There are still photos, of course

Lavandula stoechas, aka Spanish lavender. It has really nifty little flowers on a spiked inflorescence.


Because, you know, I do have plenty of flowers to have fresh cut flowers at home....


...and getting fresh cut flowers from your own garden (in my case, that I grew from SEEDS) is possibly one of the most fulfilling tasks ever.


The start of the pea shelling process (I have a mound of pea pods, now I shall convert them to peas). I was worried that since these peas ARE past their growing season that their yield / quality might be compromised, but they turned out really good! Don't these look good? I think they look good.


Columbines, which I've grown for two years, from seeds, and I'm convinced they will NEVER flower.

Yet another possible side project

While cleaning up I found a package of rose seeds extracted from rose hips that dad's found at the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden. He has no idea what roses they came from. I have no idea what roses they came from. In most cases the seeds will not be true to the parent anyway, but I do have the seeds. I'm thinking I might try to germinate them spring quarter (takes about four to five weeks) and grow whatever germinates out, just to see what I get. Of course this means ziplocked-bag-in-the-fridge and so on (rose seeds need to be stratified), but I have the seeds, so why not, right?

My flatmates have put up with bunches of dried plants in the apartment already, oh the joys of living with a plant person...

Finem

There! I think I'm finally caught up on all the yard work. Theoretically so long that my parents remember to water all the newly transplanted plants for one to two weeks everything should be set. For a while, at least. Not counting any seedlings I'll be putting in as the quarter goes along and (hopefully) everything germinates in order.

The plant photos will last a few more days, methinks:


My clump of strawberry that's actually three strawberries that didn't manage to spread out. They tried, you see, but the soil was so hard around that area that without preparation before hand they can't really put their roots down anywhere that didn't have roots growing already (to break up the soil for them).


Pink amaryllis plants at the corner of the plot with the sweet peas. These are the ones that came in a grocery bag during BIS 101 last year (spring quarter) when one of the girls brought them in to give them out for free. There were a bunch left at the end of the class so the girl told me to take two, and so I did and here they are!

The butterfly iris in the back is a seedling that's germinated from seeds scattered beside a parent plant at the side of the Starbucks that's by Ranch 99. The seedling was about two inches tall when I brought it home wrapped in a tissue. I've had it since junior high, I think, and it's finally big enough to start flowering either this year or next year.


Front-left: One lonely green onion left. The rest I pulled up and was used with the chicken, which was very good, by the way.
Rest: Garlic, result of the clove that I took home from last year, when Kate told me I can either throw it away or grow it.


My giant laundry detergent bucket full of...random plants. The thing up front (poking out of the side) with the lobed leaves is parsley. Italian parsley, I think. It is HUGE. There is this thing with me and giant plants, I think, with the dill, the radish-tree, and such.


Top of the sweet peas on their trellis. I wonder what will happen if they go over the fence (they are running out of trellis).

Replants

Finishing moving all the plants that need to be moved and, on mom's order, pulled up all the peas. There is a pea harvest (there'll be a peas photo soon, I promise). Still no sign of the promised rain. With my luck the rain that is supposed to come yesterday will probably come on Saturday.

I encountered many snails today and a lot of them have a disturbingly soft shell (as in I can dent them like elastic soft plastic by pressing them lightly between my thumb and index finger). Similarly to the case with the pill bugs, I have either found another variation on the harder-shelled snails or this is another indicator about the soil content. In which case it might be the soil is acidic. I really don't know -- I'm talking off of the top of my head here. We never did a soil indicator type test in the backyard, though we also don't need one of those to know that the soil there isn't really suitable for crops.

Now for more photos:


My contained mint. The container has pebbles at the bottom and no drainage holes, so the mint, unless it starts sending out runners and rooting from the stem like strawberries (which it may actually do if I let it run wild for long enough without pinching), is completely non-invasive now.


Calla lily blooming! (Two more are coming up today.) They're really that white when the sun shines down on them. There's something very elegant about the plant, don't you think?


My peas on their cornstalk and string support, which have collapsed because I don't own garden tape, and the regular string breaks down fairly fast when exposed to the elements.
There are lots of weeds because, of course, I'm the only one who weeds so they tend to build up whenever I'm away for any continuous periods of time.


A shot of the other part of the yard (no it isn't a particularly large yard). Going from the nearest to the furthest away in the photo we have: radishes, garlic and onions, my random potted plants and mom's other Dracaena tree (that she got from OSH something like four years ago), peas that have mostly fallen off of their corn-stalk supports, mint, chrysanthemum 'butterfield', alyssum, rose, and calla lillies.
(The last three are against the wall, I don't know how well you can see them, but they're there.)


The is the lavender bush by the corner of the yard (and a bit of the plant-eating geranium).

Blue pill bugs

I was transplanting some stuff today and had to pull up the poppies that have turned somewhat invasive. As I was hauling that bundle of plant matter away I noticed these little blue round things on the ground and my first thought was "hey, blue ceramic beads" except then I realized that those things don't just show up randomly like that. Then I bent down to look at them closer and one of them uncurled. It was almost surreal: a cobalt blue rolypoly unfurling and waving its pale violet legs in the air. I took photos because, you know, BLUE pill bugs. The ones I've seen are either black or some shade of grey. I'll upload the photos eventually but meanwhile I'm left to contemplate whether or not I've just discovered a different kind of pill bugs or if the isopod shell color is a reflection of soil mineral concentration and, if that's the case, does this mean that I have too much copper in the soil?

Now, back to your regular scheduled programming of more plant photos:


Poppies in the backyard! These are the ones that I pulled up today.


The place with the poppies, which also have invasive alyssums, sort of invasive lavender, and very invasive geranium (the one that ate my daffodils). They're there in the back, see? This is the area that I'm transplanting stuff to.


My little home-made germination kit. The number of shrink-wrap-topped containers have doubled since when I last took this photo.


Grape hyacinth that mom's afraid she'll kill and so I ended up with it.


Random Dracaena plant that parents picked up from a garage sale somewhere.

Huge photo post

Finally got around to taking photos of all the stuff in my backyard (before I completely tear it up and prep it for the new plants, heh) and so here they are:


My pot of golden pothos (or is it porthos?) with a...a volunteer trifolium growing that I didn't bother to pull out. It's not too invasive yet and they look nice together.


Cacti, this is how big they get after two years if you're growing them from seed. (In case you're wondering: the thing in the center is a toothpick. A regular normal sized toothpick. It is taller than the cactus that you can see -the other one kinds of blend into the dirt.)


Something that might be a type of begonia but then again might not be. Picked up by mom at a garage sale and needs trimming, which I did after this photo's taken.


Mikey! Bigger every time I get home. We can have a photo diary going, I think.


Oh yeah, and the sweet peas have finally started blooming. Unfortunately they don't smell, and I have no idea why.

Huh

Blog has been slightly glitchy lately and I've had a few problems the last two times I've tried to post. I guess it's too much to expect all my logs to be updated constantly. In any case, at least relative dating is still allowed and so in practice, anything within the week's range isn't too bad.

Germinated lately: thyme. Except they're dying because the soil that's suitable for germination is too water-logged for the seedlings, and my room moisture content isn't high enough for the seedlings to adjust to by themselves immediately. I'm trying to figure out how to go about gradually decreasing the moisture level at a rate that is greater than the rate of seedling dying because the moisture is too high but less than the rate that'll cause the seedlings to go "OMG WATER. NEED. WATER."

I'm...working on it.

Feverfew (#2) have started germinating. They face the same problem, I think, so we'll see how this works out.

Garlic chives (#2) are growing well so far. They're in terracotta pots which apparently leaks water like you wouldn't believe, so they don't germinate as well but a greater percentage of them seem to stay alive afterwards.

My coleus plant exist. They don't seem to be doing all that much growing right now. I think it's the root establishment stage, but ...are coleus annuals or perennials? I forget.

Forget-me-nots are alive and well. Milk cartons suffer less problems than the plastic ones, it seems, and retains moisture better than terracotta. Or maybe it's just because forget-me-nots are naturally moisture loving plants and so can cope better.

The columbines are FINALLY germinating. I feel like cheering, except I don't know how many of them can stay alive in the milk container. They're also relatively moisture loving, so hopefully they'll be fine. Mostly I think I'll keep my fingers crossed, because I've dealt with this cultivar before and some cultivars are more finicky than others.

Nope, no photos. Don't you know that the finals are approaching?

But I forgot my camera

I went home this weekend but, since this is sort of an off-schedule trip I more or less didn't bring my camera, so there's no photos of the backyard this time.

Things are doing fairly well though. Well, some of them.

I picked off two more tomatoes from the tomato plant that Annie gave me last spring, but this is officially the end of the tomato plant, methinks. There are still peas. There will always be peas, I'm convinced, and I've decided to enjoy it because most of the other crops are affected by the soil quality and so don't taste that good but peas? You can't tell at all. So peas peas peas. I will grow them again this year too. Provided that the ones from last year dies sometimes before the end of this year.

The storm that blew over last weekend had knocked over the support for the peas and sweet peas. Although the peas are planted on empty ground (using my old corn stalks that I've left in as support, heh), the sweet peas had a row of marigolds in front of them, and so when the support collapsed the peas sort of sprawled down and ate them. By "ate" I mean "bloodlessly demolished", by which I mean that when I finally retied them this weekend there's only one and a half (the half being one that's dying) marigold plants left, the rest having been smothered by sweet peas (no sunlight = death, also the damp underside tends to lure the snails).

I am sad. I wonder if I can trade up for more marigolds, though I think I'll go for the pot marigold this time. Even though it's not a true marigold (despite of the name) the color's within the spectrum, which is all that mom cares about, and it's hardier than the French dwarf specimen that got eaten by the peas.

The sweet peas and the lavender have just started blooming. I'm disappointed by the sweet peas because they don't smell, and I got the Renee seeds that are -- and I've checked -- supposed to smell. I wonder what I did wrong. Any suggestions?

The radish needs pulling. I don't think my parents will pull it, so maybe we can get radish trees again this year.

Aside from tying up the sweet peas and picking off a bunch more mint (anyone want mint? I've a lot) I didn't get to do much else at the garden this weekend. Back at Davis shows that my second sprinkling of chive seeds have germinated, and that the forget-me-nots have survived another weekend of neglect. In fact, the plastic-wrap and container method worked so well that I've done the same thing for all the other stuff too. I took a few water bottles and cut the top half off before filling it with dirt and either fresh seeds (for feverfew and thyme, because I have a bunch of those) or transfer the seeds-dirt mix from the small egg-carton (beebalm and St Johnswort, because I have no other seeds left). We'll see what happens.