Reporting In

So here I am in FL, and pleased to report, that the garden has a tender!  Mom is doing a wonderful job keeping the babies well tended and growing happy as clams.  The transplanted sunflowers have even made it passed a week of life now and I'm so happy!  There were three babies, but only two made it, but that's better than nothing!  She's even sent pictures to show us all how wonderful they were doing!  That picture is the weekend that I left, and the one on the right is as of last night! You can see the two tiny baby sunflowers in the bottom left corner!  The bud below is from the sunflower that towers over the shoulder of my momma now, and she reports it as a 2 inch in diameter, golfball shaped bud.  Hopefully it doesn't bloom until I get home on Sunday!

The elephant ear has grow exponentially! From the tiny bud in the last post, to a two pronged leaf baring beauty! Soon it might get taller and I simply can't wait. There are so many growing things that she has had to send over 9 pictures last night to cover all the bases!  And apparently last night she potted the picasso petunias, the tequila sunrise petunias, and weeded! The picasso's you can't really tell, but they have purply pink flowers, with lime green tips! They are beautiful! You never know what you might find! She added some other plants but I can't quite make out what they are but there's also some spikeys!

Its the neatest thing ever.  The dill, and the lavender are yet to be close uped, but I saw some yellowing on the dill's lower branches but mom said that was from a few days in between where she couldn't make it.  It will recover and hopefully get nice and strong and big! I love the dill, its so fluffy! And for those of you that keep up on the garden progress and knew the marigolds were just starting to recover right before I left... I have a picture for you!!!!!

WHOOT! WHOOT!  More to come!!!!

From your loving gardener in the forever spring!

-Tine!

P.S.

Guess who's growing! (Mom found him while culling at home!

Mantids, Mantids, Mantids

So ladies and gentlemen, today was Emma's 7th birthday. Happy birthday to my little sister and another great year of her pestering adorable self. It was a hectic but great day and in amidst the revelry there was another mantid sighting! I believe it is Zeus, however, there is a heavier green to this mantis than the last. It still has the same ye stripe that Zeus had though so until we see mutli-mantids at the same time. I knew I said I'd have flower pictures for you, but rather more mantids! The lavender I have to say has grown quite healthily and after viewing Nicky's garden and her happy little sprouts, I have to say that mine aren't doing too terrible. I think the growing season is quite overheated this year. Everything at Chris and Kelly's house has seemed to be stunted as well as everything here. The only thing that appears to be doing well is the potted lavender plant that has grown a huge and healthy proportions in the direction of up!

Over all it has been well and good and on Monday I will get the remaining things at work cleaned up and take some pictures of the rapidly growing sunflowers, despite the fact that all the sprouts failed to rise.

I also went out of my way to watch a documentary on bugs the other day that follows the life cycle of a caterpillar and a mantis. Its quite interesting and very factful! Great to watch. Its called the Fascinating life of Bugs! Narrated by the same woman that plays the elemental in the Chronicles of Riddick. It's a great watch that I recommend. Next research project! Onion propagation.

ZEUS!

Ladies and gentlemen! We have Mantids! For those of you who weren't reading beforehand, last summer we had three mantids come to our stoop. One was a rather hefty Ms. Mantis, who I might add, was a wonderful lime green shade and spend most her time eating insects of my plants. A grand thing to have. A few weeks after Ms. Mantis there were others! A boy, who was significantly smaller than she was though a matching green, and a small young boy mantis who was a flashy brown with green steamline marks. It appears that the brown mantis, hereby designated Ulysses, was the successor because his wee little one who was spotted for the first time today on our stoop, is BROWN!

He was discovered by Emma, who came into the room in a rush sputtering she'd found a baby. She thought at first glance that he was perhaps a baby mosquito, but that she was almost certain he was a mantis. I immediately grabbed my camera and came outside to discover him CAPTURED! He was on our stood by the nook one leg trapped in the spiders web. No spider to be seen I attempt to remove him when there was A SHOWDOWN!

We have named him Zeus! P.S. Our plants from the church fundrasier has come in! Proven Winners the lot. Planting will commence tomorrow. Tomorrow I will get Lavender, Sunflower, and Basil pictures so you can all see the progress they have made.

More Mantis!

okay so I was reading about the manits, and apparently the bigger ones are females and the smaller ones are males so what we thought was Mr. Matis is in fact a lady, and she has grown huge as you can see from last nights post, BUT! A new matis has arrived on scene. A Mr. Mantis! And he is much smaller than her and brown colored. Very cool. He's on the window hehehee. I wonder how they get another mantis from miles away to notice them?