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!

The Elephant in the Room

Another good day today! Just another documentation of how big the sunflowers are getting. Mr. Bean is only just 4 years old, and it is now over his head. I can't wait until it gets bigger. This of course is the largest of the sunflowers and the others are rising slowly now that I've been watering for almost a half hour straight each day. It appears to be helping! There's some real progress in the garden, despite thinking they were getting a bit tired, they weren't! The sunnies are growing, the elephant ear emerged, and the marigolds are starting to make a whole new round of flowers now that they are coming back from the desert weekend. So exciting! With high hopes I say these just may make the summer!

The Upcoming Week

Plans! So as of Saturday my little Emma and myself are going to Florida, so there is some things to do in the gardens before I get on my way. Firstly, the potted garden on the stoop will be in the charge of mom and it is growing quite nicely. As thus. This one came back from a devastating event of some bratty kid kicking it over and having the flower snap off. Now its got tons of flowers and is getting more and more healthy by the day. Sooooo exciting! The lavender has also grown in very nice proportions. it use to be quite week appearing after getting trimmed and I wasn't certain that it was what was suppose to be done despite what I'd been told. Trimming at that age seemed bad, but NOW! Now we have a beautiful healthy plant, so its obvious it was good advice. This one is doing much better than the one at Chris and Kelly's. But for whatever reason it is probably something about soil that's causing the plants not to grow as well as I would have hoped. Nothing is really growing with much vigor there except for the sunflowers that are 2nd generation and planted themselves. As far as they go we'll have them watered and tended while I'm gone and hopefully this week I'll get the remaining trees rid of. Hopefully more to come!

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.

Solve for Happiness

I do love flowers, and this is why. Can you even stop looking away from these? Half open chives! And our butterfly friends!

Today we spent the day doing things good for us. I mean health wise! I started the day by weighing myself, already down to 154.3 which is grand. I am very pleased because I have been working quite hard. Emma and I went for a run this morning, followed by a second run and then that was followed by something that was even better. FLOWER SHOPPING! SOoo!!! I have gotten everything I need for going to garden tomorrow. It was fun. I mean I had a bunch of fun doing it because it was with my mom and I enjoy shopping with mom. We got a flat of marigolds, daisies, a sweet basil (which is going to be living on my front step), and mom got some bulbs of something for the edging. Anyway! Its very exciting because as of tomorrow I will be finally removing the stupid trees that have been occupying the side of the driveway. I'm also going to get the bush finished as well! Yup things are looking up. Thank goodness

Recovering

Alright! So today was not my best day, but that doesn't mean I can't think of something to make the day better and guess what... I have just the thing to do it. This morning was not one of my better moments and I think I have dishonored myself in the face of my employers for it, but hopefully, because they are such great people, they won't hold it against me. Either way, in an effort to drag myself from this ridiculous rut I decided that it was time I went to Nicky's and did some gardening. Her garden is less mine and more of just a relaxing place to sit while I planted sunflowers into the seed plugs she gave be for my birthday. 2 rows of Sunspots, 2 rows Dwarf Incredible, 2 rows Teddy Bears, AND 2 rows of Mammoth Russians. That's a lot more sunflowers than I should be allowed to even touch in one day, but I have already plugged them and as of tomorrow we will be on the look out for the babies so they can be put in the garden and Chris and Kelly's. I do love sunflowers. I wish I was one. I also trimmed the chives, which will soon go in the book! Found the lavender from last year has sprouted and begun making flowers, and transplanted basil and the mystery plant that I had in one of the seed plugs. Butterflies were making their appearance today as well. I think in an effort to feel better, tomorrow i will document all the photos down and make a photo entry to show how bright the world is. I have to say, he made everything beautiful. I just have to look out my window.