I'm feeling faintly proud of myself in that I've actually got some of the tomatoes and basil in the garden already. It's a bit early to have planted the tomatoes, but I knew if I didn’t get it done last weekend, it wouldn't get done until after collegium which is a little too late. I put in a Early Girl and a Brandywine, and promised myself I'll ( Read more... )

They are really more gelatinous blobs.
I've got slime mold. Last night I went out to collect snails (got a half a quart size ziplock, a few of them were very big) and found several colorless blobs. Yuck. I scooped them up and put them in the bag with the snails. Does anybody know how to prevent them from coming back? 

I've never watched the presidential inauguration before, I'm not sure why. I watched President Obama* take the oath of office this morning, mostly because it was on the TV screens at work. I set the Tivo to record the festivities, and maybe I'll watch it tonight, or at least let it run while I fuss about the house this evening.

Watching was a rather ( Read more... )

I had a nice weekend. Friday night I made two batches of brownies, and a batch of the dates-stuffed-with-marcona-almonds-and wrapped-in-prosciutto ("crack" for short, it's ( Read more... )

Somebody, but lord help me if I can remember who, asked me about blackberry removal. learnteach's recent post reminded me. Normally I'd say trim the vines back as far as you can and dig out the rootballs. However, if you are looking for the nuke-it-from-orbit option, you need to get a bottle of Ortho BrushBeGone. It's really nasty shit, so follow ( Read more... )

This morning's bag was 14 snails, a bunch of little slugs and two monstrous slugs. They weren't the bright yellow of banana slugs, so I either have leaf-colored mutant banana slugs or they just weren't ripe yet. I hate big slugs. The little ones I can just sacrifice a leaf from the plant they are on, but the big ones were on the ground where I had ( Read more... )

I like nearly all of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings of flowers, but the ones I like the best all have irises in them, like Irises at the Getty in LA and Vase with Irises against a Yellow Background in the Rijksmuseum. Thanks to Elisabeth René de Champagne the space under the roses will soon be full of Irises!

I swear, my tomato plants grew 6 inches over the weekend. I was looking at them last Thursday, thinking if they were just a bit taller, I could force them up to the next wire on the tomato cage, and on Sunday the little buggers were past the expected wire. All leaves and hardly any fruit, I guess I should start trimming them back. Smoke in the air ( Read more... )

Now that the herb garden is (mostly) planted, it's time to look at the flower garden. 
In the shady garden, the Foxglove went feral, and now I've got five small foxgloves, they are quite pretty. I've been hoping for several years it would reproduce, I'm not sure what inspired it this year. On the other hand, they are now blocking any sunlight from ( Read more... )

Last night I added some fertilizers and soil amendments to the herb garden and turned most of the soil over. I've got two tomatoes, an Ace and an Early Girl, in the ground. I moved the two non-tasty sage plants (white sage and another type I can't remember right now) to the planter between the hottub and DogLady's fence so if I send GM to the ( Read more... )