The First Rose Appears

Our house becomes welcoming as spring arrives. Sun lingers on the front porch and flowers appear from the dark corners of the yard. Pictured: the first rose growing along the perimeter of the yard, and iris growing near the car park. Also, beautiful columbine in a deep purple that Ariel planted near the front of the house.

I feel like even the soil is more receptive to my ideas! (I do realize that this can be easily explained by the fact that the ground no longer freezes and various other changes occur in the spring that make the earth more conductive towards growth.) Various seeds that I planted last week are starting to sprout. The lettuce is beginning to shyly appear in thin lines. I scattered wild flower seeds in a pot in the front of the house and under my bedroom window. The flowers are just beginning to break the soil, but I’m highly suspicious that the sunflower seeds have all been dug out by one our resident squirrels. A note here: I found a wild flower mix that’s packing implied it was geared towards attention challenged children. Perfect.

Growth is so damned challenging in most aspects of life. I would like to grow into a more patient and wise person. I would like my position at work to grow into a career. I would like to grow into the kind of person who eats all of the green stuff in the fridge before it spoils. Being able to directly encourage growth in a plant is very gratifying.

No pictures today, just words.

Dear bloomers,

What a lovely thing warm temperatures and sunshine are after a winter of rain, coldness, and drear. This weekend the sun came out a little and it was warm. I basked on the slab in my jogging clothes for about an hour on Saturday. It was just lovely. There is nothing quite like the warming sensation of the sun radiating down on your legs and face. Our house’s radiant heating system comes close, but it’s just not the same. When you’re outside you sit and hold your breath hoping that the wind won’t blow and disturb the little bubble of warm you’re encapsulated in. While I was enjoying the warm sun, a little song sparrow trusted my lethargy and landed on the birdfeeder an arm’s length away. I know that they’re really just feathered little mice, but they sure are cute! We’ll see how cute they are when I see them eating my new veggies. Grrr.

So. On the flower front.

This weekend I planted more things. I’m out of control. Now we have boxes with chives, butter lettuce, broccoli and radishes. Seriously, it’s going to be salad heaven here if any of this ever takes root (haha). The arugulas are doing well, my newest line of nasturtiums has sprouted, and the peas are just shooting up! I will need to get them better sticks to climb on soon. I stuck some simple skewers in the ground with hope that they’d at least cling on to those temporarily, but they will need something more soon.

The sunflowers that I started inside are looking amazing, too. They have at least four or five inches on them already. I’m impressed. I’ll need a buoy them up with something soon, too. They’re getting a hair too tall for their current supports. Their crazy window-driven tropism doesn’t really help either. I’d take them outside already, but they’re still succulent enough looking that I don’t want something to have them for a snack.

I do have one unfortunate thing to report today… it looks like one of the neighborhood kids thought it would be fun to whack the heck out of one of our trees. Unfortunately, it’s on the other side of the sidewalk, so it’s difficult to protect (unlike the one in our yard). I saw it this morning, and I hope it doesn’t suffer any permanent damage or catch a tree disease as a result of this woeful aggression. The reminder that other people don’t share my same degree of respect and reverence for trees and/or the natural world somehow never ceases to surprise me. Of course, when I was a kid I whacked on trees with sharp metal things, too. I never thought twice about it, either. It must be something you grow out of. If you were somehow able to tabulate it, I wonder just how much damage kids do to things in the world, not knowing about the permanence or nature of their actions?

All We Need is Science

As some of you may know, I am a plant killer with a brown/desiccation thumb. This spring, I am attempting to change my nature and grow things instead of kill them. I’ve tried to overcome my deficiency by using intuition when dealing with plants, and apparently, my instincts are all wrong. For instance, I once had a woman for whom I was house sitting show me around her house and try to gently teach me how to determine when a plant needs watering. She would say helpful things like, “See, the leaves of this plant look slightly duller and wilted. It needs water” The plants all looked identical to me.

This spring, I will attempt to hone a new approach to my gardening: science. Attempting to employ this new technique, I went out to examine pansies (or at least I think they were pansies) that I planted this spring that are now flowerless and approaching brown. Oh well, this must be a bad season for pansies, right? The state of the flowers struck me as particularly strange since very similar flowers planted nearby by my roommate are thriving and more beautiful than ever!

I planted the flowers under an overhang of the house, and while during planting I realized that this meant I would need to water them regularly, the flowers always appeared wet so I didn’t bother. This week, science compelled me to get on my hands and knees (sans magnify glass) to take a closer look at the sad flower remains. Apparently, the flowers –looked- wet due to the mud that had splashed onto them during heavy rain fall. So essentially, I never watered the flowers and I covered them with mud.

The mysteries of nature are revealing themselves to me.

Stepping out of the winter slump.

It’s amazing to me how much more I enjoy little Casa Bloom when the weather is nice. Obviously, we’ve been absent from this blog all winter, stewing and whining about our muddy, funny little house. In front of the house, the yard was a pit of mud, rotting walnut detritus, and the garbage that sketchy people threw over our fence when they were passing by. The back was a cold, slippery wet slab of concrete, complete with a rotting vegetable garden that never did much of anything late last summer/fall, a bird feeder that scattered seed all over the world, and a hibernating hanging basket that I always smacked my head on when I tried to stay under the eaves and out of the rain as I took the trash out. But then March, April, and now May marched forward, and slowly but surely the slab became less slippery, the bog out front started to dry up, the grass began to grow (and grow, and grow, and grow!), and bluebells burst out all around the edges of the yard. Suddenly the house looked a little less “Skidmark” and a little more “Bloom.”

Today is the first of May, and I can happily say that project Summer Bloom is well underway.

As the sunny weekends have increased, so has D and my interest in being out-of-doors. Two or three weeks ago I scrubbed off the slab, and wiped down our patio furniture. D bought us a nifty new mower and whipped the grass into shape. I tied back the roses that were threatening to devour anyone walking near them in the yard. I moved my hopeful little seedlings off the kitchen windowsill, and into long, low pots outside. I bought a rosemary plant to replace the one that desiccated over the winter (under the eaves, it received no rain… whoops). And now we’re full-head, full-tilt, rolling, tumbling, and rocketing our way into and out of spring.

There are too many topics that I want to address in-depth, so I will begin by talking about a couple of them briefly—you can expect greater substance as the weeks go by. Let’s just get this ball rolling for now.

Flymo the Hovercraft Lawnmower

As the weather improved, and the alternating sun and rain incited a riot of growth on our lawn, D sallied forth onto Craigslist to find us a better contraption for mowing our lawn (our prior incarnation of a lawnmower tended to just push the grass down rather than mow it). We were set on NOT buying a gas-powered mower, if possible (think green!), which limited our options to manual-push-spinning-wheel-of-blades type mowers, and electric ones. Given our success with the prior version, we opted to search electric. And did we ever hit the jackpot.

Not only did we end up with an awesome electric mower, but we ended up with a bright orange electric mower with no wheels for only $40. I know what you’re thinking, “With no wheels of course it was only $40! What good is a lawnmower with no wheels?” Well, my friends, let me introduce you to the FLYMO. Our new little buddy is a bonafide Hovercraft lawnmower. That’s right, it HOVERS over the grass on a CUSHION OF AIR. I swear, using it is more like vacuuming the lawn that mowing it. It’s fabulous. Until we get our own pictures up, you can visit this dude’s flickr site to see a picture of a Flymo that looks just like ours…. http://www.flickr.com/photos/vifferrari/94207463/ or you can check out the whole Flymo concept on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flymo. It’s from Europe, ok? We’re just that much more ahead of the times. And if you want to try it out, admission and a test run will only cost you a bottle of wine, a 6-pack of beer, or just some delightful company.

I’m sure more will follow on this soon. We’re still excited about it.

When Seedlings Take Over your Life

As we were working hard to figure out the best way to cut things down, we were simultaneously working our hardest to grow things up. About a month ago I bought several packets of seed from the store and started planting lettuce, basil, and a few other random things in little peat pots. Those peat pots lived in relative warmth and happiness on our kitchen window, growing and sprouting, and being all cute. I finally decided that it was time to graduate them into real pots, and now I have two long planters of basil and lettuce starts growing their little hearts out on our back slab. As the weather warms I’ll probably have to move them (because it will be far too hot for their delicate sensibilities back there), but for now they get sunshine, water, and the company of a few other plants.

I was especially pleased to discover yesterday that my basils had developed a second row of leaves! We’re onto tier two!

In the garden (read: real dirt in the ground) I’ve started lots of arugula and some peas. Despite a brief problem with the peas looking like they’d been through the slug mower, I think we’re off to a good start. The arugula is sprouting well, and my little rows look so cute and linear. The only garden enemy we’ve encountered so far has been a hungry neighborhood squirrel who, along with burying walnuts in our planter drawers last fall, has made a habit of sniffing past our garden and un-earthing the seeds and/or starts before they get a good jump on life. I had one sunflower plant that had emerged and that I was watching excitedly and expectantly. I had achieved about an inch of height (cooing, and smiling at it), and I went out one morning to check on its progress, and it was gone! Eaten! Dissappeared! Darn Gestapo squirrels! I wouldn’t have made the connection were it not for a Saturday morning at the kitchen window in which I caught Mr. Squirrel at his dirty tricks.

Finally, now that I’ve moved the lettuce and basil starts outdoors, the kitchen window sill is hosting an array of new seedlings. Sunflowers (I decided to try them again… this time starting in a squirrel-proof environment!), cucumbers, string beans, larkspur, and a wild experiment to see if I can get bell peppers to grow in Oregon. Who knows. Bear with me and I’ll keep you updated.

Hurrah for spring! Hurrah for growing! Hurrah for starts!

Stepping back in time.

Since D's schedule is too busy to accommodate things like the internet blog-o-sphere, she's e-mailed the pictures she took of the garden to me and I am going to write about them here instead. That way your gratification is a little closer to instant than it would be otherwise.

I promise more recent pictures will follow soon. I'm working on getting my camera back from its vacation in Seattle, and garden pictures are top on my list once it's back in my hot little hands.
Additionally, please excuse any lack of detail in this post--we've had the garden up for about 3 weeks now, so my memory is fading smidge when it comes to the particulars of that Saturday.

So, without further adieu, we began with some starter veggies.

After my tutoring class fell through on Saturday morning, D and I decided to take advantage of the beautiful clear Saturday, and put our garden plans into action.
We started off at Pistil's on Mississippi and A-Boy on Barbur. Both places had nice green veggie starts, and we found some lovely perennials and other fun growy things. All the garden departments of the grocery and home improvement stores were having big 30%-off sales to celebrate the onset of fall, so we took advantage of that and bought some great-looking terra-cotta pots, too.

Run-down of the plants we purchased:

First, the veggies and herbs:

• Broccoli
• Kale
• Chard
• Lettuce (like 12 kinds including Romaine, Buttercrunch, and "Fancy Gourmet Mix"
• Red Onions
• Lavender
• Rosemary
• Sage

Then the other fun plants:

• Lambs' Ears
• Mums
• Hosta
  
• Something neat with red and green leaves
• Colorful marigolds, pansies, and red flowers for my hanging basket

Of course we decided to buy the plants first. Luckily it was only a summer-like weekend, and so they didn't die in the car as we went about our other various missions.

Our next stop was to Metro on Swan Island for a big composter. As I mentioned before, it looks rather like a space-ship. It's big and black and plastic. It was fun squeezing it in to D's little Honda civic!
Finally, we took a trip to the Rebuilding Center on N. Mississippi for our grand plan, drawers.

That's right, dresser drawers to stand in for planter boxes. We are relying purely on faith that they are not loaded with lead paint. (If these blog entries start getting a little off-kilter sounding, please be a friend and take us to the hospital? Or at least encourage us to stop eating the killer-lettuce?)

Neither one of us had been there before, so it was an interesting challenge. We found what we were looking for in the end, though, and so we left, a heap of drawers in hand.

As you can see, the car was groaning with all our purchases for this project. Luckily, this time of year, garden supplies are quite reasonable.

Long story short, we unloaded the car and set to work filling the "planters" with potting soil and arranging them in our predetermined garden area.

I will thrill you a little more with some pictures of the close to finished product. Of course it was an all-day event that entailed driving to Fred Meyer once or twice to acquire more potting soil, more perennials, and more fizzy carbonated refreshments.

But now we have little square drawers filled with rows of growy things! I've since planted radishes (that are in terrible need of a thinning!) and some seeds for acorn squash. We'll see how that all turns out. I'm skeptical (especially of the Acorn Squash) that we'll have anything edible before next March. But, all doubts aside, we will definitely have lettuce in another week or two. The plants have continued to grow like crazy. They're spreading their leaves to the sky and growing up green and tasty-looking. YUM! Maybe if you're nice I'll invite you over for a home grown salad.

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We also have tomatoes! Those were here when we adopted the house. They're nice, though, huh? Word has it they're awfully tasty, too.

On the Sprout.

New things are taking shape at the little house. I have to catch a bus in 10 minutes, so this will be short.

An unexpected free Saturday allowed D and I to complete a significant amount of work. It was a most productive weekend.

Things accomplished:

-The previous renters arrived and cleaned their things out of the shed. The sketchy Whoopin' Shed is now 100% ours.

-We made serious progress on the garden. D has the pictures that go along with that story, so I will allow her to tell it, but suffice to say, we now have a quaint collection of greens and more growing things on the sprout.

-I bought Mums! And Rosemary! And brightly colored plants for a hanging basket! We are so flora'd out you can hardly even believe it. As my housemate commented... "It looks like nice people live here now!"

-We acquired one of the big Metro composters. It's been a huge stress off our trash cans not to throw away all of that biodegradable waste every week. The best part, though, is that it looks like a rocket ship. BLAST OFF, VEGGIE WASTE!

-Finally, on Tuesday, the management came and installed our BLINDS. I can't tell you what a liberating sensation it is knowing I can watch as much trashy tv as my little heart can bear and NO ONE WILL KNOW. Beautiful. Access Hollywood here I come... Even better is the mental relief my dear BF gets knowing that the teenage neighbor boys will no longer be able to look right into my window when the blanket falls down, nor will our sillhouettes tell them exactly what we are doing in the evenings. Brilliance.

Now we begin the slow process of patiently waiting for things to grow so we can harvest them. Once I get my camera back, you will get millions of photographs. I'm sure you can't wait.

Have a lovely weekend, dear readers.

A dose of Autumn sketch....

Last weekend both D and I had our cars broken into at the new house. In the driveway. Within two days of one another. That stinks. As if the walnuts clattering down on the roof weren't enough to make a person a little jumpy, now we find that our driveway is no deterrant to a persistant member of Portland's thriving car break-in community. Loovely.

Luckily, for each of us, nothing was stolen except for a certain sense of safety and privacy. It would have felt different if the cars had been on the street. It would have been very different if it had not been at our home. We're both still feeling pretty positive about things, all told. Not planning on moving out and abandoning this goofy "project" of ours. But we're also not keeping a gram of anything valuable out in our cars. Forget it. I won't even keep a burned CD out there.

* * *

In other news, though, fall has definately descended. The air is cool and crisp, and the tomato plants we inherited are thriving. Cherry tomatoes for the masses, hurrah! Well, or just for us. I think we've had exactly three off the plant so far.

D is talking about picking up a compost bucket this weekend, and I've made a giant mound of sticks pruned off the rose bushes. They don't exactly compost well. It's just a stick-y, sticker-y pile at the moment. Please don't jump for glee in that pile. You will be poked.

We are also talking about our options for a fall vegetable garden. With the new brouhaha over bagged spinich, I think this is one of the number one plants on our list of "to-grow's." We are planning shallow raised beds for lettuce, spinich, broccoli, radishes, and other fun green things. My sources tell me that we should be able to raise these for a couple months yet if I can get the beds underway soon!

Also on the list of to do's...

... big planters with herbs. I'm thinking rosemary, basil, and whatever else I can get my hands on. Portland has a pretty mild climate, so we should have some luck.

... MUMS! I want some gorgeous fall color in pots, too. I need to pinch back my pansies and my geranium (they are still looking gorgeous and flower-full), but there's nothing quite like a MUM for good early October color (and it's almost early October).

... BLINDS! Supposedly they come in this next week. I can hardly, hardly wait. I won't even know what to do when the whole outside world can't watch TV with me at night. Maybe I'll just be lonely without the company?

I will try to update early next week with more news from the yard. We'll see how much we get done. D and I both have busy weekends planned.