Garden flowers and crazy cat

Just a little pic update - more garden flowers, and the crazy cuddle-kitty who provided quite the chuckle this morning (and held still long enough for a pic!)

Double sunflower bloom

Cuddle-kitty, guarding the dog's bone

How does your garden grow?

The old nursery rhyme comes to mind:

Mary, Mary - quite contrary - How does your garden grow?

While I am not a Mary, the rest of it fits.  My mom mentioned my lack of posting when she was down here a couple weeks ago for my son's graduation (along with picking and eating my first cherry tomato off the clearance cart "mystery variety" tomato plant!).  I've also noticed a few nudges from the old chat regs in comments and emails. So after some fighting with the digicam and Gimp, here's a little update:

Acorn squash blossoms

first sunflower blooming

Sweet mint!  And it's still alive!

The two (?) acorn squash plants in the garden box are freakishly huge, and look like some artist's rendition of the dinosaur-era flora ... they've done a LOT of blossoms but I have only one little squash forming.  When I did a google image search I noticed one pic where someone had a Q-tip fussing with the blossoms, so I may need to help them pollinate (?).  The ones I didn't succeed in giving away will get planted on the compost pile, I think.

My sunflower plants are only about waist-high, with the first flower being about the size of my open hand.  Small, but pretty.  My other sunflower plant will have two blooms ... the result of the top of the plant getting eaten and dividing into two tops.

Finally, it appears the Mint Curse has been broken!  This is my third attempt to keep mint alive, as my neighbor brought me this planter and stand (he made the stand at work from scrap metal) with a native mint of unspecific variety in it, which promptly died even though I followed his instructions.  On a whim, I bought one peat-pot of sweet mint at the garden department last month just for Ss & Gs.  It's now over double the size and still bushing out.

No pics of what's already been eaten: the first three ripe cherry tomatoes (Mom only got one), the sweet peas (an early variety that withered and died with the first week of over-90F weather at the end of May), the green onions I planted from the bottoms of what I bought at the grocery (knocked down by a thunderstorm last week), and the green beans (one round of bush-Blue Lake, and the first round of the pole-Kentucky Wonders).  Those are the successes.

On the not-success front ... I now have a good idea of what the word "bolting" means in the gardening sense, as my spinach and lettuce are determined to flower without getting big enough to snip enough leaves off them.  Most of my potato plants are gone as well ... in the first garden box they got eaten up, and in the front box they turned yellow and died without a single hole in a single leaf.  My basil has stalled at an inch-and-half tall, neither dying nor growing more.  Surprisingly, the cilantro (coriander) was eaten down to the ground, with the prime suspect being some stray cats.

More later ... I guess I really do have a lot of catching up to do.

First blossoms!

Lookie Ma!!!!  I got BLOSSOMS!  Now, none are mint (LOL) but this is even more exciting (I just found them maybe half an hour ago).  All three are the plants I bought at Lowe's as my "cheaters" but they survived the hard frost two nights ago and more than two weeks in my possession, so I am chalking this up in the WIN column, especially given previous history.

Roma sauce tomato blossoms

Big Bonnie (TM?) slicing tomato blossom

Ozark Beauty (everbearing?) STRAWBERRY blossom!!

Now I have a real plant to match my little cross-stitch strawberry-and-blossom motif I did over the winter!  I use the pic of the motif on a couple of sites as my avatar because I love strawberries and think the pic and motif both turned out so pretty.  Even better - I think a couple of the stems-with-roots strawberries are showing some life from the ten-pack I got from Tractor Supply.

Starting seeds

So, I have decided to try my black thumb at the garden box idea.  I figured with our wacky weather again this year, perhaps I should start my seeds indoors, and the tray with seeds was set up Wednesday (14 Mar 2012).  I snapped a pic on Saturday of the little seedlings peeking out:

seedling tray, 17 Mar

I've been faithfully following the instructions about indirect sunlight, leaving the shades down in the east-facing window until right before lunchtime, and turning the tray a quarter-turn when I remember so they don't grow sideways.  Yesterday afternoon, after hubby remarked about how well they had grown just while he was at work during the day, I joked that in a day or two we'd wake up to find the beans had lifted the lid and were clamoring, "Feed me, Seymour!"

Note to the beans: that was a JOKE!!!  It was not an assignment, nor a goal!  Holy ****!  This morning, the lid was indeed lifted, as the beans doubled in height overnight.

bean sprouts doubled overnight

seedling tray, 20 Mar

So now I need to go Googling to find out how to transplant the beans this soon, since I can already see the roots wrapping around the cell in one of the four.

Meanwhile, outside ... neither the thornless blackberry bush nor the ten strawberry starts have taken off.  The supposed-to-be-compost potatoes are sprouting again with the warm fronts.  For some real fun, the "bad" potatoes are all over the bottom of the garden box.  If all else fails, we'll have potatoes and green beans ... if I add bacon to the mix that makes "Mulligan's stew" which Dad always made the first evening of camping.

Accidental gardener!

Y'all recall my garden box ... how could I forget the good-natured ribbing Gloria gave me when she asked "We wait a month for a post, then you post a picture of DIRT?"  LOL  Well, I have more pictures of my "dirt" which actually contains no soil ...apparently something I tossed into the box as kitchen waste has grown!  And this is in spite of our fourth frost already, and second sub-freezing hard frost.  Whatever this plant actually is, it is quite determined.

growing in the garden box

another pic of my mystery plant

The suspect list is: sweet potatoes, russet potatoes, or acorn squash ... right now I am leaning towards the russet option after a Google image search and given how deep this bad boy is.  I think it may be one of the "bad" potatoes that inspired me to crochet my potato bag ... those were extras from hubby's coworker's garden in the next county.

I am hoping if this is a potato plant that it will survive my lack of attention, as I went out to stir in the last two weeks' worth of eggshells, broccoli stalks, carrot peelings, and coffee grounds (plus shrimp shells for fun).  I was not expecting my compost material to survive the frosts we've had so early.  Last time I stirred the "dirt" I had noticed a couple of the potatoes were trying to send out roots, but the next night we had our first sub-30s hard frost so didn't think much of it the next day.

Now if this is actually a weed, someone please tell me quickly!  Right now I am pleasantly stunned something is growing ... remember, I *am* the one who had mint die on her.

Quietly doing shtuff

I've been a bad little blogger lately.  In fact, it's gotten bad enough for not only my mom to email me and ask what I've been up to, but even maggie left a comment asking where I've been and why I've been so quiet.

I've been doing shtuff around the house and yard, just not taking many pics or posting about it.  Here is one yard project from two weekends ago:

garden box in progress

Yes, I am once again attempting to grow plants, but this time I am using a garden box with yard waste and compost and peat moss ... hopefully I can get the dirt good enough to counteract my notorious black thumb.  No, Mom ... I still have not figured out just how I managed to kill the mint.

I've been crocheting as well as sulking about the sewing slump.  Part of the sewing slump is I have unintentionally lost weight and will need to refit all my previous pattern alterations - which I had not nailed down to a really good fit anyway.  I do need to snap pics of what I've crocheted up: a wool hat, another soap bag, more washcloths, a potato bag and now two tote bags.  I just don't feel like fighting with the digicam today (besides, I have another bag to start ... actually two).

I've also been cooking up a storm, scored a bunch of old cookbooks from a new thrift store in town, and found what is left of my formerly large collection of cookbooks.  Hubby and son have both expression a deep appreciation for that little project.