a time traveling post for a holiday haiku of two days ago as my declaration of a haiku every day went bust quickly!  Car travel + newborn + 2 year old + unfamiliar house + helping = -progress!

Digging in the snow
I discover dirt beneath.
Yearn for spring again.

Holiday Haiku

Not wanting to take a full hiatus for the holidays, I will be composing haikus everyday until things get a little CALMer.

My recent travelings have brought me to snowier regions and the barren land of my sister's home (she's not a gardener either) and I have a serious bent to want to "help" her become one.  Her husband and I scheme to try easy things like beans and cucumbers to entice her and if they want to be a little more attentive, maybe some 'maters.

Sometimes I wonder if I lived in a truly northern, snow-nasty locale (it's only pretty for me for the first 10 minutes in the cold) if I would enjoy the nature imposed garden vacation and be better at planning for the spring garden rather than trying to garden all winter just to make it "challenging."  I think I'd probably just be miserable and whine and attempt to grow things indoors or work on getting that greenhouse in a hurry!

Anyways, haiku time, baby:

Still drunk on summer,
tea steeped from August's bounty.
Winter's not so bad.