Putting the gardens to bed.

We haven't gotten our first frost this year, but things are pretty much asleep, outside. Leaves are coming off the trees, a few tomatoes are lingering on, and my bulbs haven't completely gone dormant, so I'm just itching to do a major cleaning. I haven't had a lot of time or energy to do the regular maintenance stuff this year, so I really need to get on top of that.

It looks like my glads are finally starting to shrivel up. I need to lift them, divide them, and figure out what to do with the corms this year. They've started to overpopulate the area that they are in and struggled a bit this year before it started raining like crazy. I may list some of the corms in my shop, but I'm not sure yet. Gotta see if anyone wants them, before I do that!

Nothing terribly new and exciting, though. I think this is going to be a nice day in front of the fire with my knitting and books.

Insanity still reigns.

I don't think we've had a rest since August! Home improvement projects, storm cleanup, family stuff, life, putting the gardens to bed for the winter, etc. have occupied every spare moment of time. I'm loving it! It's so nice to feel well enough to be on top of projects and being able to cross of items that have been on the list for a long time.

I really need to get caught up on my etsy stuff, though. I've got a few things that I really need to list, but I haven't had the focus recently. I also need to get back on top of putting listings up here as I update etsy.

I should have some pictures to post soon...hopefully I'll remember! :)

posted from fluffnflowers.com.

When it rains, it pours...

Literally! The past couple of weeks have been wet, wet, wet, as you may have heard on the news. We were out of town for the middle of the Great Rains, which was more than a bit worrying. There are some washed out spots, a few soft spots in lower areas of the yard, and a tiny bit of water damage from roof leaks, but I was very thankful to return home to such minimal damage.

One thing that really irked me, upon our homecoming, was a missing tomato. A beautiful White Wonder tomato was ripening shortly before we left, and I couldn't wait to come home and pluck it from the vine. When we got home, it was nowhere to be seen. I looked everywhere, and there's no sign of it. I've been shaking my fist at whatever critter decided to snatch it, and I hope it was mealy, grubby, and unsavory for the beast. Oh, how I wanted that tomato!

I'll be updating the shopping sections over the next few days and may have a tutorial or two to post, if I get a chance. Here's to productivity!

Recovery

After the hail storm, I took a bunch of cuttings of my tomatoes and thought I'd share a down and dirty how-to.

First thing is to identify a prime bit of broken tomato that you'd like to salvage. Branches work just as well as main stems, so pick a bit that has most of its leaves intact and minimal bruising on the stem. The piece I chose was a sucker from the main tomato plant.

You can see how the stem was broken and pretty much destroyed. Above all of the breaks, though, was a fairly sturdy vine. This is where I chose to cut.


Now that all of the decision making has been done and you've committed to a cut, the easy part comes. Plop that puppy into a pot. Since tomatoes root along the stems, I like to put a couple of inches (depending on the size of the cutting) under ground. This'll give you a pretty solid root mass in a shorter period of time.


I laid the bottom of the cutting across the potting soil in a 1 gallon pot. I bent the top of the vine upwards and packed potting mix around the stem. I watered thoroughly and gave the little puppy a squirt of Superthrive for added punch.

And this is what it looks like a week later!

Several of the cuttings are flowering and showing signs of greenies again. What a relief!

Oh hail.

You heard right! HAIL.

About a week ago, we had a normal, everyday thunderstorm that dropped a nice bucket of hail all over my growing plantation. I'd just gotten the Florida weave rocking, and everything was beaten down quite nicely. Entertainingly, our roof, two miles away, survived without a dent. Drat!

We went over to survey the damage, and I took long cuttings from about half of the plants and have them going at home. They're doing pretty well, so I hope we'll be back in gear (albeit extremely behind schedule!) shortly.

Talk about taking the wind outta someone's sale. Mother nature, sometimes you royally stink. I wish they had home growers' crop insurance!!

Tutorial on how to take tomato cuttings should be up soon. ;)

Rain, iris, and snakes.

The past couple of days have been a great break from the rain. We had one day of high winds that took down part of a dying Bradford pear, so I'll have plenty of mulch this year for my beds. My flowers are blooming and I've had a lot of visitors.

My iris are blooming for the first time this year. I've got a couple of yellows and possibly a couple of peaches that are budding out, and I'm very excited! Here's one of the purples:


And here's a little guy that visited last week. He was only about 12" long, but he gave me a start when I saw him sunning himself on the patio. I think we positively identified him as an East Midland Water Snake. He was completely non aggressive (but very slippery!), so we picked him up and carried him back across the street to the pond.

Petals and puddles

Spring is here! For the past three days, all we've had is rain. It's great, since we've been in a drought for so long, but I wanna go out and play in the dirt! This is putting a bit of a cramp in my style, and I've had a few babies damp off.

My cherry tree is in bloom, and the pink 'snow' is piled up next to puddles. The petals look so lovely blowing across the yard.

And a picture of the cherry cuddled with one of my Japanese maples. I wish the forsythia would have held onto its blooms longer this year. That would have made a lovely combination.

Demo, baby.

Progress is being made on my future mini farm! The demo will be completed by the end of the week, if all goes well, and I'll be able to start cleaning up and preparing for spring. I was hoping I'd be able to go out and chart light this week, but my poor toes are in too bad of shape to even think about that.

And no, I don't get to keep the awesome yellow machine.

It should be spring!

All around the garden, I'm seeing new things pop up. My daffodils are peeking up, my fig tree is starting to bud out, my forsythia is sneaking out a couple of blooms, I've got a crazy sedum, and my japanese maples are starting to look alive.

I also got my new toy in yesterday, and I hope to be introducing some new upcycled plastic creations to my fluffnfixings shop soon!

Not much excitement.

It's officially winter and garden activities have been reduced to clean up and planning for the spring. My biggest project has been moving a massive forsythia that the former owners poorly planted and cleaning out the English ivy that the neighbors have let run rampant.

Here's the forsythia before I cleaned out the ivy around it:


And here it is after I cleaned it out:



After cleaning out all of the ivy, I found that the ivy had caused the forsythia to airlayer itself. This has given me a bazillion forsythia babies, all over 2' tall. I plan on listing those in my etsy shop, at some point.

The plant itself divided into two giant chunks that I have already planted where they will get much more light and, hopefully, bloom more frequently.

I did learn one thing from this entire escapade that I am allergic to English ivy. I will wear gloves the next time I fiddle around with it.

Sign of spring!

I've been out in the garden a lot over the past few days, moving things around, cleaning up, and I've been noticing some signs of spring.

Here are some fresh shoots from one of my clumps of lilies:


I sold my first order of moss mousse yesterday, and I took a picture of what goes in the envelope before I packed it all. As you can see, there's the sealed packet of moss mousse, a business card, a thank you note, and a page of instructions on how to use the mix.

Busy busy!

Despite the cooler weather and the rain we've been getting, I've managed to be pretty productive.

Yesterday and today I dug up a couple of plants and have evicted them from my gardens. Hurrah! I still have a bush I need to move, but it's not getting a one-way ticket out of here -- just a relocation.

The newest thing is that I've added a new product to my shop! It's called Moss Mousse Mix and it's something I've been using for a long time. I whipped up a batch and packaged it last night specifically for my shop, and I'm excited to have it available. It's ugly, but the results are great.

This is a just-add-water mix, which allows you to mix it as thin or as thick as you want. You can add extra water to dip baskets or rocks in, or you can mix it thick to slather on an upright surface.

And this is what you'll get:

I love moss!

It's cold!

It's finally gotten cold, here, and it looks like it's probably going to stay that way. I'm excited and I hope I get to see snow this year! I'm not holding my breath, but it'd sure be nice.

Our yellow tree is almost out of leaves, which is a bit sad. It starts turning first, holds onto it's lovely colors, and then fades out after every other tree. I should investigate and see what kind of tree it is, but it seems that I never get around to it until after the leaves have all fallen and then I don't know which it is! It looks quite striking between the pine trees.

Other than that, I seem to be recovering alright. It's only been a few days since the procedure and things are still pretty up and down, but I've definitely noticed some improvements. Being able to sleep through the night without being woken up a million times by a stopping/starting heart is really, really, really nice. We'll see what's happening in a month or so...

Summer is over.

Summer is obviously over. The nights and days are getting cooler, which I love, but it breaks my heart to see the bees that I spend all summer watching and cultivating a habitat for start to slow down.

That's how it goes, though. They'll be back next year, but I hate finding their fat, formerly busy bodies clinging to my flowers. :(

Summer is winding down.

The nights are now in the 60s and the days are cooler (only reaching the mid 80s), and summer is obviously winding down. Leaves are starting to fall and a second rush of seed collection is happening.

I wasn't sure whether I was going to list seeds from my Northern Sea Oats plant this year or not, but I decided to go ahead and go for it. It's a fantastic plant, but I don't know how well ornamental grasses go over on etsy. You can see the listing here. It's one of the more attractive grasses I own, and I have plans for expanding it's growing area next year.

I also spent some time today breaking up another one of my monster lemongrass plants that was trying to anchor itself to the ground through its pot. People seem to find them appealing, which I think is fantastic. Not only are they attractive, but they're a joy to cook with. I'd love to know how people use them! :)

My kava got split up, but I don't know if it'll be listed this year. I'm trying to make up my mind, but that's sometimes difficult.

Tomorrow is my dreaded follow up appointment with a doctor that I've never met, so keep your fingers crossed that things aren't as bad as I fear! :) Hopefully, I won't have any blip in my online time.

Just because it says 'mist'...

I got a new hose nozzle a couple of weeks ago and I'm loving it! It's very heavy duty, has great heft, and all of the settings are different and work like as they should. Even better, it was rather inexpensive!

Today, I went out to check on my flats of winter veggies and found that they needed a bit of moisture. I dragged over my hose, knocked my handy-dandy nozzle to mist, and went at it.

Just because it says 'mist', I learned, doesn't mean that it's a gentle mist. Yes, it mists, but I'm short and being only a couple feet away with the nozzle is a bit too much for tender little seedlings. I've been working on my technique and found that aiming the nozzle over, rather than at, the flats works much better and the little seedlings maintain their heads.

So far, arugula, some spinach, broccoli raab, buttercrunch lettuce, swiss chard, kohl rabi, and kale are all making an appearance. I wish the fennel was showing, but the seeds I found were old and hadn't been properly stored. I may go get some fresh seeds for this winter, if I'm feeling motivated!

Health, life, and gardening.

The past week has been filled with doctor appointments and imaging appointments, and it looks like it's going to keep going for the next week or so. Being tired puts a damper on how much I'm outside, but I've been going out and taking the occasional snap.

For example, my toad lily is going to bloom for the first time! It's Taipei Silk, I think, and has really been suffering since I moved it. I had to move everything in the spring in preparation for some major outside house renovations, and it's been getting too much sun and not enough water. So I'm excited.

I'll have to go outside in a bit, when the rain (thanks, Fay! we've needed it!) settles down, and see if it's survived the downpour.

Shiny objects...

Got distracted again. There's been a lot of stuff going on recently, and it's been a bit tough to keep up between doctor's appointments, imaging appointments, and life in general.

The EtsyOrganicTeam is off to a good start, and I've, apparently, been given full reign of the blog. So far, it's been a lot of fun, but not having flash really prevents me from keeping up with treasuries and that sort of thing.

It's also harvest time in them thar gardens. I've been doing a lot of seed sorting and harvesting, cropping and pruning, rooting and moving. It seems that fall is in the air, so it'll get really busy in another month or so. I've got a ton of bushes that I need to move to new homes.

I've also been dealing with a piecing nightmare. I came up with a pattern for a pair of pants and it's truly one of the most annoying things I've ever done. I haven't decided what's going to be victim first: the sewing machine or the square. Luckily, I bought 6 yards (a whopping $4.81 at 5% of the original price!!) so I've got some room to play with it.

Rain!

I don't know whether the drought is officially over or not, but the weather is acting like Georgia weather again. We've had storms for three nights in a row and afternoon showers for a week or so. We've gotten a total of 8" over the past three days, and things are so green and happy again! Of course, I'll have to deal with split tomatoes, but I'd much rather that than a dead, brown landscape.

Here's the cat from last night -- around 2". My barrels are getting close to full!

Today, I rock.

I mentioned in an earlier entry that I was considering making some frog caves to post on etsy. I haven't had a ton of time and the weather has been less than ideal, so I haven't gotten around to it. Today, however, was a beautiful day with cooler temperatures and a lovely breeze, and I decided to go out and play in the tufa.

I ended up making two frog caves and four or five planters. I'll go out and take pictures of everything after the initial curing, but I made a dinosaur egg planter, three 'petrified log' planters, and one round bonsai tray. We'll see how those come out after they're safer to handle, but I'm pretty excited.

I decided to use an experimental mix which ended up coming out beautifully. True to form, though, I didn't bother to write it down and will probably never be able to replicate it's wonderfulness again! Everything came together beautifully, much easier than I'm used to, and it just made the creation so much less stressful and so satisfying.

If everything turned out well, I'll put these in for a soak and leach for a week or two and then get ready to list them in my shop. There's nothing like a day when things seem to create themselves!