I haven't died!

Holy cow. Spring officially started but Audrey has been silent? No needlessly detailed posts about my scatterbrained gardening ventures? No reflections on my current life status?

I didn't drop off the side of Texas. It's just been a busy couple of months. Since the visit to NOLA, Brian and I have both been busy with our jobs, including working several weekends for me. We helped some friends of ours pack up to move to Washington in February.

We miss these people...

Then I had my birthday a couple weeks ago (which was a really great couple of workdays and weekend off). I got myself a hair cut for the occasion, as is my yearly around-birthday tradition.

 Coworkers made me and the manager (we have the same birthday) wear sashes all Thursday. Friday I left early and chopped about seven inches off my hair. 

Brian and I took Acer to the vet the day after my birthday. We'd intended to go to the range in Pflugerville afterward, but getting the dog in to be seen took a lot longer than we anticipated, so we stopped in Georgetown and visited the first Second Saturday street fair of the year instead. We showed up late, so got some great deals on pastries from one stall.

This guy was promoting his school. But the claims seemed to be a bit puffed up. *badum tish*

This weekend we stayed at a seedy hotel in East Houston to visit a new satellite dojo of our club in Killeen. They have a pretty nice location and are just trying to gain some more members to study with. If anyone is reading this near the Highlands/Crosby areas and interested in tomiki aikido, here are the links to their Meetup and Facebook pages. It's a good group of guys studying the art but not neglecting the martial.

After a good three hours of playing with the katas, we got to meet up with some of my old friends in the Houston area, which I'd been needing for some time now.

I was thrilled to see Carlos, Steph and Matt (not pictured, as he had to go to work) This was taken in a parking lot around midnight, right before a security guard in a golf cart stopped to stare at us until we dispersed.

Before heading back yesterday we swung through Lufkin and Nacogdoches to get my pine tree fix. We got food at Pepper Jacks and, after some mis-routing from the GPS, ate at the lake. Brian found some twin pinecones he was very enamored with.

Aren't they cute?

Soo, now we are back home. I ended up with a surprise four day weekend because I'm scheduled to work this coming weekend, so I'm trying to get caught up on things. Once I'm through here I need to get cracking on the taxes and an oil change I'm overdue for. BUT, I want to ensure all that my gardening ventures will continue into 2016. These are some dated photos, but I'm still working! I'm actually narrowing my focus to herbs this year, and the Grow Your Own Cocktails kit I got for Christmas has been interesting for that.

This was taken Feb. 28. The big ones are blue borage, which are now in a big pot. Everything but the mint and lavender has also been moved to larger temporary or permanent homes.

I'm also trying some more kitchen scrap experiments. These carrot tops are sharing a pot with a single radish from last year that decided it loves the cool weather we've been having lately.

I also got a pink bush-like plant from Jacque for my birthday. It's currently shedding it's pink leaves, as it's wont to do, but should re-grow them over the next month. She also surprised me by anonymously dropping off a strawberry plant one morning last week. I didn't know where it had come from for two days. I'm kind of excited about strawberry plants. I've wanted them for a while, but just never got them for myself. I'll enjoy them for sure.

My attempt at a compost bin has been nice. As it's mostly old potting soil with the addition of kitchen scraps, I feel it kind of had a head start, and I've already been using it for repotting sprouts.

Two pepper plants from last year, one bell, one banana, have survived the winter and are growing new leaves. I'm hoping they'll to better now that they're a little older and, possibly, more established.

So here's to a slightly more narrowed focus in plants this year. Maybe it will help to be less scattered. I also got a pretty windchime for my birthday from Korri, I'll bet its rainbowy magic will do well for my little green experiments.

I really do love this. I just have to get up really early to get the sun hitting it favorably and haven't 

managed to do that since getting it.

A plant update!

Well, since I wrote last week my garlic cloves have just exploded. Just look at this!

 You may remember these on Feb. 19, a day or so after being planted.

 Here they are on Feb. 21.

 Here is Feb. 22 (with a flash, for some reason).

 On Feb. 24...

 

And this morning (Feb. 26)...

I've never done anything more with sprouting garlic than smash it and remove the inside stem in order to use the clove for cooking. It's amazing how quickly these are growing. I've mostly been watering them by pouring water into the styrofoam tray for the pots and dirt to soak up (I have a theory this may lead to deeper roots, which is good for Texas plants).

This cold snap we're going through needs to hurry up and finish so I can move these babies outside. They're not going to stay comfortable in these tiny peat pots very long.

I also transplanted my carrot tops and bell pepper seeds yesterday. Of the original 15 seeds I germinated...

 You may remember this picture from Feb. 19.

... a round dozen of them developed roots. When I noticed two trying to stand up on Sunday, I figured it was time to move them from the nursery to individual rooms (in an egg carton).

The carrots got first dibs because I noticed their greenery starting to wilt; water on a paper towel wasn't enough anymore, I thought.

Because of the carrot tops, I had two seeds without egg slots, so they get to bunk together in an old applesauce cup, seen on the left. It was also kind of strategic: one seed, seen on the top right in the germination photo, was surrounded by yellow. I'm hoping it came from a yellow pepper, so I put it in the cup with a "Y" near it so I can keep an eye on how it grows (because it's really hard to tell the rest apart as I've moved them).

There was an issue with the cardboard egg carton absorbing the water before the soil could. I could have moved to the styrofoam carton I had, but I'd been saving eggshells for compost already, and remembered something from Pinterest about planting seedlings in eggshells (supposedly the whole thing can be planted, and the calcium in the shells is good for plants). So I spooned the dirt from the carton into (clean) eggshell halves and planted the seeds inside, using the end of a chopstick to make the hole.

Now we just wait to see who thrives in the dirt. The carrots I'm not really banking anything on, they're more of an experiment really, but I'm excited to see how the garlic and bell peppers turn out.

Brian and I got some radish and pumpkin seeds at Home Depot last week. I'm going to do it: I'm going to try growing my own pie pumpkins. They seem to be pretty fast growers (the packet says they take about 90 days), so I'm debating between planting late so they're ready in fall, or just planting early and harvesting/prepping/freezing as needed until it's pumpkin pie season. I just hope they leave some room in my tiny bed for peppers too. :-D

Gardening Season!

In an effort to increase the positivity of my posts, I'm writing today about something I get really excited about: gardening.

Last weekend, Brian built me a raised garden bed for Valentine's Day. While everyone else was posting pictures of the flowers and chocolate they got, I got to share this:

Note Acer's adoring expression toward Brian. He always looks at him that way.

He worked the better part of six hours to build it for me. I helped hold some boards in place, hammered a few nails and scrounged up some of the bricks, but in all honesty he did most of the heavy lifting. On the plus side, my grandad's hammer got some use in putting the sucker together, which made me happy. 

We dug a small trench to place the walls in, and layered some unfolded trash bags on the bottom to keep grass/weeds from creeping up. I also threw in some old, rotting wood near the bottom (I'd read a little about hugelkultur, and wanted to at least make a little effort toward it). We chose to put it against the back fence to avoid building a fourth wall, but built a small wall of bricks to keep the dirt from laying against that wood (and possibly rotting it, because we want our neighbors to not hate us).

Now it's not huge at only six-by-three feet, but I didn't want something huge for my first in-ground, weed-pulling, pest-deterring, varmint-chasing, heat-fighting gardening venture. All of my past dabbles with plants have been in containers (thank you, apartment living), which I'm not abandoning.

 Between Brian's grandma and me, we could grow a small truckload of stuff in pots (this is just a few from the back porch)

I plan to keep flowers and vine/spreading-type plants in containers. I have one sweet potato vine I planted last year in a big pot indoors right now, and two small starters that I cut off some potatoes last night. Vines are romantic plants to me, and I love to see them trailing down from hanging baskets, so that's where I'm going to put them. Also, if I decide to plant strawberries, I'll keep them in pots too because past experience told me the roly-polys/pill bugs LOVE strawberries, so I need to keep them off the ground.

Thanks to the variety of pot sizes, I also have an opportunity to build an herb tower like the ones all over Pinterest (that links to a realistic-looking tower, not the impossibly perfect ones you see elsewhere). Herbs apparently like to grow close together, so I'm thinking rosemary, basil, mint and lemon balm will be my focus.

I also have read a bit about companion planting and gardening for bees, both of which rosemary is beneficial to. It's also extremely hardy and I know it will grow here because the neighbors have two beautiful rosemary shrubs in their front yard. Basil has been tough for me to grow the last few years in Central Texas, so I'm wary of it, but willing to give it another shot. 

In the realm of plants not fantasized about, I have quite a collection of kitchen-scrap sprouts already.

The avocado pits are the only underachievers here.

Two carrot tops are seen showing off bushy tops, a celery bottom is pushing up new stalks, and the two sweet potato sprouts I previously mentioned are looking happy in their new watery bed.

The lucky cloves that are already in dirt starter-homes.

I've also pushed a few (nine) sprouting garlic cloves into dirt already. It's a bit more a challenge to keep these moist, but I've never encouraged garlic to grow, so I'm excited to see how it goes. 

Also, I put some bell pepper seeds I'd saved over the winter in a bag to germinate a few weeks ago. Within a few days a few had tiny roots.  Three days after, they'd grown even more.

 On the left was taken Feb. 16, two days after placement. On the right was Feb. 19.

I've grown bell peppers with little trouble before. The exciting part of these is I can't remember which seeds came from what color pepper! Of course they'll all start green, but some may turn yellow or red, which are more expensive at the store anyway. 

Thinning seedlings is a step in the process I've always struggled with. I understand letting the strongest survive, but I feel bad that I encouraged all of the seeds to grow, then have to decide which just didn't do good enough and toss them. It feels cruel somehow, but I'll have to do it at some point. 

Brian has requested I try to grow radishes and banana peppers in the new bed. I'm curious about trying to grow my own pie pumpkins and giving tomatoes (in my tomato stand) another shot. Mom gave me some flower seeds for Christmas, which I'll tend to with glee. 

I'm just so excited to get some plants going this year, in pots as well as in the ground. There are rabbits in the neighborhood, so I'm anticipating having to create a gate around the box, but it's going to be an educational year in gardening for me. I just hope I get something pretty or impressive to show for it.

With this hard-working man and our supportive sidekick, how could I fail?