Three quick pictures of visitors I recently found in the garden.
He looks similar, but not identical, to the frog who liked to call my garden shoes his home last year.
Remember the spider I found the other day? Well, I’ve seen plenty more of them since then, and plenty of green flies, too.
But everybody loves these gals:
I can’t wait to discover all of the visitors I’ll have once my seedlings really take off and bloom.
I attended my first flower show this weekend. It wasn’t my first gardening event, but it was the first one that had a contest where flowers were judged.
The Space City Chapter of the American Hibiscus Society had its first show in Pasadena this past weekend, so Kim and Corina and I braved the torrential storm to travel 45+ miles across the metropolis to see purty flowers and have a chance at grabbing some exotic specimens ourselves.
We didn’t stay that long. We got there three minutes late, and at that time – all the really exotic offerings from the local growers had been snagged – some people had whole shopping carts full. I was only allowed what I could carry, so I picked up an Indian Princess and a Seminole and then I got in the very, very long line to wait to purchase them ($8 a pop).
I’d have a photo of the two shaped bushes/trees I bought, but it’s dark now and I don’t feel like taking photos now, so just settle for this one, which links to a photo gallery of shots taken by my wife, while I was in line waiting to fork over more money for my obsession.
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.
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)
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 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.
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.
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.
Into my bed, I dropped at least 11 blanket flower, five zinnia and two wildflowers.
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?
