Category: Gardening (Page 5 of 156)

Soft Food and Plant Pots

January 14, 2024 / Brad / 2 Comments

My dentist said I should eat soft foods for the next week, so when I went to my usual breakfast diner and ordered my usual breakfast, I skipped the bacon and hash browns, which are both kind of crunchy.

Later in the day, I went to a Mexican restaurant. My current favorite dish is tamales. I wasn’t disappointed. And it was soft 🙂

I went to a few shops yesterday. One of them was a Homegoods store. They have spring stuff out already, and that includes plant pots. Yay! I love pots!

I found some I liked. And they were so cheap!

And then I found myself in the neighborhood of another Homegoods store. They had the same pots, but even larger. But they weren’t as cheap. Ugh. Should I get them? I really liked them, but it was kind of a chunk of money.

Then I remembered… I had some Christmas cash from my mom. Yay! Thanks for the new pots, Mom!

The second ones are so big! I love them! Check out the comparison with my foot for scale:

Fun Final Day

January 7, 2024 / Brad / 2 Comments

Yesterday was my last day of vacation since I’ll be working at school all day today, and it was a GREAT day.

I started by getting a massage. My trainer said it might help with a chronic soreness in my arm I’ve been having. It did help that a little, but it REALLY helped me feel relaxed. I will definitely be doing it again.

While I was in the part of town the massage place was, I drove past a garden center I’d never been to. I stopped of course.

It was really nice and had a great selection of plants, especially succulents.

When I got home, I took a nap, then cleaned and straightened some things at my house. While I was cleaning, I was reminded of a litter box placement that Beth suggested for my mom, but that I want to do for myself – to put the litter box in the garage.

It’s been in the laundry room / mudroom area, but Bruno tracks litter. If it’s in the garage, I can just sweep all the tracked litter outside. But Bruno hasn’t been allowed in the garage up to this point, so he is unfamiliar with it. Last night, I let him in.

He loved it! He kept going in the garage, then running around the house, then going back in. I left the door open so he could get acquainted with the new area. After a while, I’ll move the litter box in.

Oh – and there was a gorgeous sunset last night. What a great day!

Faux Fungus

January 6, 2024 / Brad / 1 Comment

When I was doing my garden center visits on Wednesday, I saw some ceramic mushrooms. They’re for putting in your garden, or in your plant pots, depending on what size you get. I got the tiniest size, and I put it in a pot that already sort of looked like a fairy garden.

My realtor gave me this plant when I moved into my house. I had already re-potted it in a bonsai planter, and included the rocks that came with it. Since it already kind of looked like a miniature scene of a tree, I added the mushrooms.

Plants and Panic and Plants

January 4, 2024 / Brad / 1 Comment

I went to school yesterday so I could do some work. Worship planning used up all my concentration energy, so the school stuff would have to wait for another day. I went home, and as I walked to the front door, I admired my freesias. They’re getting bigger!

My irises are sprouting too:

There’s a plant I’ve been admiring, but could never bring myself to get, because it was expensive. It’s called geogenanthus ciliatus. It has big, fleshy, shiny leaves that are black with a purple midrib. It’s weird and wonderful. My mom gave me some money for Christmas, and I decided I will use it to get a geogenanthus. Yay!

I’ve seen it several times at my favorite garden center, but that was a while back. Would they still have it? I went to the nearest location, and they were out, so I decided to go to a different location.

…but before I could head there, I had to stop back at school. Had I turned off the space heater under my desk? I couldn’t just leave it on…. Ack!

It was off. Whew!

On to the second location of the garden center! They were out too. So I checked a third location. Nope. Dang. But yay! I have a proper Quest! Woo hoo!

I did get a consolation prize though. At the second place I stopped at, I saw a colocasia ‘Black Coral’. I was so excited, because I had grown one of those on my balcony in Maui. I got it!

It looks raggedy now, but I’ll pot it when things warm up, and it will grow into a beautiful specimen.

Working and Warmth

December 10, 2023 / Brad / 3 Comments

Yesterday was a productive day. I started out in the morning just looking to get a weeding tool. I’m not sure what this tool is called, but I had one in Baltimore and used it all the time. It’s great because it gets under the roots of the weeds and gets them out for good.

After weeding, I worked in the garage a bit, but I didn’t take any pictures. It’s much nicer in there than it was. Then I potted some plants I’ve been meaning to get outside. They need full sun. They are three kinds of succulents that I’ve put in one pot. I like how they look:

I will write their names out here, so I have a record of them in the memory archive:
Sedeveria ‘Jet Beads’
Sedum adolphi ‘Shooting Stars’
Sedum ‘Aurora’/ Sedum rubrotinctum

While I was working outside, my next-door neighbor saw me and invited me to a party they were having last night. A bunch of their friends were getting together to have snacks and sing Christmas songs.

It was fun to meet some new people and to get to know my neighbors better. I’m so glad I went.

I was also excited to see the fire thingies that Lauren has talked about. They were on the tables as heat sources. I thought that if she was at the party, she would have been so excited! They even had a big bucket of pellets and a box of wood chunks to feed into the fire pots.