Intentional (plant) killing

      I have inadvertently killed a lot of plants in life. Sometimes it was hubris (see: orchids, cinnamon tree, etc.), sometimes it was neglect - ok, a lot of times it was neglect, because I'd get caught up in something else and forget about plants. A couple times, it was even legitimate disease/illness of the plant, like when a cherry tree contracted a fungal disease in the main trunk. Generally speaking though, I've tried to keep the plants in my care alive and thriving as much as possible.

     Last year, I met a woman at work who had a whole line of plants on the windowsill near her desk. She taught me a couple things about taking care of plants but the lesson that stuck the most was when one plant started really struggling despite no change in care, so she just picked it up and dumped the whole thing in the trash. I was floored. Seeing the expression on my face, she shrugged and said something like "It was old. It'd had a good life. Potted plants aren't forever."

     What a wild thought. It made me realize I have a tendency to want to hold onto things forever, even when it's pretty clear they should just go. 

     On a related note, I bought a houseplant a while ago that looked pretty, nice white and green streaked leaves, but was SO. DRAMATIC. Like if I was a day late watering it, it would literally droop all its stems over and act like it was horribly neglected, but then spring right back up once it was watered. Might be melodramatic of me, but I don't need that guilt in my life, so I made a conscious decision to kill it. I watered the plants around it, but not that one, and it slowly fell over and skeletonized without much fuss. 

     And you know what? I feel fine. I'll get something else to replace it eventually, but for now, it's just nice not having drama. 

The Undead Amaryllis

We're making some changes to how things are stored at work, so I figured it would be a good time to get some of the personal stuff I'd stored there back home where it belongs. I pulled all the folders out, dumped them in a zip drive, and started unpacking them at home, where my filing system is a bit more involved than just by year. Ran across the below blurb I wrote for a friend/(now ex-)coworker's blog, and figured I'd share, because it still amuses me.

My erstwhile and enthusiastic coworker has, I think, a bit of an elevated opinion about my gardening skills, which tend more toward the “let’s see what happens… hey, it worked!” side of things than the “I know what I’m doing, and it worked because of that” end of the spectrum. Still, I will admit that things do tend to work out for the most part, such as when we received an amaryllis bulb at work. 

Typically, when contractors or consultants send us Christmas gifts, it’s along the lines of chocolate, cookies, or treats – consumables and temporary items. For whatever reason, one of them gave us an amaryllis bulb in a pot two Christmases ago [2015]. I claimed it for my desk (logical, since I’m the only one not sitting next to a window, very smart), and we got a month or two of lovely red flowers out of it. 

Greenhouse/ craft area

     For the last few years, I've built a small but useful greenhouse under the back porch to keep potted plants over the winter. It was cramped and simple, but it did its job, and gave my gentleman somewhere covered to smoke in nasty weather.

     Unfortunately, because it was small and just closed in with 2x4s, the smoke would largely come back in the house with him when he re-entered, and then slowly seep out all the sides... including the one where the air intake for the HVAC sits.

Dormancy

     Been a bit quiet of late. Some of that is that I've been busy getting things done, and some of it is that I'm simply becoming quieter. My opinion does not need to be given on every issue that comes my way, especially since I'm not completely informed on many of them. Unfortunately, since sketches are usually my opinion on things, that does mean I've done less drawing lately. It's not gone, though, no worries there.

     Anyway, as things are slowing down with the season change, thought I'd catch up here. In no particular order, here are things that I've worked on recently:

Sewing: Halloween outfit (Slytherin student from Hogwarts, and apparently this was the most people who've ever dressed up for Halloween at work), and work pants.

Exercise: Still doing boot camp two nights a week, and running twice a week at home. The Kenpo Karate class is on break until December; I'm enjoying that quite a bit.

Garden 2017

     Entering year 4 of the garden, and so far, no year has been alike. The first year gave a bumper crop of cucumbers, which then failed miserably in 2015 and 2016. Tomatoes have been fairly reliable, as well as garlic, but carrots, beans, and even strawberries seem to be hit or miss. Last year we had an incredibly short springtime, with temperatures getting to 80 by April. This year, it's the middle of May and we're still getting close to freezing on some nights. Regardless, it's still relaxing and productive, so the garden continues.

A quick recap in pictures... 2014 was the first year, had a lot of success but a LOT of weeds.

2015, I lost the lower level and took over the garden next to me. We tried using straw to keep the weeds down, with moderate success. Good crop of strawberries in the middle, but the corn in the back on the right was eaten by.... everything. The raspberries appeared to die a horrible death.

2016, I learned to net the blueberries so the bids couldn't steal them. Many crops were a success, but then work got busy during harvest and we missed out on a lot of melons and soybeans. The raspberries, surprisingly, came back a bit, but were still struggling.

And so far, 2017 is going not too terribly. I don't have panorama pictures yet, but here are some highlights. I restructured the entrance with some random paving stones we had laying around, so we can actually get a wheelbarrow (for mulch and compost and suchlike) into and out of the garden.








The tools area had been a mess of weeds and stuff, so I leveled it off, put an extra bed frame down over weedblocker, and we now have a place to put a chair for relaxation.

The raspberries not only came back, but have created no fewer than 5 additional canes throughout the bed. Moral of the story, don't give up on something after one bad year.







The top tier has ever-bearing strawberries (many crops throughout the year) while the lower beds are June-bearing (one giant crop all at once). We had just enough fencing left over to cordon off an asparagus that randomly sprouted in the tomato bed. The creeping thyme that is supposed to be growing in the pathway between the strawberries hasn't come up yet, but I'm sure it will.

Surprisingly, due to the cold weather, the lettuce is doing very well. Last year we tried to plant some but it got so hot, so early, that it all bolted and was ruined. This is a random mix of many kinds of lettuce.

     The blueberries are doing wonderfully, and will need to be netted soon. Last year, I let the grapevine grow wild to build up reserves. This year, I'm trying my hand at espalier'ing it, and it has a lot of grape flowers starting, so here's hoping! I did lose a pepper and some squash leaves to the cold snap two weeks ago, but everything else is doing well, and the weed blocker is doing an amazing job. It took 4 years, but I think the garden is finally at a state of maintenance, instead of frantic catch-up. 

London/Ireland trip, part 3

(continued from previous post)

     Ok, I promise this will be the last post on this trip! After leaving Killarney, we headed up to Galway, We checked out of the hotel a little late, because we wanted to soak up the peace and quiet as much as possible, so we pulled into Galway right around rush hour. The hotel was pretty decent,
although it had terrible wifi, and had an attached restaurant where, with a reservation, we became the least-well-dressed and youngest couple (by at least 20 years) to have a freaking delicious meal. Thankfully, we both overate horribly, because the waitstaff was not what I'd call speedy, so we had plenty of time to digest before the bill came and we went back to the room to pass out.

     The next day, we drove into oldtown Galway, parked by the water, and began to wander. Since we didn't really plan anything, this turned into somewhat of an adventure as we left the shopping district, found a train station, trespassed on abandoned private property to get a good view of the Bay, got rained on, and found a random cemetery. Knowing that my gentleman and I both appreciate quiet and old spaces, we decided to duck in, counting on the fact that it had a plaque near the front gate to indicate that it was, indeed, open to the public, and we weren't further trespassing.

Preparing for winter

     Today was one of those rare days in fall/winter where it's sunny and cool, but nice enough that you can go work in the garden. Since I still had all that bare ground (and knowing nature abhors a vacuum), I decided to stop off at the first house I passed on the way to the garden that had bags of leaves on the curb, and see if I could snag some. The highly confused man who opened the door accepted my bizarre explanation of needing mulch for a garden with good grace, and I shoved three bags into my trunk before heading off again. Apparently, I have no self-consciousness when dealing with people I will likely never see again.

     Armed with my leaf bags, cardboard from work, and the prospect of having to weed everything in the spring if I didn't get cracking, I managed to get most of the upper bed filled in with either leaves or mulch. Good thing, too, because something was sending little sproutlings up all over the area. We'll see if I caught them in time. Here's what it looks like now:



     Unfortunately, the bottom board fell off of the middle bed there, so I wasn't able to get it completely dug in and leafed/mulched, but that should help immensely! The carrots that you see in the foreground are doing wonderfully, I harvested one row of them today and planted garlic for the spring. Sadly, there was a frost last night, and the tomatoes and peppers are finally dead. I weeded a little bit, and got the boards on the bottom bed kind of in place. "All" that's left now is fixing the top bed, finishing it off, making, mulching and leafing the bottom bed(s), and putting a new layer of mulch/leaves on the rest of the garden. Oh, and transplanting the raspberries. And weeding everything. Before the snow flies. We'll see how that works. Cheers!

Fall garden update

     Back in August, I got word that I and a few other gardeners along the edge would be losing some of our plots. Apparently, the head of the garden asked the county why they haven't been mowing around the perimeter, and the county responded that they couldn't get their mower along it, because we've built gardens to within 5 feet of the treeline. From what I've overheard, they originally wanted a 30' space along the edge, but since that would mean many of the gardens would be cut back to only 10' wide, the head gardener negotiated for a 20' easement.

     What does that mean? The plot that I spent so much time on this year is losing 1/3 of its area. I'm gaining that and a little more back, however, as I was allowed to take over the much smaller plot next to me that had been abandoned since May. That's not quite as fun as it sounds, because the entire plot was knee-high in weeds, strewn with rusty broken garden implements, thoroughly rocky, and had gaps in the fence that a human could easily get through, but I still accepted. Partly because I want the space, and partly because it means I don't share any fences now. There are walkways on two sides of my plot, and forest/grass strips on the other two. Suits me just fine. 

    At the beginning of October, I decided that enough of my crops had been harvested that it was safe to take the deer fence down and start merging the plots. In an attempt to hide the horrible weed-infested horribleness, I'd planted morning glories along the fence. They were doing quite well, but unfortunately, they had to go. So on the first weekend of the month, I did a bit of weeding, took down the bamboo, and took out the morning glories. Next step: the other plot.

Garden update

It's been a busy summer, although thankfully less hot than it could have been. I was finally able to get everything in the ground by the end of April, and got a huge response. Here's what it looked like by the beginning of July:

The farthest tier has sunflowers along the fence; watermelon and cantaloupe on the left; beans, peas, and raspberries in the middle; and cucumbers and eggplant on the right. The middle tier is tomatoes on the left; strawberries, borage, and collard greens in the middle; and okra and peppers on the right. The top tier has sage, carrots, and garlic on the right, mostly weeds and a straggling lavender in the center, and potatoes and blueberries on the right. If it should like a lot, that's because it is!

The eggplant and melons immediately got attacked by various pests, and haven't done well at all. The cucumbers did ridiculously well for about a month and a half, and then died off. Everything else has produced wonderfully- despite a few pest issues- to the point where I have a much better idea on how many plants of each item to plant next year (a lot fewer, in most cases!). Just a few weeks after the above picture, it looked like this:

Some of the harvests:

                  

Unexpected lessons included:

-Apparently, a number of things from bugs and beetles to rabbits, love collard greens, and will eat them over everything else. This is absolutely fine with me. 

-Garlic protects carrots from almost everything, including the aforementioned rabbits.

-Bees adore borage and sunflowers. (Support the poor bees!)

-Even cold-damaged seedlings will rally and overproduce. Don't listen to advice that tells you to toss them.

-Carrots cannot be judged by their tops. The leafiest ones were close to baby carrot size, and some unassuming tops produced monster carrots.

-Big tomato cages are more expensive, but worth it. 

-Pests don't always mean a ruined crop. Mexican bean beetles skeletonized the bean leaves, and left the beans alone, perfectly ready for harvest.

Sadly, I'm losing the bottom tier to a county easement, but I will absolutely be doing this again. It was fun, it was a workout, and we got some good food out of it. Chees!

Garden progression

     When I first got my garden plot through Columbia Gardeners, it looked abandoned. The fence was made of different sized pieces zip-tied together, some of the beds had been ripped up and dragged off, and there were rusty metal scraps of braces and more fencing everywhere. The previous gardener had a casual disregard for things like whether something was biodegradable or not, and plastic plant tags were scattered and half-buried everywhere. The ground, regardless of bed layout, was a ragged mat of nettle, crabgrass, and dead bits of annual flower corpses. The list of horrors goes on, but needless to say, it was not uplifting.

Weekend Pictures

     In apologies for this being put up late, here is a slightly over-the-top (and badly-filmed on an inexpensive camera) video of the opening ceremony at Peterhof Gardens. There are something like 300+ fountains in the entire park, and 100+ of them are in one location: the display directly in front of the castle. This is what we got up at 8am to try to catch; apparently the people in front of us had gotten up at 6 to be there at 8 so they could get front-row seats for the 10:30 commencement. It's pretty, but not enough to wake up at 6 am, in my opinion. Here goes!

     With that done, here are some pictures of the gardens, randomly selected from the twenty or so that I took throughout the day.

The Gulf of Finland- the only place I've been where the
clouds make me feel claustrophobic.

Quick Monday

     I'm mildly ashamed to say that I forgot the cable to connect my camera to my computer, so the pictures and video that I took yesterday at Peterhof will have to be delayed til tomorrow. The good news, though, is that I was able to get said pictures, and I don't have afternoon classes tomorrow, so I should have plenty of time to upload everything here... provided I don't forget to put it all on my computer first.

     Yesterday was wonderful- we did end up going to Peterhof gardens, and while it was overcast and windy, it wasn't actively raining. We managed to get going before 9am, and took the "ferry," a decently-sized hydrofoil taxi, arriving before they turned the fountains on for the day. There were people who had gotten there hours ahead of time, so we didn't have the best view, but I still managed to get some shots of the whole thing. We wandered around as a group (an activity I hate, because everyone has different ideas of how fast to walk and what's interesting) for a couple hours, then had lunch at the same place I went last time I was there. It was kinda neat, though, because this time I knew how to order in Russian and didn't have to wait for our shepherd/ translator.

Stock photo of a rare, clear day at Peterhof.

FTP 13 - Get up and...

     Of course, sometimes it also helps to have someone around to give that starter kick. This week has not been the best for me, until Angel suggested I go work on a friend's yard, where I have a garden and am doing minor landscaping. Suddenly, the week looks a lot better. You're still the one who has to get up and do it though. Come on, you know you'll feel better once you do. 

Did you know?

• that the biggest gardening problem in Colorado isn't the weather, but the basic (as opposed to acidic) soil?
• that gardening burns, on average, 8.5 calories per minute? Now consider that no one, generally, gardens for less than a couple hours. An afternoon spent gardening is similar, calorie-wise, to running a few miles.
• that the largest recorded temperature change in Colorado was in 1949 near Fort Collins when it fell from 50 degrees to -40 in 24 hours? The largest fluctuation in U.S. weather is only 10 degrees more than that, in Montana in 1916. 

No thanks...

• that grapes, despite being roughly 80% water, take less water to grow than many other fruits and vegetables? They are also very adaptable to different kinds of soil, but the soil will make the taste of the grape change as well.
• that elevation is not the biggest determining factor in growing season? Cold air rolling down from surrounding mountains and getting stuck in a valley will cause more issues than being at a higher elevation that isn't in an air pocket. 

FTP 7 - Push yourself

     In some ways, this has emphatically not been the best week of my life. Coming back off vacation, my stomach not wanting to go back to eating healthfully, seeing the effects of eating whatever I want for a week at dance class, etc, let's just say things have not gone as smoothly as they could.

     Rather than wallow in it though, I'm trying very, very hard to look at it as room to grow. I've been coasting along through the winter, not really pushing myself very hard, knowing I'll get by with relatively minimal effort. Even though spring is arriving in fits and starts, it's still here, and it's time to start some cultivation, both in my garden and in my life.

     So yesterday, I pushed myself farther than usual in dance class. On Wednesday, I started my day with news in French instead of comics. Today, I will be working on my application for an internship in Denver. No, it's not easy. Yes, it would be less work to just sit down and feel put-upon (and believe me, I've spent my time doing so). But a week, a month, a year down the road, which will get things done and make life easier then rather than now?

     What about you? What's in your garden, looking for some tlc?

Final countdown

This is the (backside of the) Summer Palace! Apparently, most of it was as gilded as the towers in the background at one point, but one of the queens got annoyed at the constant glittering, and asked that it be toned down, so now it's just accents and a few cupolas that are quite so gaudy. From what we were told, there are more than 800 rooms in the main palace (the multi-story area in the back), and goodness knows how many in the servants' quarters (one-story area in the foreground). We were going to go inside, but a number of cruise ships had docked and unloaded just as we got there, and the line was upward of two hours to get in, so we passed over it and just wandered the gardens. Fine with me!

   This is an example of the "english gardens" in front of the palace itself. Perhaps it's just my long association with the book/ play The Secret Garden, but I associate english gardens with fountains of roses, not laid-out gravel. Meh. Regardless, it was pretty impressive, though apparently one of the many strays about the place thought the black circle at the bottom needed some spreading out. I can't imagine how much work it takes to keep all this looking this orderly, but I suppose after 300 years, you've probably gotten most of the weeds cleared out. :)

  I have no idea what these flowers are, they were all over the Italian gardens, in a huge bush-type plant (think lilac bush size), and they smelled heavenly. If anyone can identify them, I would happily grow about 6 billion of them, just to sit in the middle and back in the scent. The rest of the Italian gardens were also wonderful, well-laid-out, with statuary and vine-covered arches. We missed the lilacs, poppies and irises, but the begonias and petunias were just coming out, so it was still quite lovely.

A breath of fresh air

This is going to be a long post, so grab some popcorn and settle in.

   To catch up from the last few days, this past weekend was fairly uneventful. Another foiled attempt to go to Petergof gardens on Saturday (darn you crummy coastal weather!) had us wandering around an Ethnography Museum which, while interesting, was not what I had psyched myself up for. It was basically a history of all the people of Russia, which are quite a few, and how they used to live. The loom to the right was highly interesting to yours truly, and there was even a (small) bit of fabric woven on the other end of it, with a spinning wheel and drop spindle nearby. I couldn't imagine trying to thread a loom that uses the same type of string for the heddles as what you're trying to weave with. Headache galore.

    After about 3 hours of looking at how various groups of people lived, and working and walking around areas (about 1/3 of the whole museum) that were under reconstruction or closed for setting up new exhibits, I was more than ready to walk out. The prof apparently has a stomach (and legs, feet and back) of iron, because he then asked us if we wanted to stop for the day, and go get lunch... or go to another museum. Sharing looks of disbelief, we all promptly voted for lunch and home, as we won't have another day off til the 26th, when most of us get to start 22-24 hour flights home.

Cruise and graffiti

  Cruise! Tuesday after class, we met at a distant metro station and walked over to this where this boat was moored. I was lucky enough to get a single room, I guess because I'm old and crotchety and Artemi (the prof) knows that I don't tolerate drunken shenanigans.  And lordy were there drunken shenanigans. Just like the trip to Europe I went on with Morgana, a lot of the kids had never encountered absinthe, and thought it would be the best thing in the world to knock it back like soda. Brilliant. Anyhow.. the cruise started at 8 pm, and we had to wait a bit for a bridge to go up, as the water level is pretty high at the moment, but we kept going during the night, and arrived at Valaam Island, located at 61 degrees N in Lake Ladoga. We got very, very lucky and it was a beautiful day. A touch windy, but no clouds in the sky and probably 63 degrees (F).

Weather change.

The weather has reverted back to typical St. Peterburg weather, which is very similar to Washington state- chilly, damp and drippy. Quite the change from Colorado, and while I miss the warmth, my allergies are now completely gone, yay!

   Wednesday was... quite the "adventure". We had been told we were to visit the Pavlovsk palace, so most of us dressed for indoors walking. What Artemi had failed to mention, though, is that there was a 2 mile hike on dirt (read: mud) trails to get there! I was very much reminded of Washington and Hawaii on the way, as it was through a deciduous forest with ferns for undergrowth, and where there was any grass, it was supported from underneath by moss. Quite beautiful, moreso because I was actually dressed for the weather! (My backpack, however, is not waterproof, it turns out. The dictionary I have is now quite the worse for wear.)