Brandon Moeller

Week Five

Photos from the fifth week in the garden are up, spanning April 11-17, and have been tagged "Week Five" in my Gardening 2010 album in my Picasa Web Albums.

Last year, in mid-Summer, Corina and I stumbled upon two hybrid gerbera daisys at Lowes for a clearance price of $1 each. We bought two - and they stayed in the pots we bought them in all year. This year, I decided to plant the white one in the ground - and this is its first bloom of the season.

The white hibiscus had three blooms at once this week. But, my favorite shot of it is this one.

Week five in the garden. — Week five: The requisite shot of my original bed.

‘Oh my God do we love patterns’

Kim’s sitting right next to me, and she said I should add a comma to the title of this post, but you know what? The article it comes from didn’t add the punctuation, and I just don’t feel like ruining the flow of it. You see?

Also, on a related copy editing tangent, I’m really glad that the Associated Press changed the style of the word, “website” – previously, it was mandated that it be written as two words with the first one capitalized, as in ‘Web site’ – I found this out today thanks to a colleague who lamented the change. But I love it. It’s about time. Website, website, website, website, website!

Anyway, back to the title of this post, there was this great blog posting I read this week just because the title was “The Care and Feeding of a Developer” which, after reading the article, I take to be the title of a presentation given by someone named Jason Johnson who spoke at some conference or something. Whatever! I was just in it for the part where it suggests bosses buy their (web?) developers bigger monitors and other tech gadgets that “passively” increase their work performance. There was a bunch of videos in the post – none of which I watched – because unless it’s 30 seconds long and involves a cat on a Roomba, I just won’t watch it, people.

Anyway, here’s a quote from the article:

“OK, three of them have some sort of interest in music, and you all listen to music while you hack? Right? Yes, there’s a connection here – patterns. Developers love, love, love patterns. Oh my God do we love patterns. We like relational databases, we like constructs and languages that do really neat things and they happen over and over again. So we’re constantly looking for these patterns to satisfy this need for immediate gratification. We love it.”

Speaking of patterns, I found this great website called Repper Lite that allows you to make a pattern from a photo you upload. I know how to do this in Photoshop, but what’s cool about this website, is it has some built in filters that distort the photo similar to a kaleidoscope, and you can alter the photo quicker than Photoshop.

So I uploaded the following photo of my new Neon Cowboy rose:

(UPDATE! Now, click on the photos for a sample page with the pattern)

The first pattern I created with Repper Lite.

The last pattern. Which one is your favorite?

Hansel eggplant

So, I got a new addition to the garden on Saturday. Yeah, i know it’s Thursday and this is a long time coming and all, but that’s just the way it is. Too much is happening, not enough time to process it all.

So, without further ado:

The Hansel Eggplant, planted in the back of the new bed extension.

The Hansel eggplant is supposed to produce finger-shaped eggplant that can be picked at 3 inches, if I remember correctly. You can let it grow bigger, though. I was inspired to buy this $3 young plant after eating at a well-regarded Thai restaurant called Kanomwan, on Telephone Road, with the co-workers. It was great. Can’t wait to cook my own fresh eggplant.

The mass transplanting begins

On Sunday, I moved all of the seedlings and put down newspaper over what will become an extension of the flower bed. Another part of the extended flowerbed had already been dug, after I transplanted some of the grass from there to other parts of the yard.

In this spot, I dumped some new garden soil and transplanted some cosmos, my top gun tomato and a new eggplant that I could not resist when I saw it at Lowe’s when I bought the new garden soil. The soil in my yard is so clay-like, amending it when I start a new bed is the best way to kickstart it. I’ll post more about the eggplant – and what made me want one – tomorrow.

I also went through all the seedlings, and separated the ones that did not sprout from those that did. I dumped the excess soil into the large pot where the Top Gun tomato was, and it filled it! Then, I transplanted eight coleus there. All said and done, I had at least 50 empty seedling containers when I was done. I packed them all up in the garage.

Here’s a shot of the extended flower bed that hasn’t been finished yet.

And to think, there used to be at least 50 more seedlings than pictured here.

Sunday through today, I have transplanted the strongest of the blanket flower, half of the portulaca, most of the Cosmos Happy Ring, some of the Cosmos Psyche mix, about eight bachelor buttons, a cut flower wildflower mix here and there as well as the previously mentioned coleus.

I transplanted at least eight cosmos between Kim's flower bed and the new bed.

Into my bed, I dropped at least 11 blanket flower, five zinnia and two wildflowers.

From left to right, some marigolds, some what I think are zinnias that I direct sowed a few weeks ago and the newly-transplanted blanket flower.

Corina’s sixth birthday party

This past weekend, we invited friends and family over to celebrate Corina’s sixth birthday. The week before, I bought her a new bike for her birthday – every six year old needs a bike, even if it still has training wheels. We’re working on it.

Great friends and family came over, ate some barbecue and showered her with gifts. A great time was had by all, best I know.

For the second year in a row, we splurged on a bouncy castle. Why not?

Week Four

Photos from the fourth week in the garden are up, spanning April 4-10, and have been tagged "Week Four" in my Gardening 2010 album in my Picasa Web Albums.

I started transplanting cosmos this week. Pictured here are some Happy Ring cosmos.

This week, I transplanted four of Kim's jalapenos to my beds. And then I told her about it. — This week, I transplanted four of Kim's jalapenos to my bed. And then I told her about it.

Eight legs and still trapped

I found this guy in one of my seedling starter cups. I startled him, and then I watched in amazement as he tried to run away – but couldn’t. The next day, I thought I saw his crumpled dead body in the cup, but then a few days later, I found him in another cup – and so I let him out. In the rose bed. Anybody know what kind of spider this is?