Leaves You Can See

I've been talking about lots of leaves and no flowers and since I haven't had any flowers I haven't bothered to take my camera outside....until today. I took some pictures to share...mostly because I'm tired of posting text only :) (and in the back of my mind

I'm hoping they grow and thrive while I'm away. I'm on my way to West Point for my little brother's graduation. God Bless my little plants for the next nine days.

Tomato and pepper seedlings headed to my parent's house (tomatoes have since been thinned). They'll be on their own for nine days too. :

Patio Sweet Pea:




Nasturtium. The biggest one so far:



Winter Sown Marigold:

Direct Sown Something (cosmos?):

Direct Sown Nasturtium (there's a bunch of these little guys):



Bareroot Day lily:

Out of focus Winter Sown Cosmos:

Direct Sown Cosmos :

Blue Flash Direct Sown:

Winter Sown Zinnia:

Involuntary Plantslaughter

Tuesday I potted up three tomatoes and three green peppers...these are for mom. (The newspaper and toilet paper tube starter pots worked wonderfully!)

One really huge clump of blue flash seedlings has been divided into two huge clumps.

Winter sown Cosmos went from their pot into the ground. Sadly two of four seedlings died during the effort. They just refused to come out, and in the process of my squeezing and shaking the plastic pot, two stems became decapitated and lost their leaves. They were snubbed out of the world, just like that, because of my carelessness...I guess it's a little bit like involuntary plantslaughter.

Sunshine!

It may rain around 5pm, but for now it is nice and warm and sunshiney...good for young sun starved plants :) A lovely day outside is also my cue to go to work, so here I sit at my desk, dreaming of the outdoors and not doing my work. I did a few quick things before coming in.
I got the winter sown zinnias out of their container and into the ground..they look happy. Three seed grown nasturtiums in a cell pack are now properly potted...they look happy too. And the sad little poached egg seedlings that were not thriving at all in their shallow little egg carton have been moved into the ground. I sprinkled them with a little water..they don't look so hot; I wish them luck.

Lots of Leaves (or no flowers in sight)

Meanwhile, back at the apartment:

The tulips are no more and now all I have to look at are tulip foliage, lily stalks, a few day lily leaves and lots of sprouts and seedlings. I am surrounded by healthy green plant life, little miracles that have burst forth out of tiny seeds. Yet, I am impatient and disappointed because flowers seem a long way off, and may never come at all should the mulchmen come to weed. Obviously I'm being pessimistic, but it seems like it will never happen. I'm like a little kid on a road trip.

Are we there yet? NO. Are we there yet? NO. Are we getting close? NO.

Today before work I transplanted my two little winter sown marigolds into a pot that so far has had nothing to show for itself. The soil in their winter sowing container was pretty shallow and their roots had just ever so slightly started to circle the bottom. I hope they will do well. Right now they are the most mature of all of the sprouts and seedlings outside my front door.

I also hope the trend of cool wet weather lifts soon. I think it might be to blame for stunting their growth. It might also be to blame for my pessimism....

New Flower Bed

Starting at a good clean square one:


First and foremost my thanks goes out to my Dad for cutting all of the sod out of the new garden bed and turning over the earth in the past two weeks. He even added several big bags of manure so my plants are off to a good healthy start. Today, I turned everything over, raked through, and planted. Easy Peasy!

I spent most of the day outside, from about 10:30 am until 4pm. It was very sunny and I was half smart and wore a hat. I was half stupid and now have a farmers' burn to show for it on my arms. But that is the extent of it thank goodness and hopefully it will fade to a nice farmers' tan. More green Aloe gel please!

Planted, watered and hopefully settled, square two:

Planted above are Hydrangea, Dragon Flower, Carnations, Coral Bells, and red lilies and white lilies.

I spent lots of time weeding the side bed, lots of grass had gotten in there.
Sweet peas I planted about 3 weeks ago are coming up nicely at the chain link fences and the little red lattice fence. I took out lots of wild violets that were trying to choke out about 5 sweet peas.

Morning Glory and Moon Flower seeds also went in at the chain link fences today. Also a smattering of 'other' seeds were scattered through the main bed seen above to hopefully fill in some of the gaps this season.

I felt like a tour guide when my parents came home from work....'Oh, what's this one? What will it do? What kind of flowers does it have?' I feel like if I give them the tour and they can look forward to seeing the future flowers, they will be more likely to water and keep things alive :)

I've already got them scared to weed. Even though I've shown them all of the plants and which one's are the 'keepers' they seem a little reluctant to try to identify them and pluck them when I'm away.

Sprout Count

Three days of rain means....the tulips are looking washed out. :(

Three days of rain also means.....you don't have to water direct sown seeds :)

We had a few hours of no rain this afternoon so I headed out to see if there was anything to see.

My sprout count is roughly 50 from my very scientific method of take a step, squat, look, repeat. I didn't label things very well, but I think the ones that are coming up are marigolds and blue-flash-dwarf-morning-glory-something-or-other. The nasturtium seeds had been uncovered by the rain, so I sprinkled a little dirt their way.

Also six more tomato seedlings have made themselves known. It seems late for starting them. I wonder if they will reach maturity and produce tomatoes. I was looking at green pepper and tomato maturity dates and it looks like anywhere from 60 days to 90 days. Surely I will see fruits and veggies before August.

They seem so small though. I feel like everything, food and flower are growing so slowly. I thought I was a patient person, but where is my patience now?

Goodbye to Bushes and Direct Sowing

The apartment complex employees took out the big old gnarled bushes in front of my apartment last Thursday. They did a beautiful job and didn't disturb anything. If I had tried to do the job myself, things would have turned out much worse.

Monday I did some direct sowing into the huge spaces left by the bushes. I'd show you, but it's just a big open area of dirt.

The direct sowing and the two daylilies that have come up, survived the first mulchmen mowing, edging, weeding day yesterday. I stayed outside as long as I could before I had to come into work and they didn't disturb anything :)

Today is mother nature's chance to foul things up and wash all of my flower seeds away. T-storms are predicted for tonight.

Oh, and this past weekend was pretty busy, the parents and I saw three houses I wanted them to see...they all got the thumbs down...the search continues. I also ran the Mini on Saturday before a Very Long day at work.

Itty Bitty Yellow Buds or Teeny Tiny Tulips

I planted two kinds of tulips last fall (1)purple that turned out pink, and (2) yellows with red streaks.


Some of the yellow/reds got itty bitty buds and some only sent up foliage. My first itty bitty yellow/red opened today.


The color is wonderful, but it is so small in comparison to the pinks. I wonder if this is how big they were supposed to be. Maybe they will get bigger in future years?

As a side note, the apartment complex maintenance guys came by this morning and asked if I wanted the huge ugly bushes in front of my apartment trimmed up or cut down. I picked cut down. When I was leaving for work this afternoon they had just arrived to do the work. They asked me where I had stuff planted so they could try to work around things. How thoughful.

We'll see how they did when I get home tonight.

I also walked to True Value today and bought two yard rakes. They were on sale for 3.99 each in this week's ad. I'm starting to accumulate quite a few things to go in my new hypothetical garage.