A Breath of Fresh Air

After being sick for what seems like forever I’m so excited to welcome the spring like weather we have been having, and along with the weather, spring activities also. We have been doing a little spring cleaning and organizing and also some gardening. A few weeks ago we got out in the garden and cleaned it up from the winter. We planted a few things outside and started some seeds inside. I have learned yet one more thing about gardening. When starting seeds it’s best to use plastic trays, not the ones made out of peat. For some reason the peat ones always start mold. Which makes me wonder why do they still sell them. I went to Wal-Mart and picked up the ever popular Jiffy seed starting kit and started my seeds and in only 4 days I had mold growing. I Googled mold on seedlings and every page said don’t use peat pots. It seems everyone knows they are bad, but I can’t find the plastic trays anywhere except online. I finally broke down and ordered this cool little tool that makes little seed pots from newspaper and as an impulse buy I got 25 strawberry plants too. Yes, I realize that’s quite an impulse buy, but I never said I was normal.

Many many moons ago I came across a really good deal on bookcases. The bookcases were only $40 and they were supposed to be $98. I only needed one bookcase but I ended up getting two, because it was such a good deal. There was also a computer desk that matched the bookcase, but it was out of stock at the time. I kept waiting for the desk to come in, but no luck. I had measured my wall and I could fit the two bookcases and the desk and have an inch to spare, it was like these three pieces of furniture were meant for my house. I searched on the internet for other suppliers of the desk, but the price was not right, then on top of that the shipping was so expensive. Finally we broke down and decided we need the new desk, well actually it was our old computer desk that broke down. So we decided that we would get the computer desk for ourselves for Valentine’s Day, because nothing says love like a desk. We are a little too practical sometimes, but to each his own. The desk actually arrived on Valentine’s Day, weird. We had a few issues with some broken parts and had to wait for replacements and all that fun stuff, but now our office is complete. We spent the day putting the desk together and organizing the shelves; we now have one bookcase for books and one for crafts and office supplies. Next on my organizing list…the kid’s closets.

Strange and Unusual Things in the Garden

I haven’t been out to the garden very much lately because it has been so hot. I did finally venture out there and was quite surprised by my findings. I have yellow squash and yellow watermelons growing side by side, which I guess is a big no no. I have a watermelon growing on our squash vine. I’ve named it the squashmelon, original I know. I wonder what it’s going to be like on the inside. I couldn’t imagine having a squash that big, hopefully it’s just a watermelon growing on the wrong vine. Then I was watering a few of the corn plants then I started picking some tomatoes and I spotted this horrible looking creature. If you know me you know I’m quite fond of bugs, but this one was so nasty. It was a huge tomato horn worm. I knew I had to pick it off so I just reached in and tried to pull it off. This sucker was holding on for dear life, it was actually starting to pull up my tomato plant. I then started at one end and started pulling it off two sucker feet at a time. He didn’t like that very much; he started squirting green fluid at me. I don’t even want to know what the green fluid was. When I was close to getting him all the way off the plant he started swinging his back end around, the one with the horn. I don’t know if the horn is soft or hard and I didn’t want to find out, so I let go of him. Then I had to start all over again. It was a very nasty process but I finally got him off. I put him in one of the many cups Lana has outside to make mud pies in. He was contained for the moment then I started to think. Why did I just go through that? The tomato plants have leaf spot (a fungus) and try as I might I couldn’t get rid of it so I was going to pull up the plants anyway, plus it’s not like they are our favorite vegetable. I was going to have to leave the tomato plants in the ground a few more days just because of what I just went through for them. Lana was outside watching all the action so we the excitement was over and the worm was in a safe place she ran inside to get Kyle and show him then of course then they ask, can we keep him? Knowing how my kids take care of our fish I knew he wouldn’t be around long so I said sure, but we need to find a container for him before he goes into the house. We decided on a water bottle that had a sport top so he could get some air. A few days went by and the worm was not looking so good so Lana decided to shake it. The thing was dead, I felt bad for it even though it did spray me with the green slime, but not bad enough to give it a proper burial and into the trash can it went water bottle and all. A few days went by and I went out to the garden again to pull up the tomato plants. I got the shovel and started to dig them out and then it looked like the ground was moving. I put my shovel down and took a closer look. It was thousand of little black ants. I thought I had dug up their nest, but then I got to the next plant and the same thing happened. I think my 4 ft by 4 ft garden is their whole ant bed. I got the plants out and then got the ant granules, so much for organic gardening. I went inside and had the creepy crawlies for quite a while after, you know where you feel like something is crawling on you but it’s not. I am getting tired of this gardening thing now, but maybe I’ll still try for my fall garden I think there will be fewer bugs.

You Like Tomato and I Like Tomahto...

So we have planted this little garden in the middle of the desert and actually managed to keep it alive. It has taken lots of water and a ginormous shade umbrella, but by golly it’s growing. We did what is called the square foot garden method. Basically you can plant a different variety in every square foot, which sounded like a great idea for a beginner gardener. So if I kill one plant the others may still have a chance, then I can tell what is easy to grow. We planted corn, tomatoes, strawberries, radishes, green beans, carrots, jalapeños, yellow squash, watermelons, pumpkins, eggplant, snapdragons, peanuts, and sweet peas. So far I can tell you that you plant sweet peas in the cooler months, peanut seeds need to be raw and still have the skin on, and for some reason the eggplant plant hasn’t grown at all. We have harvested the radishes and made a pasta dish out of them. The strawberries we have grown are smaller than the size of a dime and that’s before the ants get to them. Out of our 16 corn plants we have 9 ears growing, more than what I expected. We picked quite a few tomatoes the other day. We were hoping to make some tomato sauce out of them but we didn’t have enough ripe ones. So, we made salsa. All we had from our garden were the tomatoes; we had to go buy everything else. Which really cost a lot more than just buying a jar of salsa, but no one in the family likes to eat tomatoes so we had to use them somehow. Which you may be wondering, if no one likes them then why grown them? Well, we all like tomato sauce and tomatoes in salsa just not tomato slices on our burgers or tomato cubes on our salads. Anyway, Ronnie and I get home with all our stuff to make salsa and we start chopping. Then we chop some more and some more. We are chopping for almost an hour! Finally we are finished and we break out the chips and taste it. It was so good! All our chopping and dicing and mincing had paid off, but next time we are totally breaking out the food processor.