Annual my foot!

Bloomin' Petunias
Well sure enough I have proof that some petunias we planted made it through the winter. Just see for yourself. This is a new bloom I just discovered. The plants seem to be recovering nicely and hopefully they will return completely full of blooms. We shall see.




Just Hangin' Around
I tried a little experiment for this spring. I'm full of experiments. I have several hanging baskets that are not being used so I filled four of them with potting mix and planted annual seeds. The instructions stated to put more space in between the seeds than I did so what I thought about doing is once the little seedlings are big enough, I will thin them out and put some in the garden and leave the rest to hopefully be a nice hanging basket throughout the summer. I hope it works. The seedlings seem so delicate, I hope I don't destroy them trying to transplant. As you can see here, I have all four baskets and my Cosmos and Marigolds have sprouted. I can't wait to see what happens. We are supposed to have a hard freeze tonight so I have moved the four baskets into the garage so the little plants don't get nipped. Better safe than sorry.




Huh?
I'm a little confused about the several daffodil plants I have in one of the beds. This has actually happened every year. The plants come up and look healthy, then they start to bloom and that's where it all stops. I'm not sure if they are not getting enough sun or what but I sure don't get it. Everywhere around our neighborhood I see other plants looking really great and bright yellow, but not here. If they don't do anything this spring, I may have to transplant them somewhere else for next year. All in the learning process.

What I Did Today

I really got into a cleaning up mood today. I decided to make some of the beds ready for plants. I started out working on the little bed that we made for Catherine last year as a Mother's Day present. She likes Irises so last year she dug some up out of our nice neighbor's garden and planted them along with some annuals and other goodies. Irises are pretty hard to kill and sure enough they are looking pretty good right now and should have some nice flowers before long. As I was cleaning up the bed, I noticed that our Lantana's were coming back with little bits of green right at the ground. Also some Petunia's decided to go ahead and live through the winter so they should be nice also. After all was said and done, I thought the little bed cleaned up nicely. Now it's ready for something but I'm not sure what.

Another bed I cleaned out was one that I made almost four years ago. This bed has not really had much going on in it. I really like strawberries, and I wanted to grow some in this bed. I have tried every year to grow them and finally realized that it is probably too hot here for them to live through the summer so I think I'm going to give up on that. There are a few from last year that survived and are still alive although they don't look very healthy. Maybe they will come around and produce a few berries that we can enjoy. I'm not sure what I will put here. I might could put some tomato plants and maybe they would provide enough shade to protect the strawberries once they finished producing.

And finally I started working on the bed that I showed in my last posting that has been overun with weeds. I can already tell, this is going to be a tough one to maintain this year, but I am going to try to stay on it. As I was cleaning, I noticed that my crocuses were coming up. These make pretty little purple flowers but they haven't produced very well in this bed. We will see what happens this time.

Not yet! Wait!

It's all happening way to fast. I need a vacation so I can get some things done. Since I am a teacher, I will certainly enjoy the summer off, but I almost wish we had a late winter vacation so I could do some outdoor work. Right now the days are getting longer but by the time I get home from work, the sun is going down and I really don't have that much time to devote to outside chores. A perfect example is a little flower bed right beside our back porch. This was a bed that I created a couple of years ago. I put some daffodil and crocus bulbs and that's about it. Last Summer, I kind of just let it go and I have plans to clean it out this year and put some of my new little plants that are sprouting in the milk jugs. Well, I better hurry because my bulbs have begun to leaf out. I will probably just have to work around them the best that I can. I hope to do this bed in the next couple of weeks and then post some "after" pictures. The weather here lately has been just beautiful. We did have a close call a couple of nights ago when a strong storm came through very quickly. We didn't have any damage, but several people lost their lives in a little town by the name of Lone Grove OK. That's really not that far from us. It's just across the border and west just a bit. Our hearts and prayers go out to those people because they are really hurting right now. But, we do live in tornado alley and we expect this type of weather, just not usually this early in the spring.

Sprouts!

Well, I tried my hand at overwintering this year. I used my sisters tip about using milk jugs to create little greenhouses for planting seeds. I used 8 jugs and planting a different plant in each one.

I found a little area of the yard and also next to the house that seemed like a good place to put them. I followed my sisters tips as much as I could. I guess I did alright because I checked them yesterday and was surprised to see sprouts! Boy, now what?! I wasn't really ready for plants yet because I really don't have any place to put them. I guess what I will do is wait until they get a little bigger then transplant them to little pots. Fortunately, they are not all sprouting at the same time, so I won't have to do them all at once. That will give me some time I guess. The four that have sprouted are Coreopsis, Campanula Bellflower, Delphinium and Scabiosa. I was able to stick my camera up to the spout of the jug and get some pretty decent shots of the plants.

Here are pics of the little sprouts.
Grow little plants and pretend you don't depend on me for survival.

Spring Is Coming!

Most people use the little furry groundhog in Pennsylvania to forecast the coming of spring. If he sees his shadow, six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't, he stays out and spring is on its way. I however choose to use what I think is the more accurate means of forecasting.......Walmart!
That's right ladies and gentlemen, spring is right around the corner because our local Walmart has put out a lot of the lawn and garden supplies just ready to go. I can hardly wait. It's February 7 and I have actually worn shorts for most of the day today. It's really nice outside, but I don't know if I'm really ready for spring yet. I'm one who doesn't like the summer very much at all so I like to make sure that I am really tired of the winter cold. But since I saw the scene at Wally World, I guess I need to prepare myself. I didn't actually see it, but I bet somewhere there is still a row of Christmas items they still can't get rid of.

A Little Tour

Okay, so since I'm going to make this about gardening, I might as well put some pictures on here showing you a little of what I have so far. Some of these are random, but it will give you an idea of what I'm up against.

Last year for Mother's Day, I thought I would give Catherine a little flower bed she could call her own. I went and bought a few annuals and it wasn't long before we had what you see here. The bed actually worked out very well and produced a lot of good color throughout the season. My next plan is expand it a little further away from the house and longer maybe including some curves and such. A few of the plants that are in this bed are petunias, Iris (Catherine loves Irises and we got these from the neighbors yard), and you don't see it here, but we added a Lantana. That will be coming back and should be pretty. We are looking forward to see what the irises will do this year. This picture was taken toward the end of May last year.


This was a project that took some time. We have a propane tank next to our driveway and while I really don't mind the look of it, I decided to mask it with some kind of plant. I wanted an evergreen and the only one I could find for our area was Carolina Jasmine. I built a trellis and planted the plants. I didn't take long for one to take off and it's beautiful in the Spring. The other one seems to be stunted for some reason. I don't know if it's hit a rock or what. I planted both plants at the same time, so we will see what happens. When we moved in, there was no retaining wall around the tank, so I had to build that. That came out really nice and has worked well. That was my first retaining wall experiment.


And the last thing I will subject you to is a picture of my compost pile or piles. These are not really effective because I do not have a water source nearby and they don't get full sun all day. The composting process is rather slow. I built two because after a while, I will take the compost from one and transfer it to the other turning it to try to speed up the process. Anyway, I will add other images of my yard later.

So I've had this blog for some time now and really didn't have a purpose for it. I just wanted to create a blog to say, "I have a blog!" I just figured that was the thing to do. I've had it several years now, and have updated it very little. This morning, I was outside planting some onions in the garden and it hit me. Why don't I make it a gardening blog?! I love to work out in the yard and having 2.5 acres gives me plenty of yard to work on. I have many projects that I want to do and those that I need to do involving the yard and garden. I have lots of thoughts and this is as good a place as any to record them. I am by no means a professional gardener. In fact, most of the things I do are by trial and error. I don't really do much in the way of "experienced" gardening, so if you are reading this and hope to receive some powerful knowledge or tips on making your garden a showplace of color and aroma, just forget it.

That being said, i was stating earlier that I had planted some onions today. I thought you would like to see them. This is the earliest I have planted any vegetables and I thought I would go ahead and try even though it is the end of January. The other plants you will in these pictures are Buttercrisp lettuce (just the sound makes my mouth water) and cauliflower. I planted those last weekend and we had an ice storm last week with low temps hovering around 20 and so far it looks like they will survive.

For those of you who don't know, I live in far north central Texas, along the Red River. I'm at the southern end of zone 7 so it gets a little warm here in the summer. In fact, it's January 31 and the temp is about 70. Most everything I read seems like it was written for the northern half of the country. I think that's what a lot of my problem is. In the past I have planted things at what I think is the right time only to have my vegetables scorched by the end of June so I'm going to try a few things a little differently this time. Oh, I have had some victories and enjoyed the fruits of my labor, but it just doesn't seem to work as well as it should.

One Semester Gone!

Well, I made it through one semester of my first year of teaching. There were some rough times, but I have a lot of support and made relatively unscathed. I'm teaching 7th and 8th graders, so if I can handle them, I can handle anything the way I see it. I have discovered that I am going to have to find ways to keep my technology chops up while teaching very basic things to the students. I have found that if I don't stay on top of things in the tech world, it will quickly leave me behind. I just hope I can stay informed. Things are changing so quickly and there were many promising new gadgets at CES this year. I wish I could have gone, but I was able to hear about some cool new toys that I would certainly like to get my hands on. The new watch/cell phone really looks cool. It reminds me of Dick Tracy stuff. There is also a wireless computer keyboard that has a computer inside of it with a small touch panel. It's designed to work with your media system and supposedly will transmit a wireless HDMI signal to your big screen TV. I would love to test it out.

I'm a new teacher!

I am now an official teacher with a local school district. I will be teaching Middle School technology applications. I'm excited!

nbc5i.com - WeatherMap

nbc5i.com - WeatherMap

My First Post

I'm just starting and was wanting to see if this blog stuff was worth the time and effort.