I'm Totally Crushin' on This Guy

Daron "Farmer D" Joffe

Who knew organic farming could be so sexy?  Sure it is important for the earth and our health, blah, blah blah.  I'm watching the video above for the man-candy.  You can fan him on Facebook, follow on Twitter here or here, visit his website and blog, or you can be like me and just stalk him. 

Update of the Front Garden (And Other Bits of Happiness)

Time to do an update of the Front Garden. I slacked on doing updates of the gardens last year because they never really got to where I wanted them. Hopefully things will be better this year and I'll be posting more updates. I'm doing the front because is it is really the only garden with anything green in it, never mind something blooming. 

Gotta love petunias and snapdragons.  This snapdragon reminds me of popcorn. 

I'd love to go in here and plant some pentas and divide some irises, but my last frost date is still almost two months away, so for now I've got to wait.  For now, I have to content myself with cleaning up dead stuff and keeping new weed growth to a minimum.  Such a bummer because when it isn't rainy and cold, the weather is down right decent.  Not hot at all and zero bugs.  I've decided that the bugs will keep me out of the garden more than anything else in the summer.

Well here are some things that aren't bummers:

WORMS!!!  Is it gross to take pictures of your compost?  Probably, but I'm so excited I don't care.  Got to love the worm poo!  I've been using the excess water run off from the bin to water plants for a while now, but I can't wait to harvest some fresh new worm poo for the garden.  The worms seem to have taken the freezing temps just fine, but they are very camera shy.

FREE TOOLS!  Okay, not quite free, but close. I found these clippers in a big pile of gardening stuff in the shed. Brand new and in the package! It think it is from a few Christmases ago when everyone I knew got me a pair of clippers.  These got shoved to the back of the shelf and totally forgotten about.  The best part is that I really needed a new pair.

GINGER!  My Disney Ginger survived both squirrels and freezes this year.  Maybe there is hope for a bloom on this one yet??
Well, that's it for me.  What made you happy today??

Does Anyone Else Still Have Their Christmas Lights Up?

Procrastination is often detrimental to the success of a garden.  Seeds aren't sown in time and aren't ready for the summer heat.  Weeds aren't pulled and quickly take over the garden.  Garden blogs don't get updated for months at a time . . .  But every gardener has experienced a little beneficial procrastination.  That beloved plant that up and dies out of the blue that you can't bear to throw out.  You stick it in the left-for-dead pile and suddenly next season it comes back to life - Wa-hoo!
This year, we've delayed getting on Christmas lights down.  Certainly mid-January is far from epic procrastination: A friend of mine's mother kept the Christmas decorations up in her house well into July, but that was generally interpreted to mean she wasn't taking her recent divorce too well.   Mid-January is late for us, though.  Here's where the beneficial part comes in.  This year the freezing temps came early in November and December.  Usually I cover as much as I can with sheets, fitting most plants only half way, and hope for the best.  I normally loose just about everything.  This year, I thought I'd focus all my efforts on to one plant, the philodendron in the front garden.  Every night before a frost I've covered it with two sheets, one of them flannel! I filled several gallon milk jugs with hot water and placed them near the plant in hopes the heat would radiate out and get trapped by the sheets.  Also, this plant was nicely wrapped up with Christmas lights.  I've kept them up, the theory being that the electricity in the wires is enough to keep the temperature up half a degree or two.  I'm sure there is a fire hazard here, but so far, so good, and the plant has had minimal damage.  This year, the Christmas lights will stay up a bit longer.  The giant inflatable Snoopy?  It is coming down.