It is so nice outside. The breeze is a little cool, but it's sunny so that helps ( Read more... )

This is supposed to be the nicest weekend we've had in a while. Today was warm enough to throw open the windows; my father, the gardening guru, brought up some of his plants from the basement to get some sun and fresh air. I joked that he was taking them on a field trip. It's his way of acclimating them to the outside, which is probably a good ( Read more... )

As expected, I spent some time outside gardening, for lack of a better term. I wasn't sure when it would happen, or if; it was still pretty chilly, even past noon. After lunch, though, dad finally went outside and started working on the front flowerbed. Mom and I watched from inside as he put down newspapers, then piled mulch atop them. Okay, ( Read more... )

All week, the weather report has suggested that tomorrow will be seasonably warm and sunny, perfect for working outdoors. I'm gearing up to go out and help do stuff, if only for a bit. Dad's already bought mulch, and we've been saving up our old Chicago Tribunes to put down over the ground. We've both heard that a layer of papers, then mulch, ( Read more... )

I may have gone to see a show about plants last weekend, but the real thing is growing in my basement ( Read more... )

Now that we've had a hard frost and the flowers have died, it's time to clean up the front flower bed. Dad and I set about doing that after lunch today. He dug up all the flowers, and I tried weeding; as it hadn't been done in at least two months, it wasn't easy. Then he disappeared for a while, so I took the shovel he'd been using and started ( Read more... )

With our nearly winter-like weather, it's no surprise our garden is virtually no more. On Sunday, dad started taking down the fencing and supports in the edible part of the yard; he also pulled all the romaine, since it had gone to seed and ceased being edible, or so he'd read somewhere. I didn't see what he ended up doing around the corner of ( Read more... )

Note: This entry was postdated.One of the fruits my father was most excited to grow this year was watermelon. He loves melon, and he really looked forward to having a bunch of melons in our garden patch. He grew them from seed, transferring a number of seedlings to the ground, where most of them promptly died. The rest struggled. When they'd ( Read more... )

Wednesday morning, I head downstairs for something around 6:30. As I pass the window, something catches my eye. What's in the flowers? Is that a moth? No--it was a tiny hummingbird, flitting about all the vinca blossoms, going to each flower on a plant before moving on to the next one. Fascinating. It was there for quite a while, to the point ( Read more... )

Dad and I got to spend a little time outside on our gardens this weekend--not as much as we'd hoped, but a decent amount nonetheless. You can now see the flowers instead of the weeds in the front, and in the back his fruits and vegetables are really coming along. The lettuce is pretty happy, and he thinks the birds may have scattered the seeds ( Read more... )