Thursday, May 1, 2014

If The Ground Ever Thaws...

I received a seed catalogue in the mail yesterday!  And look at that fine specimen on the cover!

 
The new "SteakHouse Hybrid" tomato!  That thing is ridiculous!  Actually, I don't know what a person would do with such a tomato.  You would need a whole family of tomato eaters to eat one of those in a sitting.  Also, I don't know how the branches of the plant would support the weight.  I would like to see one on the vine.  You would need a scaffold to hold it up! 
 
I haven't had a chance to look thoroughly at the catalogue yet since I had some more pressing Internets business to take care of first and then Tessa, Miss "I only nap for twenty minutes", woke up from her nap.  She's on the floor right now, and getting mobile.  She doesn't crawl, but she can get around by rolling and creeping.  I am excited for the next milestone even though a crawling baby opens up a whole new set of challenges.  She seems like she is getting bored being in one place. 
 
Back to the catalogue, there are some new and interesting things that I haven't seen before in there, in addition to the SteakHouse tomato. 

 
This looks pretty fun!  It's corn that grows in a pot on your deck!  It seems kind of pointless though.  I have spent plenty of time around corn in a gardening capacity and also as a farm crop and I know that each plant only produces a few ears of corn.  I recently learned that, ideally, when grown as a crop, each plant should only produce one ear because if a second ear is on the plant it takes some of the resources and then both ears are kind of puny.  It is more productive to have one robust ear that gets all the nutrition.  Interesting!  Maybe I could be an extension agent!
 
I have a fantasy of one day having one of those mini greenhouses or a sunlamp in my basement or something where I would start seeds, both flowers and vegetables.  I don't think that will be happening anytime soon but it would be fun!  I read a good gardening tip in the newspaper a few weeks ago.  It was a way to reuse "K-cups" from single serve coffee makers.  The little cups are the perfect size for starting seeds! 
 
I ordered the catalogue to get some inspiration for landscaping around our house.  What is here is mediocre, overgrown, and not properly placed.  For example, there are some hosta plants in the back yard which bakes in the sun all day.  When we moved in they looked ill which of course they did because hostas are made for the shade.  The sides of the house are landscaped with overgrown dogwoods and spreading juniper, which Justin loathes and I could do without.  I hope our bulbs that we brought from the old house in pots survived the winter! 
 
Speaking of bulbs, check out his magical iris that I saw on Pinterest! 
Beautiful Shades of Teal Iris. I want to plant some of these in my yard.
Blue flowers are rare, and I couldn't imagine one more fascinating that this!  With my luck it probably only grows in zones 5-9.  Zone 4 can be limiting and the plants I am drawn to always seem to just miss zone 4!  It's like when I go to TJ Maxx and a certain bag catches my eye and I go look at it only to find out that it is an "ink tag bag" that is really expensive.  It's never the cheap, fake leather ones that I like! 
 
I really miss the old iris row from the old house.  There is some sad news from the old house...we heard from our realtor that they got water in their basement.  It is a surprise because we never had any water in that basement and there was no history of it happening. There was no lingering "damp basement" smell when we moved in and our inspection back in 2009 and their recent inspection did not reveal moisture issues down there. It is "clean up" week this week so everyone has thrown their junk on the berm and I couldn't stop myself from driving by there today and saw carpet and several trash cans full of something that was probably pieces of the wall by the street.  I wish it didn't bother me as much as it is.  I still feel attached to that place and I almost feel like I should be there to clean it up and take care of it.  Or maybe we could have stopped it (of course we probably couldn't have). 
 
Hopefully it will truly warm up (by that I refer to real warm, not half a$$ed spring warm) in a few weeks and we can work on the yard.  I can't wait to work on the landscaping and also plant my usual pots of annuals.  If anyone happens to have some nice bulbs that we can divide that would be nice since buying bulbs at the store is actually kind of expensive!  I'm sure an interesting iris bulb like the one above would cost several dollars for each bulb.  I would also like to get some peonies and maybe hydrangeas. 


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