Day 3 - Still sick

Yesterday I dragged my sorry self out of bed to watch Youngest Daughter play basketball in a Special Olympics tournament. In two days of play they won all four games so came home with gold medals and broad smiles. 

Today everyone in the family had plans and so did I - to sleep! It didn't last, I started wanting to get something done this weekend. So I began my gardening project.

I planted an indoor seed tray with 72 little plant cups, covered it with its special clear dome and set it in my office where there's southern exposure. 

All 72 are tomatoes, three different kinds. I hope at least a few of them mature to be transplanted outdoors in my Square Foot Garden. (See, that's the same kind of thinking Nadya Suleman used, I really understand her!) I've never been successful in the past but I followed all the directions and am determined that this is going to be my year.  

Then I unpacked my new Sears drill to build the first container. The salesperson assured me this model would suffice for my project but I wish now I'd overridden her and gone one step higher. I drilled and drilled. I predrilled, I soaped the screws (3"deck) and I'm still not nearly finished. 

I'm learning a lot. I can feel those new dendrites forming in my brain from all I'm doing outside of my comfort zone. When I start the next container I'm going to use softer wood, only 1" thick. These 2" Douglas Fir boards would support the planet.

If I ever get the first container built I could start the cool leafy greens now.  It's still too early for tomatoes, but since I'm growing my own this year, they are a good six weeks away from transplantation anyway.  But the colder crops, spinach and lettuces, some herbs and such, they can get started this week IF I ever get that blasted box screwed together.

Lovely, lovely cosmos

Are the cosmos especially delicately attractive this year or is it that I finally learned their name? There's a lot of power in naming.....

Getting ready to plant

The tomatoes are still not planted.....but look! I'm getting closer!

In the meantime, this Nana noticed that the "Nana" tickseed is thriving happily in a container. I wonder whose Nana it was named after....

Garden of distress

This is my back yard vegetable garden. Obviously I have done nothing yet to get it started. Every spring it looks like this and every spring I do what I can to bring it back to life. Each year I say, "This is the year I will have some GREAT tomatoes, the garden will be great!" Right. So, like the hopeful fool I am, I'll be working these containers, this earth and will offer occasional updates. THIS year I will have a great garden!

More spring planting

I've been transplanting small bedding plants into containers all around the yard, front and back, trying to get everything in place before the heat of the summer hits. Here are some geraniums, salvia and allysum that are next to the sidewalk to cheer walkers as they pass.



And here are the pansies that I planted on April 3rd.



And how they've flourished in just three weeks.

Breezy weeds

I weeded today. Foxtails are growing abundantly and they're a danger to dogs, besides being weeds. And today it was breezy first and then downright windy and the 'tails were blowing every which way. So I pulled them out in an attempt to create a new border plot under the cherry tree alongside the driveway. It will take some figuring out and lots of practice to know what works there - full shade, part shade, part sun, full sun, they're all in the same plot. The soil is yucky too, no self-respecting plant other than a foxtail would choose that site.

In the meantime, the English daisies I planted in a barrel last week are acclimating nicely.