Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

This past week has been wonderful with spring-like weather. Nearly all the snow is melted… the few bits that are left are in deep all day shade. Even the giant piles in parking lots are melted away.

It’s been great dog walking weather, although a bit mushy in places. Today it’s not so mushy, and the little temporary creek in the hay field is down to just a bit of mushy…. rather than a creek I’d have to jump! I wore normal shoes today, instead of my boots. Only needed my jacket for the pockets… gotta have treats for when we are done walking, the dogs expect it and will sit in this nice row for me, waiting for the hand out. :)

Earlier today I was out and about in the yard, with a week of mild weather things start thinking it’s spring already. I can see the cause of my latest allergy attack… the maple is blooming. I’m sure other trees are, too. Ugh.

All of the pink amaryllis are coming up… the ones that I moved and divided up last year. It will be interesting to see if they bloom, but they did poorly where they were before, mostly just did a lot of leaves in spring. Not surprising, they were planted in a few inches of dirt on top of the concrete footing that surrounds the house! They should do much better out in full sun and dirt to actually put roots down into. I just hope they grow faster than the grass, so they can build up energy to bloom. Otherwise they are in danger of being mowed.

Also showing leaves are my hyacinths. I love spring blooming bulbs, I really should plant a gazillion daffodils and tulips and crocus and such. I have plenty of stuff at my house… but no tulips any more. Tons of daffodils I could dig up a few and move em here. Some little bulbs that I forget what they are called… get bright blue flowers. (something with snow in the name, they bloom real early, too) Tulips do wonderfully here in Arkansas, the only reason I don’t have any at my house any more is because my pet pig Opal dug them all up and ate them. I tried to keep Opal out of that flower bed, but she’d just knock down my “fence” and dig more of em up. Pet pigs and flower beds don’t mix. Pet pigs and where you want a NEW flower bed works pretty well, though… just pen up the pig where you want it to dig. They’ll root up all the rocks, eat everything that is edible, and you can end up with an area that will need smoothing out, but will also be fertilized already. :) Opal passed over the rainbow bridge a while back, and I was lucky to have known her, even if she did eat all my tulips. :)

So, with the lovely weather today I got a little flat “mini greenhouse” at the store. Peat pellets and the plastic stuff to hold em in, keep em moist. I bought some artichoke seeds late last year, and managed to kill the few that I got to sprout. Time to try again, when I can actually set them out sooner rather than later. I won’t bother growing my tomatoes from seed, don’t have a lot of room to be starting a bunch of plants like that. I am going to put a few wildflower seeds in, though, and hope they sprout. With 16 spots, I need to have something else to sprout than just artichokes. I don’t need that many artichoke plants, just a few that I’ll have to baby through our hot summer.

Forgot to look at seeds, so on my way home later I stopped at a dollar store to find turnip seeds. I got the ONLY pack they had. I mixed bunching onion, radish and turnip seeds all together with some seed starting mix in a jar. Then I went out and used a cultivator and made one long row in our garden. Sprinkled the seeds and dirt mix out, pressed it down, and raked over. It might be a little early for all that, but you never know around here. Those are all things that like cooler weather. I love turnips and radishes in the spring, and it’s been a few years since I got any decent radishes to eat. I keep trying to grow them in pots, and that doesn’t work well at all. They need the cool and damp ground to grow in. Hopefully this year I’ll get some to eat.

Of course we can and probably will get freezing weather again. But radishes and turnips can survive that. I don’t know that I will… I hope this isn’t just a teaser of spring and we go to super cold and more snow again. It =could= be spring now, I’ve seen it start this early here. Keeping my fingers crossed!

hugs,
Vyx

Yes, yes, I know… I go weeks without posting a darn thing and now I’m up to 3 posts in one day. Can’t help it, sometimes things just happen all at once.

The story of the moonflowers… I planted two packets of seeds this year. Hardly any came up, I should have sprouted them in a wet paper towel in the house and then planted them. That’s actually what I did for some for my neighbor, ended up planting those where they never got watered. All sprouted that way, though.

So I’d stuck them all around my sunflowers thinking the sunflowers would be good for them to twine up. Not many came up, and the few that did were soon overrun with grass and weeds. (yah, I’m a lazy gardener) But I kept them alive all summer, hoping they’d bloom sometime when it was still warm out.

Not likely. My Mom and I have grown these before, and I don’t think it matters how early you plant them, they don’t bloom until it’s chilly out at night and you aren’t sitting out there any more. Summer is over before I see any buds. The sunflowers are long gone. Seriously long gone, Ron chopped and pulled down the dead stalks and managed to snap off one of my moonflowers in the process. Oh well, I’ve still got at least one.

Every night that I think of it, I make a point of going by there to see if anything is blooming. We’ve had some pretty chilly nights, but it’s also been rather dry. I’ve watered when I saw that blooms were not going to open, too dry. Maybe the next ones will be okay.

I can’t remember every night… and of course I’d see the wilted shriveled but had been opened blooms the next day. Darn it!

Last night I was outside a lot later than I normally am. During the week I’m in bed somewhere between 9 and 10, if not earlier. But it being Friday night.. I took little dog Rita out to potty and thought hah, Moonflowers!

Well, guess what? Finally, finally I got to see and smell an open flower. They smell good… reminded me of four o’clocks which I love the smell of. However… the flower was BARELY open, and it was way later than 10 pm. Are they on some kind of 3rd shift schedule? It’s been dark for hours, and they are in deep shade for the later part of the afternoon anyhow. Crazy.

I took a couple photos. Will post one here… if only the darn things would bloom earlier in the summer and a bit earlier in the evening, lol! This is taken without flash…. the reason the flower is lit up is because of a handy LED headlamp my sister gave me. :)

Yay, a moonflower. They are really lovely flowers, with a nice nighttime scent. But sheesh, these have been making me nuts this year. :)

hugs,
Vyx

As in Oops, I think we planted too many. Hey, some years we have a few plants and hardly get any, so we erred on the side of too many plants this year.

I’ll be taking sacks of them to work Monday.

I’ll turn all the Romas into tomato jam. I don’t can tomatoes, I think it’s too much trouble when you can freeze them just fine, skins and all.

hugs,
Vyx

Took these photos the weekend of the 4th, uploading in a more timely manner than I did with the last batch of yard photos! LOL!

First of all… I accidently left the soaker hose going overnight on the berries a couple weeks ago. It was really dry and they needed water, but probably not quite that much. Thing is, though, that the right amount of water at just the right time will make the berries HUGE when they ripen. Huge as in monster sized!

Not a very great photo, and they weren’t all that large, but most are at least as large as my thumb. A few are monsters. :) We are way overloaded with berries again, I think next year I’m going to put a sign out for “U Pick Thornless Blackberries. Cheap.” They are starting to wind down a bit, and the bugs are getting them…. so we are being more selective of what we try to pick. We get japanese beetles, but now there are also Big Green July Beetles. 4x the size of japanese beetles, and love fruit. Will fly out and whack into me so hard that they almost knock me down. :)

Seriously, though… I am tired of picking berries and washing them and etc. The neighbor who promised me he’d come pick berries has never shown up. Pfft! No jam for him! Of course I haven’t been real great about helping pick his garden, either… but I can only use so much squash and cukes. I have yet to make pickles, just hope the cukes in the fridge will be okay until this weekend.

Anyhow. All of my lilies bloomed this year, including for the very first time my tiger lilies planted from the bulblets that they grow on the stem. I’m so happy… those weren’t that old and I wasn’t expecting blooms for a few more years. They are so pretty, always have been one of my favorite kinds of lily.

I had planted stargazer lilies last year, but they didn’t do well and didn’t bloom at all. This year, even though the grass got away from me in the flower bed… and even though it’s all full of dillweed… every single stargazer bloomed, from the ones I thought I’d killed last year to the new ones I planted this year. I really love the pink stargazer lilies and they smell good, too. (and I’m sure I’m going to be really sorry about the dillweed next year when it =really= takes over!)

Plus! One of my stargazers is an albino! Or almost an albino. It’s supposed to be that brilliant pink like the others. I thought the buds looked a little pale, and they were for a reason.

None of my sunflowers are what they are supposed to be… it’s like someone swapped the seeds in the packets. I planted Apricot Splash and Cherry Rose… and what I have are plain yellow (but multi-blossomed and pollenless) and a yellow with red at the centers, also multi-blossomed. I know darn well what Cherry Rose looks like, and it doesn’t look at all like these two. It’s a double sunflower, and dark pink. Hmmpf! My volunteers look to be Russian Giants… tall, huge stems like tree trunks and just your basic yellow sunflower with a single blossom. I’m thinking some of these fancy sunflowers I grew last year must be hybrids that went back to parent on the seeds. Oh well! No good photos of the sunflowers, I tend to get out there too late in the day with the camera. One of the giants is a bug magnet… every sort of bug is on it drinking it’s sap out of the stem. Strangest thing I’ve ever seen… wasps, bees, beetles, ants, butterflies, all hanging out together on the stem of the sunflower. I have taken a few photos of that, but the EW factor of bugs keeps it off my blog, lol!

Speaking of bugs, last night I got to watch a cicada come out of it’s shell. I’ve never seen that in person before. Cicadas have to be one of the ugliest bugs ever… and the beetle type shell they emerge from isn’t very pretty either! I documented that with camera… took out a good halogen light so camera could focus and not use up the batteries on flash. It was quite interesting. Newly hatching cicadas are beautiful colors of green and white! Bright dayglow green! I had to move him before his wings got stretched out, so that he wouldn’t be run over by Ron leaving for work. Tried to take one more photo and the cats finally saw what I was looking at. Sorry bug, you just became a cat snack. Just like the sphinx moths that come to feed at my Four o’clocks every night… cats get em.

Well, it’s time to eat, feed the pets and get this uploaded. My daughter left Tuesday morning, and arrived on the coast of southern North Carolina this evening…. she text messaged me to tell me she got there okay. I was worried… it’s a long drive to do in 2 days. Wish she could have stayed here longer, we never got to make pickles or do tie dye, both of which I need to get doing! This weekend for the pickles, maybe will fit in some dye work, too, hot as it is. :)

hugs,
Vyx

The lilac bush went crazy this year. Butterflies are loving it, I am too.

Macro actually worked on the camera. There is a button, but when set on Auto the camera should actually switch when you are close up. Doesn’t always work, however. I am not in the habit of walking around the yard with glasses handy, so I never can tell if it’s going to work, lol!

The clematis I bought on sale last year. Seems to be doing okay after being eaten by the neighbors’ goat and/or pony last fall. Sort of a natural pruning, which it did NOT need. I am going to need a better trellis for it to climb, the one it has came with it and isn’t nearly large enough.

Kittens are out playing and starting to eat food.

They don’t always hold still long enough to take a photo.

The calico is the biggest kitten… and also the wildest one. She’s a week older than the other two.

Libby’s boys. Libby is in the upper left corner, and that is Tyler and Fluffy posing. They are almost all grown up now. Libby seems to have the most exotic looking children of all the cats.

I had a lot more photos but the light was horrible and some didn’t focus properly so I skipped the uploading.

Well, I have lots to do today, indoor stuff. Gotta get the new blinds hung so I can quit using a tablecloth for a curtain…. the usual cleaning and laundry stuff… some drawing and carving of a new stamp… and then bake a cake to take to work for my birthday. Sort of a preemptive cake, so that no one else brings one. I don’t particularly like cake.

hugs,
Vyx