Work, New Cat, Temple Pictures, Garden, and Moving.

Work

I've been busy with work lately, which is a good thing.  A man in northern Utah asked me to manage his house for him.  He's moving out of the country.  Then, another man who has eight apartments and lives out-of-state asked me to manage for him too.  So, this month I've spent a lot of time showing vacancies lately, and also responding to maintenance issues at the apartments.  I've actually been busy enough that I haven't been doing any more marketing, although I plan to pick up with that again soon.

Jeff is back to work, too.  He has been for a little while now.  He did get multiple job offers again, but one of the jobs offered higher pay and really good benefits, so he accepted that one.  It's with a company that most people have heard of.  Jeff doesn't really like the job very much, because it's taking a long time for him to actually get started doing programming, and he is bored.  That should improve over time, though.  He keeps finding out about new benefits--we already knew our health care would pretty much be free, but on the first day of work he found out they were going to give him an iPhone--and pay for his service.  (Cool!  Although Jeff is kind of disappointed because he really likes his Droid.)  Then, Jeff offered to work later hours so that he can work some hours with the Australians that are on his team...so the company gave him a credit card and said they will pay for his dinner every day.  Nice!

New Cat

I brought home a new cat.  I was showing the home that I'm managing to some prospective renters and I asked if they had any pets.  (The owner allows up to two, with pet rent.)  They said no--well, they do--they have cats--but they're getting rid of them.  "Oh," I said,  "Are they good at catching mice?"  I explained that we've looked for a mouser before, but people always list cats online saying they would be good at catching mice, or saying they would grow up to be good at catching mice, but I want a cat that already catches mice. 

They said, "Actually, they are!"

So we talked some more about it, and after I showed them the rental home, they invited me back to their house.  I met two of their cats, and decided to take the one who had more of a history of catching mice.  Her name is Kitty, she is 17 years old, and she has long fur that started getting ratty a few months ago.  She is sometimes really friendly and sometimes really aggressive.  Perfect.

So I brought her home, and let her out in the barn, and then I didn't see her again.

Jeff thought I was joking when I told him I'd brought a cat home, but it didn't really matter because she isn't really our pet, she's just [supposed to be] living in the barn and we're feeding her.  We'd talked about getting a barn cat before, so it wasn't completely out of the blue. 

And then, after a few days of Kitty being missing, I was out doing some work in the barn and I heard a meow that wasn't Paley.  I walked around the corner, and (!) there she was!  So I showed Jeff our new cat.  And I fed her.  Paley does not like Kitty.  Kitty is disinterested in Paley.

Temple Pictures

This week my Relief Society (ladies church group) did a "Wonderful Wednesday" activity.  The main project was making temple pictures.  The pictures are beautiful (and popular up here in Utah) but if you just go buy one they usually cost about $200, so although I've wanted one for a while, I haven't bought one.  For the activity they charged us $53, though, and that was totally worth it.

I invited my sister Jessica, and we each did pictures of the temples where we were married.  (Jess did Salt Lake and I did Jordan River.)  It was pretty easy.  Basically, what you do is mount a print onto a board.  Let it dry.  Texture the print.  Let it dry.  Paint your frame.  Let it dry.  Add screws and little metal things to the back of the frame.  Insert the mounted, textured print.  Tighten the screws.  Wait a day and add the bracket thing that lets you hang it.  Then hang it.

Garden

My garden didn't go quite how I planned, mainly because I was unable to get a fence up to protect my garden from goats.  So I never planted my garden.  But, after I abandoned so many healthy plants at my in-laws' house, my father-in-law planted anything that seemed like it might survive.  This resulted in a lot of produce, actually.  We've been picking and eating purple tomatoes when we go over to my in-laws' on game days.  And, I've had a couple of the Rich Sweetness 132 melons.  They're small, but they're pretty delicious.  A couple days ago, my father-in-law tore out all of my garden and harvested what he could.  Frost is coming soon, anyway, and I think he is planning to plant some trees where my garden was growing.  It was nice of him to let my stuff grow at their house.  

Moving

We're only sort of moving.  We've been living in the back portion of our house, and we've had the front part rented out.  The guys living in the front have been there for over two years, but now they're moving.  So we're going to move up to the front!  I think it will probably need new carpet, and a little bit of work done...but we plan to move in the beginning part of November.  I am SO excited to have a kitchen(!) and a bath tub(!) and a bigger office area(!) and a fireplace(!).  Jeff is worried that moving will be a lot of work, and getting organized will take a long time.  It kind of will, but I don't think it will be too bad, because we won't have to pack, or load things up in a truck, or anything like that.  We'll just take things and put them in their new places.  Easiest Move Ever.  Did I mention I'm excited to have a real kitchen?  Because I am.  We finally got an oven back here a few weeks ago, though, and that's already been excellent. 

We're busy and we're happy and these are the things that are going on.

Happenings!

Real Estate:

I graduated from the Real Estate Academy I've been attending. I took (and passed!) the licensing exams. I interviewed at a couple different offices (and talked with a few others), and I found a broker to work with. I will be working for Community Property Management, which works with Community Real Estate. The broker's name is David Anderegg, and he's had his office for about a year. He's just started the property management brokerage, but he has a bunch of experience managing properties, so I think he will be great to work with. I submitted the application to actually get my license, and the Division of Real Estate is processing it, and they said I should receive my license in 5-7 business days, which should be sometime next week.



Farm:

The cow is still pretty little.

We're down to one turkey. The one that's left is doing really well. It's out with our chickens.

We still don't know whether the goats are pregnant or not. They'd better be.




Garden:

It's growing. I transplanted it into bigger pots, and it is still in J's parents' greenhouse, where it is doing really well.





Family:

My dad is visiting! He is in town for two weeks, and he's helping us with a bunch of things. He and I built a big shelf for our garage, and we organized the garage. He's been painting an apartment for us. He is also painting our barn. (So far he's put new plywood up to cover the old, really worn out plywood.) We're enjoying his visit. I think he is too. He plays with Chalcy a lot, and she gives him lots of kisses.

Heirloom Seeds!

I am interested in trying to grow heirloom plants and preserving seeds.

Last year I ordered a Baker Creek catalog and looked through it, but I didn't end up actually ordering anything, because it was too late in the season and also I knew things were going to be way too busy.

This year when the Baker Creek catalog came, I decided I would go for it! I read through all of the descriptions and picked out some plants that sound fun to me. I ordered them, and then I talked about them with J to try and get him on board for a big garden next year. He was not as excited about it as I am, but he decided he would garden with me and it can be something we enjoy together. Good!

Christmas came early for me this year--on Christmas Eve, my seed order arrived!

Here are the things that I ordered:

Melons
1. Early Hanover - small, sweet green melons that were famous at the turn of the 20th century!
2. Ginger's Pride - The largest melon they carry, which averages 14-22 lbs. per melon! "The flesh is very sweet, melting, and of excellent quality."
3. Petit Gris de Rennes - Small, orange melons with a grey-green rind. French melon, rare in USA.
4. Rich Sweetness 132 - From the former Soviet Union. Red, striped with golden yellow. Tiny melons.
5. White Sugar Lump Watermelon - Rare, with creamy white flesh. Light, sweet taste.

Berries
6. Hardy Kiwi - Little kiwi without fuzz! Eaten like grapes. Grow on vines.
7. Yellow Wonder Wild Strawberry - Creamy yellow strawberries that are supposed to be very tasty and also easy to grow.
8. Narangilla - Fruit from the Andes. Sweet-and-sour, orange flavor fruit. Good for juice.

Tomatoes
9. Brave General - Big, beautiful Russian tomatoes from Kazakhstan. Rich, sweet taste.
10. Violet Jasper - "Tzi Bi U." Asian tomatoes that are violet purple with iridescent green streaks. Dark purple-red flesh. Very high yield.
11. Hawaiian Pineapple - "1 lb fruit with yellow-and-red mottled flesh." Sweet, fruity, pineapple-like in taste.
12. White Queen - White tomatoes! sweet, citrus taste. Part of American history.

Vegetables
13. Corn Rainbow Inca Sweet - Multicolored corn, good fresh, or good for grinding into flour.
14. Squash Zucchino Rampicante - Italian vining zucchini, which is used in Italy to stuff gnocchi and ravioli. (I remember it!)
15. Lettuce Little Gem - very small, green romaine type. Heat tolerant variety.
16. Carrot Jaune Obtuse du Doubs - A lemon-yellow carrot that comes from France. Originally used for livestock, but popular now because of its sweet taste.
17. Artichoke Purple of Romagna - Large, round purple chokes.
18. Cauliflower Purple of Sicily - Purple cauliflower. Sweet. Cook to bright green. Easier to grow than white varieties.
19. Asparagus Mary Washington - Popular, long green spears.
20. Cucumber Sikkim - Fat, large fruit. Good cooked or raw. Rusty red color.
21. Carrot Parisienne - Small, round carrots. Popular in France. (These ones were my free gift; every order comes with a free pack of seeds!)

Herbs
22. Hyssop Blue - Attracts bees and butterflies. Antiviral plant used to treat flus, etc.

Anyway, that's everything. My father-in-law has already started looking at our backyard to think about where my garden will go. I don't actually know what can be grown in this climate, or how to grow any of it, so it will mostly be a big experiment. I'm looking forward to it.

Little Farm Update

Garden Update

Attempt #1: I think I may have mentioned--my garden died. All of it. (Well. All of it except the basil and chives, which were in a separate thing.) Even after it was totally thriving in my post about how I'd started a garden. I don't know what happened to it, but I think it may have to do with the greenhouse lid for my inside starter thing. I think that my plants get a lot of sun as it is, and with the greenhouse lid on, my plants were being steamed and that's why they died.

Attempt #2: But I hadn't really figured that out, so I just replanted the whole thing and the same thing happened: a bunch of stuff grew, and then almost everything died. At this point, I guessed that it may be the greenhouse lid and I removed that. A few plants survived. From my second planting, I have: one bean plant, one cantaloupe plant, five onions, two peppers, and either a broccoli or cauliflower plant (I forget). Also, for extra fun: I thought a whole bunch of stuff was growing, because a ton of these teeny tiny sprouts came up. But it was kind of weird because all of the sprouts looked the same, and

they never got any bigger. Soooo...I think something in the soil sprouted, which wasn't something I planted.

Attempt #3: I got some of those little planter things that you just add water to, like I did last year. In a couple plastic containers I planted just a few of each of the things I was excited about/still had seeds for. I planted: arugula, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, celery, a few carrots, and lettuce. I put no special greenhouse lid on them, and just set them in the window with everything else. And! They're growing!!! Third time's the charm! These plants are also kind of a surprise, though, because Paley

knocked the bigger container over and all of the little plants fell out, so now I don't know which ones are which anymore. It's kind of like those grab bags at Claire's. Who knows what I'll get?! They're doing well though, whatever they are.

Attempt #4: About the same time that my second garden died this season, J suggested that we plant a garden at his house. He has a bunch of containers because he's done container gardens before. He's actually even grown stuff indoors with grow lights. He's actually kind of a much better gardener than I am, I think. Probably, since all I got from my square foot garden last year was like 2 strawberries and one tomato in October. (This was actually mostly because our balcony got like, no light. And because I didn't use a starter tomato plant.)

SO! We bought little plants. We got 6 strawberry plants, 2 tomato plants (J is learning , an artichoke plant (!!), and two blueberry plants, plus seeds to grow spinach (two varieties), and carrots. And we've planted them. They're doing great! The strawberries don't really like that we separated them, but they'll get over it.

Also, yesterday I bought a fancy green pot to transplant my kitchen herbs into, because get this--they've grown so well that they don't have much soil left! I will also re-re-plant the kitchen herbs that didn't re-grow when I re-planted them. Plus, fun discovery: the girl before me planted stuff in our front yard and a bunch of strawberries(!!) have come back along with some lemon herb and...sage? or something. Her tomatoes did not come back. Too bad.

So that's what's growing at our houses.

Chicks Update

For a while, every morning when J and I would text, I would ask him if the chicks were still alive. I remember us getting chicks when I was little, a couple times. And I think all of them always died. None of them ever really grew up. I think this was because we were little kids and we loved them too much. I'm sure we dropped some, and held them too tight, and were so excited to hold them that we didn't always remember to wash our already-clean hands. Also, they were in the garage, I think, which was probably cold. J and I don't drop them, or squish them, and we wash our already-clean hands before we pick them up. So they haven't died. Also, baby-chick food is medicated, so that probably helps with all of the baby-chick diseases.

The chicks are about a week old now. They're really strong and healthy, so we think they'll probably all make it, because the first week is probably the roughest for them. (Wahoo! Only five more months until they're big enough to start laying!)

They're still mostly fluff, but their wings have feathers now. Sometimes they try to get a little air, but they don't really fly much.

They eat a ton! We at first had a mason jar lid in there for their food, but they were eating [spilling] so much that J put a shallow tupperware thing in there instead. That seems to last them a bit longer.

They're starting to develop tiny personalities. Evelyn CHIRPS and CHIRPS and CHIRPS VERY LOUDLY! when we pick her up. Gertrude is the sweetest of our little ladies. She likes to be held. She is also really cute these days because she has a poofy, fluffy head. Maude and Gladys tolerate being held, but act like they have more important things to be doing. Silly birds.

I took them outside for the first time yesterday. They loved it. At first they weren't really too sure what to think of the grass and they stayed close to me, in the shade. Then they started to explore a bit and pecked at the grass and the ground. The flock stays together. It's pretty cute.

We think that we want to make a [very!] simple coop from a doghouse, which, if we found the right one, could work really well. And then after J moves to a house with more space, it would be nice to build/adapt something much bigger so that we can have 10-12 hens instead (and plenty of eggs to share with neighbors and friends).

Cat update:

Paley is doing fine. She likes to sit on the top of my ladder to get a great view of everything going on in the house and out the window. She likes attention! Whenever I'm home, Pay thinks I'm here to entertain her. When J comes over, she likes to cuddle with us. She's a sweet cat. (ALSO: She is almost a cat. In July, supposedly, she will be a year old, which is when kittens magically become cats.)

We play fetch. Paley brings me one of her toy mice, and drops it by my feet. I throw the mouse across my apartment. She runs for it, snatches it up, brings it back to me and drops it by my feet. We repeat this several times, until I decide I want to do something else.

Other, unrelated updates:

This weekend we are hiking across the Grand Canyon, rim-to-rim, in one day. It will be fun for me to see my family, and it will be fun for J to meet my family. (We see his family pretty regularly since they mostly live up here, but he's only met Jess from my family.) Our hike will be 24 miles, and I kind of want to die already, just thinking about it. I remember hiking Timp last year and hating my life. There should be fun parts, too, though. We have some geocaches we'll be finding in the Grand Canyon. And after we're finished, we will have Done it. I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures and interesting stories to blog about when I can't move on Monday.

Also, my grades posted and I got an A- in Children's Lit, an A- in Modernism, an A in my Darwin literature class, and a B- in my Diversity in American Lit class (which, I totally deserved a B at the lowest, but whatever). That means I made the Dean's list for this past semester. Cool. I'm looking forward to my Fall schedule, except now I'll probably drop the class by my Diversity teacher.

Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point

I've been hearing a lot of radio commercials for the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point lately, so on Saturday we went. Saturday was actually supposed to be extra-special, because it was going to be Dutch Day. I was excited about that, because there was to be a costume contest, traditional music, and other stuff going on.

Jess and Mitch came with us. We went in the afternoon, and by the time we got there, not much was happening for Dutch Day. I saw one lady dressed up. Jess said they saw a couple others, when we arrived. [We did get to hear a little bit of traditional music (although we'd had our fun by then, so we didn't stay long), and we passed up the opportunity to paint little wooden shoes for $3. ]

However! Thanksgiving Point arranged for it to be cold and rainy, just like it probably is in the Netherlands, and that was pretty impressive. We rented a golf cart, which made our visit quite pleasant, partially because it kept us dry, because we got to see everything within the amount of time we felt like being there, and also because it was super fun to drive.

The gardens were lovely. The signs and commercials and everything said they had over 250,000 tulips. Apparently, they order the tulips directly, from Holland. A sign in the bathroom said that if you like what you see, you can place an order with them by 30 May, and on 1 June, when they order for next year, they will add your order to theirs so that you can grow lovely tulips directly from Holland.

We wondered what they do with all of the tulips, and apparently they have to take them all out every year. Otherwise, they wouldn't know what would pop up where next year. So they remove them and sell them.

Anyway, it was all very pretty. The festival goes on until 2 May. It's $10/adults, $6/kids, $9/seniors, and I think golf carts are $25, and worth every penny if it's rainy or if you don't feel like walking, or if you like speeding (THERE ARE NO SPEED LIMITS!!! WOOOO!!!), and especially if you have four people.

Garden 2.0.09

Even though a week ago it was still snowing here, when I went grocery shopping at Smithy's last Saturday they totally indulged my desire to pretend it's spring by having a Start Your Garden Indoors! display.

They had seeds for everything, and those little peat moss things (or fake peat moss since using real peat moss is Bad for the environment) that expand so that you can start seeds indoors. In all sizes! I could start a few seeds, or a lot of seeds, or a ton of seeds. Of anything.

And even though I do know it's not really spring yet, I totally bit. I bought it ALL! Well. A lot of it, anyway. I won't need more seeds for a long, long time.

I knew I wanted to start growing fresh herbs for my kitchen (I think this was even on my 101 list), so I got the Kitchen Herbs kit, which came with six little pots and seeds for Basil (mmmm), Chives, and Parsley.

And then I chose the seed growing kit that had 72 cells (instead of one with 50 something or 30 something.) And I chose seeds. I'm growing: cilantro (which is also coriander. Who knew?), rosemary, mint, oregano, thyme, onions, cauliflower, broccoli, cantaloupe, arugula, celery, peppers, and mixed lettuces.

Here are some of the lessons that I learned from my garden last year:

- Buy little plants instead of using seeds, especially for tomatoes and strawberries. Otherwise, it takes all season for them to grow to be big enough to give fruit and then there isn't enough time for them to grow things before fall.

- Don't plant anything outside until after it's done snowing.

- The little pods that are not just dirt (so that you can plant them in the tiny pot they grow in) are cool, but they make me feel concern for the roots that aren't strong enough to break through.

- Even though seeds are tiny, you don't have to plant a whole lot for them to grow.*

- Thinning a garden is not fun, because you have to take little plants (!) that worked so hard to grow from being teeny tiny seeds (!) that are totally viable (!) and just throw them away (!)

- Science has a lot figured out, but God has even more figured out.

- Plants need sufficient light to grow. If the package says it needs direct sunlight, partial sunlight for a few hours isn't going to cut it.**

Anyhow, I got the stuff, and I planted it. I planted the little kitchen garden first, and then I planted the other stuff. I came up with a plan so that things would stay organized:

I used my label machine to make little labels for some of the things on the sides so that I would remember what was where on the actual thing.

And then I put it up on the plant shelf in my kitchen window and left it.

AND THEY GREW!

I planted this stuff one week ago, and here are pictures from today:

I still need to figure out who had the garden in front of our house last year. We have a triangular space about 1o' x 15?' that someone used for gardening last summer. If it was the girl who used to live where I am now*** then it's my garden now. If not, I may have to fight someone for it, I mean share nicely. In either case, I plan to get a bunch of pots for outside since Krista's garden thrived last year, and hers was in pots, and mine didn't and wasn't.

* But that didn't keep me from planting several lettuce seeds in each cell. Because they're just so tiny. Annnnd, now they're all growing. Of course.

** Hooray! I have great sunlight at this house.

*** Likely, since she had a ton of plants in this apartment--hanging, on shelves, in pots outside.

Garden Post #6

Now that we've had a few days of sunshine, my garden is finally growing. Sort of. I'm having three problems with it, though.

1. So far, the harvest has been about as exciting as waiting in a long line. I've had about six little strawberries. They were each amazing. They tasted completely different from store-bought strawberries. But, I have had no fresh vegetables at all.

2. I keep wanting to pull the carrots out, check to see if they look like carrots yet, and replant them. I think this may not be ideal for them, so I haven't done it. Yet.

3. Since everything is taking so long to grow, I keep having to think hard to remember what was planted where. Except for the strawberry plants. Everything else just looks like little green sprouts. Lame.

I just realized, I haven't seen Uffish's garden at all. She just kept planting more and more stuff, and she doesn't have a balcony that only gets sun for a little part of the day, so maybe hers is growing better. Uffish? How's your garden doing?

With Silver Bells and Cockle Shells and Pretty Maids All in a Row

You're probably all guessing that by now my garden has flourished. I probably had to figure out what to do with everything being crammed into tiny squares. Since I've got to be close to my 55 days to harvest or whatever, I should be eating fresh vegetables pretty soon. Right?

NO!

Unfortunately, my garden has not grown since I transplanted it, back whatever day that was. Fortunately, however, it hasn't died. It's just stayed the same. The beans have grown a little bit. Some strawberries have grown. (Stupid snow in April!)

I had abandoned the many carrot sprouts that were no way going to fit, and a couple sprouter things that hadn't grown, and was waiting to carry the indoor-greenhouse to the trash with everything else. A few days later, everything was dead except for a little tomato sprout that had grown and reached out in search of light. It really obviously wanted to live, so I moved it outside with everything else, though it isn't planted.

I also wanted to post today about a couple movies that were part of the reason I started a garden this year. Entirely coincidentally, after I saw the blog post about square foot gardening (but before I planted mine), I had two gardening movies come through Netflix.

It turns out, there aren't a lot of gardening movies out there. Today I Googled gardening movies, and basically a lot of people talk about the scenery in movies about other things (like, for example, Sense and Sensibility). But a few movies do come up on any list of gardening movies. Included are BOTH of the two that Netflix had randomly suggested because of other movies that I'd liked before. They were both clever, funny movies.

The first movie that I saw was Greenfingers. It's based on a true story. It's about some prisoners who get all into gardening, and go on to compete at England's huge garden show. It also has a kind of funny romance in it. I loved this movie. (It kind of reminded me of the Shawshank Redemption, although I don't think it's quite as clever. Still, the prisoners and the library/gardening projects struck some kind of a chord for me.)

The other movie came next after Greenfingers, and it was Saving Grace. The premise for that one is, it's this old lady whose husband dies. She finds out that he's left her deep in debt from his little get-rich schemes that didn't work. It's so bad that she's about to lose the house that they've like, spent their whole lives in. She's all into gardening, though, and her gardener gets her started growing marijuana. This one's kind of about that, and the way her town gets all into it. I worried that this one would be stupid, because marijuana makes people say and do stupid things. It actually wasn't a stupid movie, though. The plot flowed well. It ended differently than I expected. It's not one that I would buy, but I did really enjoy it. It was very funny. And it won the Audience award at Sundance.

Both came out in 2000. Netflix recommended them to me because I liked: Waking Ned Devine, Chocolat, Dear Frankie, Children of Heaven, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Amelie. So if you liked those movies, you'll probably like these, and if you hated those movies, then you probably won't like Greenfingers or Saving Grace too much.

ALSO, please note that you may want to use ClearPlay or find edited copies; they take place in the UK and one of them involves prisoners, soooo... there aren't blood and guts, or intense adult scenes or something, but there is a fair amount of bad language.

They're great movies, though. Non-stuffy gardening movies.

Well, that's basically it.

Except, when I Googled "mary mary quite" to be sure that I had my title spelled correctly, I found out a lot about that nursery rhyme. It's actually kind of gross, and interesting. Wikipedia has a page about it. I can't believe everyone teaches their kids this stuff.

And finally, this is my 100th post.

I just planted my garden!

I've heard it's supposed to snow next week, and hopefully, hopefully it doesn't. My plants were getting too big, and today I transplanted them into my square foot garden!

I used 2 bags of vermiculite, and 5 bags of Miracle Gro Organic Vegetable Soil. I wanted to use peat moss also, but they only had one kind at Lowe's, and I didn't like how it looked. Anyway, I layered them into my garden, and mixed them. The layers made me feel like I was making a giant, inedible cake.

And then, after I had all the soil where it belonged, and it was good and moist, I needed to actually plant stuff. Fun!

So I planted everything. I decided how many to plant in each square based on how big I thought they would get, and also based on how many had actually sprouted indoors. I used the peat-moss-like stuff from the ones that didn't grow to cushion the planting area so that my little sprouts could grow from super-soft baby-plant dirt into pretty-soft normal-plant dirt with a little bit of a transition.

For the beans and melons, where a couple grew in the same little spot, I picked the stronger sprout and pulled out the smaller one. And I was sorry to do it, but I knew that I had to.

The only problem I ran into was, my seeds did better than I expected them to. The carrot seeds were tiny, so I poured a little pile of seeds into each of the indoor grower things, and actually I didn't need to. They grew like grass! So I opened the little grower things, and pulled out ones that looked like they had long roots and were growing well. And I set the other ones aside. I felt kind of bad.



They did what they were supposed to (grow!), and that just wasn't enough for me. So even though they were alive, I had to just throw them away. But they looked kind of grassy since there were so many, so I felt bad, but not awful.

And then I got to the tomatoes. I decided to plant four tomato sprouts in the tomato square, and that was fine, except that when I was down to one little tomato hole I had two little sprouts to choose from. And there wasn't one that had grown a whole lot and one that was little. And there wasn't one that had longer roots. They were the same. And I had to sit there and decide which little guy would live and which one would die. It was terrible! I've been so excited about my little garden. I've watched everything sprout, and felt encouraging thoughts for the ones that had almost pushed through the soil. I just got kind of attached to my garden. And it sounds kind of silly but actually isn't, because they're all alive. It's hard to abandon something that's alive, because I grew it from a teeny tiny seed. I got kind of emotional about it. (My roommate and I decided which one to save, and when I was on the verge of tears we decided that I would suck at having an abortion, if I feel so compassionate about tiny sprouts.)

So I won't say that I planted a tiny tomato plant in front of my apartment complex, but I won't say that I didn't, either. If it grows, that will be cool, because tomatoes! in front of our apartment! and if it dies, then at least I wasn't the one to kill it.

Anyway, that's the story of me planting my garden. Here's something I'm really starting to wonder: How in the world am I supposed to keep everything in its own squares?

Digging!

"Digging" really is the perfect subject for this post, because I have two stories related to digging, and that's about the only thing they have in common.

The first thing is a story from a book that I'm reading.

"One summer, she helped me create a fantasy world in a large cardboard box. We used mirrors for lakes and twigs for trees, and I made up fairy-tale stories for my dolls to act out. Another summer, she encouraged my younger brother Tony to pursue his dream of digging a hole all the way to China. She started reading to him about China and every day he spent time digging his hole right next to our house. Occasionally, he found a chopstick or fortune cookie my mother had hidden there." (pg. 10, Living History, Hillary Rodham Clinton, 2003.)

How awesome is that?! I love that her mom hid fortune cookies and chopsticks for her brother. I bet the kid was totally delighted and felt like he was actually getting closer. I bet he was super excited about it. That's terrific. Every time I share that part with someone, it makes me laugh.

My other story about digging isn't really a story at all. It's just news: MY PLANTS HAVE SPROUTED! I am so happy! Today I noticed a bean sprout, a zucchini sprout, and two carrot sprouts. Also, my strawberry plants grew another berry that looks ready-ish and a few green ones.

The carrots kind of surprise me, because they come from seeds that are so so tiny. How can whole big green sprouts come from something so little? (Someday when I get married and have kids, I'll probably be fascinated with that too. It's just like life comes from nothing.) A carrot sprout is kind of a miracle, and it's amazing that all of the blades of grass, and trees, even just leaves on trees...all of that stuff, it's really incredible. Because scientists can grow seeds, and manipulate stuff sometimes, but I sure doubt they could pick the perfectly right molecules and assemble DNA and pack that stuff all together into a scientifically made seed. Every time they do something, they start with something that God has already made a miracle for.

Anyhow, there are miracles all around us. It's just a matter of watching for them. (This all reminds me of that scripture that says that everything bears witness of God.)

Here are some pictures of my lovely garden.


The End.

Planting Seeds!

Yesterday I started planting my garden! I had purchased seeds on Friday, and planned to plant them on Monday. Monday came, and I trekked to Smith’s to start buying soil. Unfortunately, I encountered two problems. First, I had to walk through January to get to the store, and second, Smith’s only had one kind of soil, and it said multipurpose, but the picture was only of flowers.

Since I had to walk through a snow storm, I wondered if planting seeds and baby plants outside was such a good idea. I decided that starting the seeds indoors would be an acceptable solution, because the seed packets described the process in the instructions. (Also, I’m already afraid that I’ll kill the plants by giving them too much or not enough water, or too much or not enough sunlight, or too much or not enough fertilizer, or the wrong kind of fertilizer. Or by planting the seeds too deep. Adding snow to the equation didn’t seem like a good idea.)

And then, the soil that Smith’s has doesn’t say “vegetables” on it. And the picture is just of flowers. So I started talking with the florist lady who works there. “Ummmmm, look, I’m starting a garden,” I told her. “Will this stuff work?” I pointed to the soil. “Because it doesn’t say vegetables on it, but it does say multi-purpose. But the pictures are all of flowers. And I don’t want to eat chemicals.”

She looked at the package. “You’re trying to grow them organically? Well, this has Miracle Grow, so it probably has chemicals….but it does say multi-purpose….I think it would be fine. I use it for my herb garden.”

“Hm. Okay,” I said.

“And if you’re transplanting them anyway, you should be fine.”

“About that. Do you just use little plastic cups or Tupperware? Or what do you grow them in if you start them inside?”

“You can. Actually! There are these things that you can get, they’re pellets, and you can grow them indoors and the roots just go through, so then you just take the little things and plant them directly when you’re ready…Do you know where IFA is?”

“No…wait, so what are they…?”

And the lady told me all about these little things for starting seeds indoors. As soon as I heard about them I knew I had to have them. She told me where the store was.

Yesterday I went. I got an indoor greenhouse for starting 50 seeds. AND! I bought strawberry plants. I love strawberries! I really liked the store a lot. I actually just like country stores in general. Every time I visit a country store or ranch store, I wish I had a ranch. I want to take chicks home, and have a big garden, and horses, and wear a cowboy hat and boots.

But anyhow, I got home with my loot and planted the seeds. The way that the pellets worked is, they came in a tray. They started out hard, and looked like chocolate cookies. Then I added warm water, and they became little pots of soil wrapped in…well…something roots can go through.

I poked seeds into them. I planted cantaloupe, zucchini, tomatoes, green beans, and carrots. Hm. Fun. The seeds for the carrots and tomatoes were especially tiny, which will make them even more impressive plants.

And now I have to wait for them to grow. The package says they’re guaranteed to grow. I am less confident than that, but I hope it‘s true.

I just know this project is going to teach me loads of patience. My roommates and I went out to dinner last night, and when we came home, I wanted them to have sprouted already. They hadn’t.

Oh, and: here is a link to the blog post on FrugalDad that Erin shared to begin with. I wanted to post it yesterday, but my computer was not cooperating.

And, here is a link to Uffish’s post yesterday about gardening. I’m kind of excited about her and I both doing gardens this year. We can probably like…trade fresh vegetables or something.

In Which I Start a Garden

I have a new project!
(When don't I have a new project?)

A little before my trip, Erin shared a blog post about square foot gardening on Google Reader. Basically, the idea is: only use the amount of space that it actually takes to garden, use really rich soil, and you can grow a garden! So it's perfect for people who don't have time to weed/ have bad soil/ only have a balcony, etc; people can grow a garden even in 1ft square pieces.

This appealed to me for a few reasons:
1. I've been trying to eat more fresh/healthy food lately.
2. Organic stuff is appealing to me.
3. The price is right. (You start with seeds, which are basically wooden pebbles, and wind up with fresh vegetables!)
4. I had a plant on my mission since I couldn't have a pet. It was kind of cool to see it grow towards light and stuff. And get bigger. So I guess I like watching plants grow.

So I decided that I would build a garden!

On Friday I went to the man mall to get supplies. It was tricky. I learned how to tell the difference between treated and untreated wood. A nice thing about Home Depot is, though, the people who work there are suuuuuper helpful. A guy saw me looking at lumber and asked if I needed help. "YES!" I was like, "Okay...I need to get these things, and I don't know what they are..." He helped me go through my whole list. And he even helped me pick a good drill. (I was like "Look: I'm sure someday I'll get married and he'll have tools, and how often will I even use this anyway, so it doesn't need to be some $500 drill...but I don't want it to break in the middle of the project either." He understood.)

And THEN, another Home Depot guy carried huge heavy long boards for me, and cut them into the sizes I wanted. He even used the huge saw to cut me six little blocks to be feet underneath my garden. Nice.

The only problem was, I was supposed to get side boards that were 6" tall. And I thought, wait a minute, it's square FOOT gardening. So I wanted sides that were twice as tall. And I got them, but they were daaaang heavy. But fine, whatever. So I thought I would carry them and take the bus back home...except that I couldn't walk with the stuff at all. I had way too much heavy wood.

I ended up taking the bus and taking things in trips. It took me three trips to load everything onto and off of the bus. But it worked. And I wanted to build it the same day, because I was excited.

So I got everything ready...and realized that even though the display drill said it came with a 20 piece accessory kit (including drill bits), mine actually wasn't quite the same because it came with nothing of the sort, and didn't even mention an accessory kit on the package. I went and bought drill bits from a nearby store. And I bought vegetable garden seeds.

BUT! Nowhere had the right kind of soil!

And then Saturday, in between Conference sessions I constructed my garden. I was so proud of myself. Aside from having no dirt, it looks fantastic!

It is also very heavy, so I don't know how I'll move it in August. But whatever. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

NEXT POST: Planting seeds!

[NOTE: I'm not sure how I wound up with all of my pictures sideways. They started out right-side-up. I'll try and fix them tomorrow. EDIT: pictures corrected.]