Up, up, up!

The seeds from last weekend have started to sprout!  I suspect it's the basil that's popping up so eagerly, despite the snowstorms and our not-very-warm windowsill.  One small seedling pot is alive with little green duckbills and another seedling pot is showing some of those little bent white swan's necks that come before the leaves make their way out.  The second pot might be the chives, but I thought they took longer than that to sprout the first time.  

No sign of other things yet, but I'm not going to cover the pots because I am so encouraged by the dudes who haven't been coddled coming up that I think maybe we should be selecting un-coddled only.  

I have to say that one of the huge advantages of having started seeds last year (and let's be honest, in terms of impact in the garden, there wasn't much impact so it's a good thing I can see an advantage somewhere else) is that I now have a better understanding of which seeds behave in which way.  Knowing that coriander doesn't sprout much is useful.   The first garden we tried to grow included a planterful of coriander and when it failed, I thought the planter and the position and all was flawed.  Now I know that it's the coriander and I can put that planter back up and fill it with marigolds and it'll be fine.  Hooray!  

In other news, the pace of the leaf-yellowing in the new parsley seems to be reducing.  It's still happening, though. 

Winter gardening

I have been reading the marvellous blog Fast Grow the Weeds lately.   I was looking at it in the regular way of blogs starting in November, and then she posted something about how a snowy day made her happy and want to drink tea and bake bread.  That spoke straight to my soul.  So when I say I have been reading the blog lately, I don't mean that I've been checking it for updates.  I mean that I've gone back into the archives and read every single post she wrote.  For days, it's been keeping me occupied and, frankly, fantasizing.   

I dreamt that we got a greenhouse.  I have gone back to looking at the real-estate webpages seeking out possible gardening plots in the country.  These are both pure fantasy activities.  I don't drive, so a plot of land, even within an hour-long drive of my house in the city, is not of any practical use for gardening.  I would very much like to put a greenhouse and a bit of garden on our (flat) roof, but I don't have that kind of money sitting around at the moment, and even if I did, I am not sure that the foundations of our (120-130 year-old) house could support it.  

I'll allow myself to read the blog of someone who is actually making gardening a huge and significant portion of her life.  However, I'll remind myself that I am lazy and people who farm or garden for more than a pecadillo are the least lazy of all folks.  I will try to remember how much I ache after turning over half of my tiny flowerbeds.  I will dream on, but remember in my waking hours that I am the inconsistent gardener, and no more.  

Parsley update

The old parsley is fine and plentiful.  It's not quite plentiful enough to provide us with parsley for, say tabouli (which we're having for dinner tonight) but it'll do for a garnish pretty much every night.

The new parsley is in its new pots but still distressingly producing yellow leaves.  Or rather, its old leaves go yellow distressingly.

I don't know what it is.  I wonder if the folks at the market sold me a bum plant (gasp).  

No sign of seedlings in the other pots, of course.  I should cover over the pots to make 'em greenhouse-y.  

Winter Indoor Gardening (with apologies to my father)

I did, finally, get around to re-potting the boughten parsley.  I suspect that it's an old, old plant.  It's got positively carrot-like roots beneath.  There were a few plants squished in together and growing into each other, which I ruthlessly cut apart.  There was nothing for it.  They couldn't be expected to keep going as they were.  The leaves on the sprigs were going brown at a quite alarming rate, which I took to mean that there just wasn't enough room for the roots.  

Anyway, I spread the new parsley around and as I did so, I looked at my culinary herb seeds and decided that there would be absolutely no harm in giving them a go.  So, I popped a few seeds in a few pots (including some in the parsley pots) and hopefully in a couple of months we'll have a healthy indoor garden.  

We got rid of everything but the parsley we had before now because it had acquired little friends.  I suspect the mint was really to blame.  There were insidious little webs all over the bottoms of the leaves.  Let's hope the new batch do better.   The seeds were: basil (which did amazingly well in tiny pots), coriander (which barely germinated at all when the seeds were new, so I don't know what I think will happen this time), chives (also not keen to come up), and mint (which I think took a long time, but then did come up before I neglected them and they all died).  

My plan is to put some of the annuals outside when the summer comes.  The mint is most definitely destined for the outside.  I have a dream of putting mint in the difficult little triangle to the left of our front door.  I think a nice-smelling, aggressive as all get out plant will be just right for that sad patch.  I'll even spread out some compost for it.  But not much!  I don't want its roots to break through the house foundations.  

For shame

I'm using the blog as a motivator (I hope):  I got a parsley plant on Saturday with which I intend to supplement the old one.  The old one is such a success that I'm starting to feel bad about harvesting its stalks ... only a few junior ones remain.  Anyway, I need to put the new one in a proper-sized pot (or two) and that apparently will only happen if I give myself a good kick in the pants.  

*kick*

The Nick of Time

Yesterday's industriousness came just in the nick of time.  Last night we had a generous dollop of snow.

The work of yesterday was to take this

and this (front yard)

and this (side yard)

and turn it into this (front yard)

and this (side yard).

The work of mother nature last night was to take that and turn it into this (front)

and this (side).  

The blizzard was what the weatherman calls a "classic nor'easter".  We can tell that because our front walk is cleared by the howling wind and our side walk gets a drift to make up for it.  The houses across the street got drifts on their front walks and they have beautiful (dramatic) cakes of snow all over the fronts of the houses, too.  

There is a certain magic encapsulated in those photographs which is not obvious to the casual observer, but in the days before we had blow-in insulation, snow never built up against the side of the house.  It would always melt for a few inches around the perimeter.  For me, there are few more trenchant illustrations of how wonderfully effective the insulating has been.  (Of course, the 15% reduction in our oil use is nice, too.... probably it will be an even greater reduction this winter because we've done a little more sealing and we're not keeping the house as warm as we did last year.)

The sweary one's brother came over yesterday and saw the lovely corkscrew tree trunk and was clearly appalled.  "What happened to your tree?"  We tried to explain, but I think that as a non-gardener he left perplexed.  I hope the boughs are doing good service protecting the following from the perils of the wind and snow.  I'm also hoping that the darkness will convince them (finally) to give it a rest.  There are an awful lot of little shoots popping out of the dirt.

Last, but not least, let's hope 2009 is a good year filled with good growth.  

Midwinter activity

Yesterday, I gave myself a disgusting blister which popped before I even noticed it (ugh) while ruthlessly snipping the xmas tree to bits.  I have to admit that I liked the bushiness of the tree on the lot; I thought it would provide plenty of ground cover for the winter months.  

The side yard and front yard continue to be distressingly full of little (and not-so-little) green shoots from the bulb planting in October.  I am hoping that a bit of shelter will keep things from dying too spectacularly over the next few months.  I think that the real danger is not so much the deep winter (which the plants are pre-programmed to cope with) as it is the periodic misleading thaws.  The poor bulbs get tricked into thinking it's spring when there will be another foot of snow at least.  I get tricked, too. 

Anyway, now I have a big pile of boughs where once there was a christmas tree and it's time for me to do the only wintertime gardening I know how to do.  

The now bare tree trunk, by the way, is lovely.  It corkscrews upward in a most elegant fashion.  The sweary one and I agree it's really quite beautiful and we're going to leave it in situ until the city collection day.