Victory Gardening Rocks!

In all my frustration toward the judicial system, I forgot to tell you!

I am growing more vegetables and herbs from seed! Woot!

I KNEW you’d be excited!

I planted more seeds in a new mini-greenhouse yesterday. This time, I have three types of tomatoes, one grape-like kind called jellybean tomatoes, one heirloom variety that has sort of a purplish splash of color on top, and one variety that is larger than a cherry tomato but smaller than a regular tomato. I also planted some dill and some oregano.

Next, I am going to order some funky fun seeds from an online seed house. There are all sorts of varieties of plants that you can’t get at your local store and I really want to test out these seed waters while the timing is right.

I have officially decided that the flower bed around my patio (that will be built when the weather is warm for just one day) will be a garden of sorts. I am tired of not having a garden just because tradition says a flower bed should have flowers. Dang it! I can have vegetables AND flowers around my patio!!

And as a side note, I did come up with a solution for the peas. I started the flower bed and added some good soil, planted the seedlings and put stakes up with strings hanging between them so that seedlings can grow on them. It’s not the finished flower bed. Just enough room for the peas. And I will have to go back and add stones around the outside edge to really hold the soil in, but it should be good for a week or two. I just hope the seedlings survive with the cold. They are a cold weather plant, but they just had a 30 degree shock. Guess we shall see!

We The Jury Declare Driver’s License Renewal Is A Crock

I was called for Jury Duty again.

This time it’s Federal court. And here’s the kicker, I have to call after 3pm everyday between February 23rd and March 9th to see if they will need me the next day.

On the plus side, they reimburse you for mileage driven to and from the court house. Given that that’s about 2 gallons of gas a day, I will be happy to let them give me an extra $4. Wonder if they will pay for my tolls, too. That’s another $3 a day.

What fun.

A Little Political Fodder

Boring seems to be my middle name these days. I haven’t written a thrilling post in ages. My apologies.

What I can tell you is:

• I think Hillary Clinton is a dolt. “What in my past makes me capable of handling evil men?” Ugh. Bleck. I want a woman president, but not her.

• I think Barack Obama will make an outstanding Vice President.

• Gov. Mike Huckabee (Arkansas) is a frightening man, who says things like “we need to take this country back for Jesus” and then turns around and says things that people will actually flock to like, (paraphrase) “if we are really pro-life then we should be pro-education, and pro-family, and pro-sending kids to college” and other things that will strike frighteningly good cords with people and lull them into not believing he’s a neo-christian-ultra-freakishly-conservative-turn-our-country-into-a- “Christian”-country-leave-out-all-the-other-religions-loon. Oh and he’s an ordained Baptist Minister. Not that there’s anything wrong with ordained Baptist Ministers, but I sure don’t want one as my president. Sort of the ultimate disturbance of the separation of church and state isn’t it?

• Oh, and John McCain had better pray he was right to side with Georgie Boy because if he was wrong? Well, he won’t be sittin’ in that oval room any time soon…

Holy Toledo!

The seedlings looked basically the same as my last posted picture on Friday. They were about 2 inches tall. Then I left town. And the snow peas went nuts! Two and a half days later, this is what I came home to! They are more than a foot tall now!

What the heck do I do with them now?? I wasn’t expecting to transplant them for a few weeks. Now I am going to have create a wire grid for them to grow on and all of that. Hope they can wait until the weekend, because I have no idea how I can do that during the week. PLUS, it’s supposed to get really cold! Any suggestions?

On the other hand, I did discovery why they are called “snow” peas. Apparently, they like the cold.

Also, if you look on the left of the picture, you will see seedling chives and basil. The baby chives are adorable. They look just like full grown chives, but they are in miniature.

If you want to see a better picture of the chives and basil, click on this picture and navigate through the baby seedlings set.

Updates…

The baby plants are doing great! If I had remembered–amongst the other 8 million things I have done in the last 36 hours–to take a photo, you would be seeing teeny little green leaves poking through the soil that is protectively incubating the basil seeds, and you would long stalk-like stems stand strong and tall on the Snow Pea side. The snow peas are so tall that I had to take the lid off of the greenhouse! They were bending!

You would also find in my life, if I were snapping pictures, a shiny, beatiful, but smelly yellow Xterra. I got my car washed at lunch yesterday, and when given the fragrance choices of: New Car, Leather, Cherry, Pina Colada, or Vanilla, and not wanting to waste the 10 cents that I was paying for such lovely smells, I tried to pick the least offensive smell. I picked Vanilla. It’s vanilla! It might make you hungry, but it’s not going to offend your sensibilities right?

Wrong.

It smells like a radiated, mutant Vanilla Bean Plant exploded into every corner of my car. It smells like a disastrous mix of noxtious toxins and drug store perfume were poured into the cup holders, air conditioning vents, and onto the gas pedal. It makes me cough and sneeze, and I have to drive to Austin with that putrid stench today.

Note to self: Frugal and economically wise does not have to equal stupidly ensuring you get your 10 cent fragrance at the car wash.

My Babies are Growing Like Weeds!

I posted a couple new pictures of the seedlings. I tried to post some at lunch yesterday, but I forgot I had shot them in RAW and I don’t have PhotoShop CS2 here at work, so I couldn’t access the pictures. SO, this morning I took new pictures in JPEG and voila! A blog post was born!

The snow peas are growing extremely fast. They seem very excited about coming into the world. Always giggling and drooling, they are really something to see! The chives seem to be waking up. They are sporting teeny tiny spikes right now. Just peeking out at the world. It’s the basil babies that seem to be most shy. I just hope they come out of their shells soon (hehe…get it?? Shells?? Seeds!! I kill me!)

Anyway, like any good mom, I am trying to be sure to keep up with pictures of their growth, so go take a look and compliment them in your best baby voices!

Gilded With a Touch of Sugar

I want to make these cookies! They make me feel all sappy and gooey and victorian inside. The cutters are from Sur La Table which in my opinion blows Williams-Sonoma out of the water. I may even be willing to blow the $25 dollars to get these cutters if I have money left over after I pay The Man this month. (Unfortunately, that’s not likely, so I will probably cave and go buy some crappy replica version at Target…Not that I don’t love Target or anything, but these are COPPER! and the hearts have extra pointy ends!)

In other news, I have new pictures of my baby seedlings. They are so cute! I will post them when I have a few minutes. Maybe while I scarf down my super yummy lunch of stuffed red bell pepper that I made last night. And that EVERY dietician in the Northern Hemisphere would approve of due to its super lean turkey meat and brown rice, and red bell pepper, and tomatoes, and no added fat…Oh yeah, Baby! Mmmm…I can’t wait. Seriously, they are awesome.

Seedlings are Sprouting!

I have started the photolog of my seedlings’ growth! Their progress will be tracked on my Flickr site. (click the picture…)

In other news, go rent The Illusionist. It’s really good! I watched it last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Also, I made whole wheat pasta from scratch. Can I tell you how much better it tastes than store bought whole wheat pasta??? It’s a rather big pain to make, but it was quite tasty.

In other, other news, I am totally procrastinating right now by posting this. I have been cleaning out my closet today. What a mess! I have already pulled three trashbags worth of stuff to give to Goodwill. Whew! It’s amazing though. There is ROOM in my closet!

Ok. Back to the cleaning I go.

Operation Plant Explosion

Last night I bought a greenhouse (sort of like this, but bigger and it didn’t come with the plethora of seeds)…Ok, it’s a black plastic tray with a clear plastic top. It’s a greenhouse for my kitchen! How ’bout that? Don’t know why, but I got the urge to plant something. So, since I can’t do that outside just yet, I am growing things from seed. This should be an interesting experiment because I haven’t even had success keeping one measly little house plant happily alive. But nonetheless, I bought my greenhouse, and I bought seeds. It’s really rather ingenious. The little tray has discs of dirt and peat wrapped in mesh netting. You add water to the tray and the discs absorb it and expand. Then you add some seeds, put the lid on, and wait.

I bought four types of seeds. I bought Snow Peas because they are the most awesome of snacks but ridiculously expensive in the stores, two types of Basil, Sweet and Genovese, and Chives. If all of these seedlings take, I will have a HUGE crop of plants, and my plans for my backyard will go from small border garden with many flowers and few herbs (and peas) to large border garden with many herbs (and peas) and a few flowers…

The point of all of this, is I am going to try to take pictures of the little greenhouse and post them here daily or every few days. I am going to do that not because I think you all will be so excitedly enticed by seedlings growing a millimeter per day, but because it might help me remember to water them!! I am now responsible to not only my soon to be baby plants, but to the vast dozens of you who read my blog.

So get on my case about it already! If I forget to post a picture, yell at me! I want to have pretty little plants that I grew from seed!

Here goes, Operation Plant Explosion has officially begun!

The Trials and Tribulations of Winter

For weeks, I have been craving winter. Real cold, real snow, or even some sleet. The stuff that I grew up with.

And I got it!

A whole week of W-I-N-T-E-R! And I am loving it! I love having to wear a coat, and gloves, and snuggling under blankets, and the tip of my nose feeling frosty. It’s wonderful!

But there is one thing I had managed to forget from my childhood. One thing I would be happy to live without…

Cold toilet seats!! Oh my God! My downstairs bathroom is on an outside wall, and man that toilet is cold! It’s like sitting on an ice throne!

THAT, Mother Nature can have back.