Playing in the Dirt!

   I am so glad we had a good couple of days this weekend, because A: my apartment needed a good airing, and B: my back steps were looking really shoddy. Two beautiful almost-70 degree days went a long way toward resolving both issues.
   Windows were pushed open, screens were popped in, and we left the back door open, much to the delight of the cats, intrepid explorers they. Watching my husband try to her a honeybee out of the kitchen while explaining to it why it didn't want to be in the house was definitely worth it. Liam and I planted strawberries and herbs in outdoor pots and I started my seed flat in the kitchen. This year's container garden attempt includes sweet peppers, a variety of hot peppers, five kinds of tomato, beans, cucumbers, mini squash, radishes, lettuce, and nasturtiums, plus a couple odd balls like cucamelons and jelly melons, because why not? These last two didn't sprout at all last year, but I also just direct-planted them outside. I think squirrels ate them. For good measure, I also picked up a mushroom growing kit.



I also picked up an ivy plant and a globe basil, but those are for my office window....

Hopefully I'll see some kind of yield from this year's back step garden. Last year I was too busy with school and didn't pay enough attention to the plants, so nothing really came of it. I read through my small collection of gardening books this weekend, taking notes of what I need to do to keep my plant babies in tip-top shape and not kill the poor things. Keeping my fingers crossed that I will be a good plant Momma this year.

Before leaving for work this morning I peeked in at my babies. The lettuce, arugula, and radishes have begun to sprout, and some of the tomatoes look like they'll be open by the time I get home this evening. Happy is the child that plays in the dirt!






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ellie@Home 2020 Summer Reading List

   Good Evening and Happy Memorial Day! This post is far later than I planned thanks to technical difficulties (sob, sob) but here it is, better late than never! The earlier version of this post was wry, witty, and weird, and I don’t recall any of it now on my THIRD attempt. So without further ado (or headaches) I’m going to dive in. I have 34 books for this summer’s list. Because I can’t order from my library, I scoured my shelves for books that I haven’t read or have not finished. I managed to come up with 28. I grabbed one of Josh’s books, and two of Liam’s, then on a whim treated myself to a copy of Caleb Carr’s The Alienist and Angel of Darkness for my Kindle. Then, just when I thought I had enough (plenty!) Henry Roi from HellBound Books kindly sent me a review copy of The Horror Writer: A Study of Craft and Identity in the Horror Genre compiled and edited by Joe Mynhardt. This is at the top of my reading list, partly because it sounds really interesting and informative, a
Read more

Beauty for Your September Morning...

Image
To the Light of September By W. S. Merwin When you are already here you appear to be only a name that tells of you whether you are present or not and for now it seems as though you are still summer still the high familiar endless summer yet with a glint of bronze in the chill mornings and the late yellow petals of the mullein fluttering on the stalks that lean over their broken shadows across the cracked ground but they all know that you have come the seed heads of the sage the whispering birds with nowhere to hide you to keep you for later you who fly with them you who are neither before nor after you who arrive with blue plums that have fallen through the night perfect in the dew
Read more

Carrying On

Image
I hope this finds you and your loved ones well. My family has been fine during this stressful time, anxiety a little high but nothing debilitating, and certainly nothing we haven't been able to work through. Still, each day is an exercise in uncertainty, wondering if we are doing enough to keep ourselves and others safe, wondering if our luck will change, and what we will do if that does happen. We recently learned that our boy will not be going back to school next month (we weren't going to send him anyway), and now my husband and I are trying to figure out how we are going to oversee our son's virtual schooling while both of us are working full time. My husband has said that is the main topic of canversation in his workplace, as many of his coworkers are parents to school-age children and both parents are working. It is less of a conversation at my workplace; not so many of us have school-age children, though a handful have school-age grandchildren. Because I work
Read more