the sweet smell of ten week old fabric softener

Gardening at night is just about the only option for those whose daylight hours are made of guacamole. Cerebral cakes that are baked at dawn and colloquial cakes baked at dusk act as parentheses, leaving only the night for the garden.

My parsnips have bolted and they look terrific though they won't yield any parsnips. My garlic-scapes are growing nicely. I will harvest all of the parsnip seeds later this summer, or early fall, and then will plant some of them next spring, after I have refurbished that garden bed with a fresh layer of compost. I haven't any other food growing on my property.

It has been a long time since I've written a limerick.

It has also been a long time since I've written a sonnet.

It has not been a long time since I posted a blog post, or commented on one.

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So we've had quite a lot of rain this spring so far. The back right side of my backyard gets flooded when the rain is really heavy. The image below isn't the worst it's ever been.

The left back side of the backyard also gets flooded, but it is harder to see as the moss on that side sops it up. To walk in that back corner is like walking on wet sponges.

Of my three raised beds, this is the only one that has any action in it, the two rows running on the short side at the bottom of the photo are parsnips. The two long rows that run along the longer sides are garlic. There was supposed to be three strawberry plants in the center between the two rows of garlic, but they did not grow.

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My garden update.


The bigger raised beds has no action on the strawberry plants or the parsnip seeds, but the Dwarf Sunspot sunflowers have mostly all germinated and made their appearance.

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Here are three of the Dwarf Sunspots close up.


I deweeded this decorative bed somewhat after I took the photo, all along the closer edge there is a row of weeds that I mostly removed. Otherwise everything here is fine.


Here the right of the two smaller beds there are carrot seeds that have sprouted as well as one of the two lettuce.


Here are the carrots that will eventually need to be thinned.


Here are the lettuce sprouts that will also need to be thinned.

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Continuing in my raised beds, here is what I planted this afternoon:


It is difficult to see (perhaps impossible), but in this one, there are three of the Strawberry plants (perrenial) down the center, each one adjacent to a watering fountain. If you click on the image and zoom in, you may see them. On the left side is alternating pansy (annual) and violet (annual). At the top are all pansies.


In the left bed I put hostas (perrenial) down the center, and alternating pansy and violet around them.


In the right bed I planted the carrot seeds in one row along the closest short edge, and in the center planted alternating pansies and violets making sure to leave room along the edges for where I planted the lettuce and spinach.


Here is a close-up of one of the hostas with the watering fountain behind it.


I started watering them immediately after having planted everything so that they can get a good start. I'll be watering them all regularly over the next week or so to be sure they root well. If we had rain, that would be helpful, but there hasn't been any rain in five days and there is none in the forecast.

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So the first thing I did was use this:


that looks like this at the bottom


...to break up the earth in my raised beds. The tines are about 5" long and so I would force it down, give it two rotations, lift it up, and then move over to do it again. Then I added some black earth and vermiculite.

In these two I have at the back some Pink Pampas. In the left one, nothing else yet, in the right one, a row of Dwarf Sunspot sunflowers between the two branches at the back. Also in the right one some lettuce and spinach along the edges in the larger gap closer to us. In the end section closest to us I will be planting carrots, but I haven't the seeds yet.


In the bigger bed I've planted the same Dwarf Sunspot sunflowers along the long right side, and parsnips in two rows along the closest end.


A number of weeks ago I started cherry tomato plants from seed, here they are outside on their first day to be 'seasoned'. Just a few hours today, then a few more tomorrow, then a few more still on Saturday and finally on Sunday, outdoors for the summer.

potato harvest?

I decided to dig up my potatoes.

I had planted a dozen small potato bits, they grew into plants that came up, the plants died due to my lack of watering in late July. I got more plants than what I had put in, however, they didn't really grow because they didn't get enough water.

I had planted some parsnips two years ago, pulled one up and found it had hardly grow, so left them. They came up again this spring having survived the winter in the ground. So I decided to pull another up. Again because of the watering (the lack thereof), it doesn't look as good as it might have otherwise.

And finally here are the garlic bulbs that I had harvested in early August, I had left them outside to dry; they're not as big as I'd like, but then, I was a terrible farmer this year.

send well wishes to wishful thinkers

Big Macs not having anything to do with this post, I amaze no one by stating the completely obvious.

Transplanting dandelions seems like an incredibly wasteful use of time.

I have added a few more posts to my gardening blog lately.

Soon it will be April; what this means to people who differentiate the months is not attributable to being lazy or corrupt.

Stained underwear

With a subject like that, the content of this post is bound to be somewhat jarring.

Well, I have no jars.

What I do have is the beginnings of a new blog that I will be using to track my gardening.

I have my first post there already but I'm not quite done with modifying the template that I downloaded to have it meet my needs. I am tending more towards black backgrounds because your monitor will consume less electricity displaying a dark screen compared to a bright one.

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There is a large gangly tree in the near center of my backyard that is shading my garden and making it hard to expand my garden as it takes all of the sun. As there are trees that go almost all the way around the perimeter of the yard, I need to put my garden in the north east corner, so this tree has got to go.


So photo 1 above is the picture of the tree from the deck in the back yard, you can see the gangliness of it by the trunk that has three large arms.


Photo 2 is the same tree, now from the lawn on the south east side of the back yard facing the north east side. Those white containers you can see are part of my garden. Clearly in this photo you can see that removing the tree will allow that part of the yard to get plenty of sun.


Photo 3 is a picture of the container garden on the left side and the tomato garden behind the garage. If the tree was removed almost all of the grass you see in this photo would eventually be turned into vegetable garden.

Debstar once posted photos on her blog of trees on her property or in her neighbourhood. Here I wanted to show a few of the trees in my backyard that are on the perimeter that put shade into the yard at all of the different times of day.

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My first foray into home made self watering seed starting containers. This is an interim photo where you can see the wick comes into the soil and is coiled, more soil was put on top of this into which the seed was placed.

making kentucky fried chicken in alabama

The big day is coming! April 26th will mark the beginning of the seventh year of existence of my first child. Now that he is in school he is keen to have a birthday party inviting all of his class. My wife is really over-run at work these days so I will have to do some research into what activies can I organize in the least expensive way possible for a two hour duration in my home having between five and eighteen kids over (depending on my son's popularity and on these kids' availability).

Of course there will be cake, but we will not organize a lunch or supper - from the experience of friends of ours who have slightly older children, kids often do not eat at parties because it is more fun to play than it is to eat.

We could let them run wild in our basement which is full of toys, but I think it would be more fun for them if there was at least some amount of organized activities.

In other news I received the seeds I will be using for starting my vegetable garden this spring.

destruct instruct restruct exstruct

A buddy sent me a link to a page on Instrucables.com and this is exactly how I will start my seeds for my vegetable garden this spring. I will be using a smaller water bottle style container instead of the 2L bottle as shown in the link, however, everything else as described in that link will be exactly how I do it.