Spring has sprung

Yeah I know the official first day of spring was last month, but it doesn't feel like spring for me until almost May. I guess I'm still stuck in Maine mode; her winters are long and arduous, 9 months of winter and 3 months of damn poor sleddin'. Teehee

Anyway, I finally put up my pea trellis yesterday, I had planted my peas a month ago and the poor things needed SOMETHING to climb. I also couldn't resist while I was at DiGregory's Greenhouse from buying some herbs; pineapple sage, lavender, and cilantro. My cilantro from seed was a fail so I bought a plant. Don't judge me.


Im up early this morning, felt the warm sunrise, saw two rabbits getting friendly, listening to the birds sing.

Yes, Spring has officially Sprung.

Thank. God.

Gardening is FUN

So yesterday I went out to TJ Maxx with some friends, and bought myself a GORGEOUS clay pot with a blye glaze, and a bright YELLOW metal watering can! I would post pictures but I'm currently too lazy. This recent purchase has made me a little more excited about gardening this year, despite our lack of land to garden in. What has really helped me not feel sorry for myself for lack of said land is a book called The Vegetable Gardeners Container Bible by Edward C. Smith.  It is a veritable cornucopia of information, his instructions for making self watering containers are going to be very useful this year. I found that planting my peppers and tomatoes in traditional containers was less than ideal. See, peppers and tomatoes are greedy with their water and fertilizer, so they dry out FAST. Anyway, I highly recommend his book.

This years garden is going to at least on my part focus  mostly on peppers and tomatoes, since we eat ALOT of those. I might take a stab at growing a cucumber and squash plant if I can manage the space. I currently have peas sprouting. My cilantro failed, probably because its seed from last year. Speaking of which I should bounce over to Seed Savers Exchange for some Santo Cilantro. Good stuff. My pepper sproutlings are coming along nicely, their true leaves are lookin' gorgeous! I'm going to be starting my tomatoes and basils this next week as well.

Updates on the gardening endeavor will be rolling in now that the weather is nice and warm!

Back to normal

This past week, B and I went downward to Owensboro, KY with my parental units to visit with my dear sister and house hunt in anticipation for their Great Exodus to the Midwest. It was a lovely visit, I played with my nephew an obscene amount of time, making exaggerated faces and snuggling his belly with my head every chance I got. B played well with D(nephew), at least when he wasn't literally on top of him pulling his hair (D doesn't have much, but my son has a talent for finding enough hair to pull).

Unfortunately my parents did not find a place to live, realtor's don't like holding things for rent for 2 months when they could be moving the property. Meh. Such is life. Amy is going to scout it out down there for them.

So now you know what I mean about getting back to normal, getting back into routines is hard after a long visit. I did get caught up on laundry, kind of. Anyway, I won't bore you with my chores. Heh.

In closing I would like to post a completely unrelated link that has nothing to do with the title of this entry, because its my blog and I do what I want with it.

I want this and I will have it someday. ( a house we outright own on land we outright own.)

It...is...ALIIIIIVE!!!!!!!

Wow, I am so not good at the blogging thing. Glad I got that out there, I didn't want you to think otherwise and feel lied to by me. Why the sudden come-back? Well, my sister inspired me, http://homegrowncatholic.blogspot.com/, and her blog totally pwns mine, and what kind of little sister would I be if I didn't compare myself to my intelligent, creative, LOVELY older sister? (K now that I said all that Ame, link me in your list of blogs, kthnxbai.)

I definitely have issues with consistency, I always have. Throw a lovely husband, a bouncing baby boy, a needy loyal mutt, and a household into the mix...well...

Needless to say, I've just gotten MORE busy with life since I started this whole soiree. But, I have also grown to learn how to manage my time a little better, thanks to FlyLady. While I don't follow her routines and tips to a T, I have somewhat made them my own, which has been a serious Godsend for my family and I. The house is clean most of the time, the laundry is done most of the time, and dinner almost ALWAYS gets on the table before 8pm. Yeah I know I didn't say its like this all the time, I don't like absolutes, 'cause I'm a jedi. Hah.

My hope for this blog is that I will be able to post an entry a few times a week, once a week at least. I'm pretty sure only family and a smattering of friends read this thing, but thats cool, I'm a middle child and don't mind not getting a lot of attention. :-P

Beautiful day!

So B and I went to the Pittsburgh Zoo today with some of my mom friends, it was so much fun! He's still pretty young, but at 6.5 months old he seemed to get a lot out of this trip. His favorite part was the fish. I really enjoyed myself too, I think that doing things with kids is more fun and interesting because they are so fascinated with everything. It was really neat when the polar bear was right up against the glass, and when the howler monkey jumped onto a slant in the glass and made faces at us! One wicked funny thing that happened was the orangutan picked its nose and pulled out a massive booger. Hilarious! It was a lovely day, and I'm exhausted.

I'm making a Bean Chili from a cool cookbook called Perfect Vegetarian by Parragon Publishing, super yum. Can't wait to eat it!

Seed starting

So I started some seeds a couple weeks ago, and they are doing splendidly under our handy dandy grow lights.

Here are some of the bell peppers. There are 7 of these babies already.

These are my garlic chives, they are amazing growers, they're touching the grow light that is 3 inches above them. Crazy.

Here's the oregano, I only planted like, 5 seeds, so I have no idea where all these seedlings came from, I'm guessing they make extra sprouts underneath. *shrug*

And here is my lone rosemary seedling. I read somewhere they have a crummy germination rate, around 50%, so we're doing okay with one out of 4 considering that they are temperamental little things.

I have some Johnny Jump Up violas sprouting too, but I couldn't manage to get a good picture of them. Ah well. Also, my cherry tomatoes are coming up like crazy, almost every seed I planted is poking through the seed starting mix, I am much pleased. I have high hopes for this container gardening endeavor, and with this increasingly warming weather, I think I might go mad with anticipation. Mad I tell you.

Is it spring yet?

Have seeds, will plant...them. So I finally got my seeds from www.highmowingseeds.com and www.seedsavers.org and I've so got the itch. They have overtaken my dining room table and I've managed to organize them by how I plan to combine them in pots. Some I'm not 100% sure where to put what with what(wow grammar), so I'm going to play that by ear. I'm super excited to get some seedlings going, one more month to go!

I'm also very excited about the containers we scored at Big Lots for a decent price. I love these overstock/defect stores that sell stuff waaay below the suggested retail price, I feel like I'm beating the system somehow. Anyway, they look fine to me, and I think they'll look pretty with my gorgeous cherry tomato in the "terra cotta" plastic beast pot. The blue glazed matching pots in varying sizes are also preddymus. I'm not sure if I'm going to do herbs or flowers, or both in the blue ones, again, playing it by ear.