This extraordinary cold

Got a closer look at the peas in the yard--which I had thought were probably freeze-dried in this extraordinary cold--and they actually seem to still be alive!! Now I wish I had planted tons more. It was an experiment, you know? The weeds were sprouting exuberantly and I thought, well surely there must be some equally hardy veggies, peas and lettuces at least, right? But I had NO IDEA the polar vortex would be this brutal. Monday night the low is going to be -11 F (temp conversion says -23.89 C), and that's a record low for us. Normally February is forty degrees F warmer, hovering right around freezing for the nights and a good ten degrees (F) warmer during the day. 

Be interesting to see if the plants in my little greenhouse have survived at all. You can bet this winter is going to inform what and when I plant next winter!!

In the house, tomatoes have the teeeeensiest true leaves showing, sweetpeas are vining, and zukes have one true leaf apiece, the biggest no larger than my thumbnail. Poppies are thread-like and seem to have needed tons more light than they're getting. The kitchen is currently the brightest place in the house because of all the lights. Strawberries and snapdragons remain compact, and such a bright green. Salad mix isn't doing as well as I had wished, lanky, fading, but opening true leaves here and there. Probably past time to plant the fast-growing part of the salad mix.

Transplanting and the Polar Vortex

Hi! I haven't been here in a week because I haven't been able to garden. I did manage to buy a small growlight (LED) and I've clamped it on my kitchen dishrack (which is a two level over-the-sink rack). The seedlings get some light every day now, not ideal, but the best I can manage--and the dishes get washed at night after the seedlings go back to the top of the fridge.

The Costata Romanesco squash is vigorous and exuberant, roots coming out everywhere, so tonight I repotted them into giant styrofoam drink cups--nothing like recycled and free! It's a good thing I only started three squash plants, sheesh. Hope the cups will do them for a couple weeks. We did have to laugh when we saw all the roots poking out of the sides of the toilet paper cores! They won't be able to do that with the cups, but they will have five times the soil.

Sweetpeas have to get potted up next, because their roots are coming out the bottom of the tubes already.

I think I may be saving toilet paper and paper towel cores permanently now, because that was the easiest potting up I've ever done--just lifted the whole thing into the cup and filled around the tube with wet potting soil. I do have sixpacks coming, but there's no obligation to use them all or to use them exclusively. They'll be quite convenient for carrying seedlings to other gardens and I can keep using the cores here.

The polar vortex has called a precipitate halt to my outdoor plans. I'm not safe walking through uneven snow, so I can't get to the greenhouse and that means my plans to bring seedlings inside have come to naught. So now we are having a big experiment: will lettuce and pea seedlings survive two weeks frozen solid? They do fine at freezing, but how will they do in single digit frozen nights when the wind chills are below zero? Luckily I have plenty of seeds, right? I was going to succession plant anyway, but I tell you what, if these seedlings survive the bitter cold, I am definitely gonna save seeds from them and plant it again! Polar vortexes come 6 to 8 times a decade so plants which are hardy enough to survive them will be a treasure!

Viney, viney

Imagine my shock, dear reader, after my rainy blog post when I went out and discovered every plant sitting in scads of water----EXCEPT for my butternut sqash, wilting away in a DRY pot. I thought sure I would lose it then, yanno? I soaked it, but I thought sure I would lose it.

Guess what?

The garden yesterday, July 14th. That squash wilts every day from the intense sunlight, and comes back every evening... and to think I wondered fretfully if it would get any sun at all!! No more doubts about that, sheesh!

I fertilized again yesterday, along with the daily water. Everything seems to be pretty happy.

Especially this...

Sorry for the blurry pics, btw, twas windy enough that I'm lucky I got any pics. Anyhow, this is a pic of the weeds in perspective, zooming out of their four inch pot next to a tall 12 inch pot. I guess it's time to screw up all my courage and my taste buds too, and find out what amaranth tastes like. Or maybe I'll let it bloom and set seed--I already know I like the seeds, since I've bought them at a health food store in the past.

I'm thinking that might be the smart way to go, since I am not certain sure this really IS amaranth. Where the heck would it have come from? I haven't seen it anywhere around here, and that was brand new potting soil in that pot... was it in my herb seed packet? The herbs certainly didn't bother to sprout in that pot... but amaranth in bloom is unmistakable, so when it blooms I will know for certain what it is.

Alas, alas, this is what's left of the mulberry at the back fence after the city scalped it. Tis only knee high now and is sure to bush out even more now, ripe for future scalping. I bought some pruning shears and will have to gradually prune it back into a tree--taller this time, so no one is tempted to reduce it again.

Of course, I don't have much room to talk.....

.......scalpmint....... it is now sitting under a butternut leaf. A new pot is planned for this one over the weekend... but um, seems hardly necessary, eh? *wry smile* Hard to believe that plant was a good ten inches high and ever so lush when I bought it...

Lil punkin and the big bully! In this pic you can see the purslane is filling the pot nicely, the basil is taking hold and expanding a lil at the right hand side of the pot, and the punkin seedlings are reeeeeeeeaching for the sunlight--but will the butternut share? Or is it a big, big bully? Stay tuned, for the saga will surely be documented in breathlessly annoying detail; I'm worse than a grandmother with new grandbabies! *snaps open wallet and scads of pics unfold* lol! Okay, not really, but I feel that way! *grin*

Viney exuberance... ahhhh, life is good! *wink* We'll see if the eggplant can out-compete the butternuts, lol...

I really DO need more pots. Tis time for the next batch of green beans, and those snake gourd seeds are whispering my name... they LIKED the books I've been reading.... *eyebrow waggle* Plus yanno, the mint will need more water than it can get in a four inch pot if I want it to thrive.

On the art/crafting front, I'm still reading library books, but last night I spent a little time working on that crocheted Starwheel motif. I'm through the worst of it and back into the fast and interesting part, so I'm hoping to have a pic of it by the weekend. I still cannot spend much time on it because of the fineness of the thread; it taxes my eyes and my hands alike now, but I am determined to persevere!

I also spent some time working on Gryph's amulet bag. I closed up the bottom of it and am putting on the first of the fringe. It still has thread ends dangling everywhere and I'm not certain they're long enough to hold much in the way of fringe beads, but it's okay because I'm pretty wild with my fringe anyhow--here! I can show you an example of my fringes, and you might see why it takes me so long to finish one bag. *wink*

I made this bag several years ago for a friend and it's pretty typical of the way I work. The fringe on Gryph's bag might not be quite so full, but it will have the same kind of exuberant look to it.

That bag always has been one of my favorites; I designed it from scratch.

Happy summering, and here's hoping you find great joy and beauty in little things today, like the vine on a squash or the fringe on a bag--or even in your memories of things you've done.

Wouldja look at that!

Better than I expected, better than I dared to dream! Look at that butternut squash!

Of course, watering it like I did brought the rain two days early this week *blink, blink* and I'm seriously beginning to wonder just what is going on here... lol! Hey, this time I didn't even fertilize!

Something else really likes the rain....

Say hello to amaranth. You can see that it took a huge gulp of water and just, well, expanded! I wish I could get basil to grow like that! And no, I'm not going to pull the weeds; they're very nearly as nutritious as purslane and I've been wishing for years that I could have a chance to try them and see what they taste like. Now I have a chance!

True leaf time! First off, the punkins at the back of the purslane pot--and those droplets you see are rain; I snuck out between showers to get these pics.

The seedlings in the eggplant pot seem to be catching up with the seedlings in the pepper pot now. Maybe the difference is sunlight? The shade comes in gradually from south to north, and gets to the eggplant first.

Then we have this exciting lil development--a pepper blossom! Wooohooo!

Last but not least at ALL--check this out--new growth on the butternuts. Can you imagine? On the 7th, nearly dead, on the 8th, burgeoning new growth?! Like I said, beyond all my expectations!

I'll get back to art postings soon; I've been reading a lot lately while I wait for my wrists to settle back down. The Friends of the Library store had three issues of a magazine called Belle Armoire that I am enjoying right now; inspiration on every page.

thinning lettuce

Dawn asked about thinning lettuce. You do it because you were profligate--one might even say exuberant--and you sowed the seed with wild abandon, so that the lil seedlings have no room to grow. See how they are all smushed together under the squash seedlings? And you do it as soon as they are big enough to go on a cheese sandwich *eyebrow waggle* which means about as long as alfalfa sprouts. I just pulled out small clumps of them from all over the pot, washed and dried them and put them on my sandwich--roots and all.

I have to say though... I wish it were the spinach I had been exuberant with, because lettuce thinnings sure don't have much flavor! Well, maybe as they grow they'll get more. I'll certainly have to thin them repeatedly until the last plants have room to grow to full-size.
And yes, the squash needs thinned also... but I am reluctant to do so because I think that multiple plants might offer me a chance to get squash despite the squash vine borers, which I found out were bad in this area. Of course, I didn't find this out until after I bought and planted the squash seed. *wry smile*

It's coming on time for fertilizer. Everything has stopped growing (or slowed drastically) and I suspect that means whatever nutrients were in the potting soil have been used up now. My fingers are crossed that I can find something natural (or even organic!) at the hardware store.