Dinner Plate Dahlias!!!!!

I have been wanting dinner plate dahlias for several years. Now that I have a yard where I can grow them, I actually found some!!! I am so excited! They are yellow and should be gorgeous! I wish I could go put them in the ground, but it could kill them, so I'll have to wait. (It's also snowing and cold outside.)

Aaron thinks I'm funny because I'll have to dig them up and replant them every year to keep them from getting frozen, but I think it's totally worth it to have flowers as big as your head!!! I'll post pictures when there is more to see than tubers!

Spring is (almost) here!

The sun is shining, and even though it's cold, I know that Spring is coming. My plants are coming to life and the thought that they are just about to bloom makes me really happy, today.

Come to think of it, what am I still doing inside on the computer when it is such a beautiful day out there???

I Used to Blog More

I'm not sure why, but I haven't been blogging here as much as I used to. I have been busy and also blogging about gardening more. I love to do that! It helps me to keep my knowledge current and actually in my head. I am also in the planning stages of starting a garden coaching business. I would go to people's yards and teach them about the plants they have as well as how to take care of them and generally improve their gardening skills.

If you're interested, my gardening blog Turn Your Thumb Green is updated pretty often, now and I'd love to hear any questions you may have for me! Also, I've been pretty active at Crazi Beautiful Women This has been a great opportunity for me and I hope it turns into more!

I'm not going to stop blogging here, but I think it will just be about what it has been for the past several months rather than the several times per week.

I guess I didn't need to say anything, but I wanted to explain... Thanks for visiting and come back soon!

Crazi Beautiful Women

I wanted to let you all know about a great new website! It's called CraziBeautiful Women! They are gathering experts in lots of areas to write, inspire, encourage...you get the idea! It is a really fun place and it is just starting up!

The best part for me is that I have been asked to blog about gardening for them!! If you go to their site and hover over Girlfriend to Girlfriend and then click onBack to the Basics and there I am! I am really excited to blog like this! My first post will be on Friday! Come check it out!

I'll still blog about gardening at Turn Your Thumb Green, too!

Gardening Humor (?)

Have any of you seen this? I'm just surprised that they did so many!

It's Snowing!

I love the first snow of the season! I usually take a camera out and take a picture and my husband thinks I'm cute or crazy. I didn't see snow until I was 21, so it is still a thrill for me. I get to be a kid again, since I didn't get to be a kid with snow.

It is really coming down, too...and sideways. I love it!

I'm just glad we finally got the plants in the ground before the weather got icky! Now my pretties can root in and be gorgeous in the spring. We'll see how things turn out! (I'm going for a cottage look, and I hope it doesn't end up looking like a three year old just threw them in....we did have one of those helping, so I blame her!) I'm sure I'll be glad for the work we did this fall, when I am sick of the snow in the spring and want some color!

You Know it's Going to be a Long Day...

...when you open the door to let the dog out and two wasps let themselves in for breakfast! Between eating, and getting ready for our crazy day, we were able to kill the wasps and cover several surfaces with poison! Good times!

The rest of the day was as follows:

7:30--Mom's and Muffins at Link's school. The goal was to read with our kids. We ended up mostly talking with other moms and the kids played. Oh well. At least I was supportive, right? I was also there to help make sure his class didn't mutiny since the substitute teacher was late.

8:30--Convince Princess that she needed to come home with me rather than be a first-grader. Then, rush home, change Doodle, grab toys, call a friend to offer her some irises and grab a sack of iris rhizomes to take with us.

9:30--Doctor's appointment in our old town. (We really like our old doctor, so we thought it would be worth the drive!) That went well. Doodle is around the 50th percentile for all things measured. She is healthy and the doctor is happy.

10:00-11:30--Drop off rhizomes, visit briefly, go to Hobby Lobby (my new favorite store), and to the grocery store since I can't get this in town!

12:30--Get home, get lunch and try to put a dent in my housework!

2:30--Leave to pick up Link. Then, go home, pick up Captain M and head to the garden center! We found some great plants for really cheap. I even got a few of my favorites!

We spent the rest of the evening cleaning up the front beds, dividing more irises. (If you want some, PLEASE let me know. I hate throwing out perfectly good plants!) We had a late dinner and went to bed exhausted!

Then, it rained all weekend, which is good, but I didn't get the plants in, so I am itching to do that!

Anyway, I hope you are having a great weekend!

Do You Have a Plant Question?

I want to start posting more on Turn Your Thumb Green (my gardening blog) but I don't know what to write about. I want to write about various topics that would actually help people, so I thought I'd ask if any of you have plant questions?? If you ask them, either in a comment on this blog, over there, or in email, I'll answer them!

So, if you have had a problem with something, want to find information on a certain topic or plant, want to know what to plant where or just have a black thumb and need all the help you can get, ask away!! Feel free to ask about indoors, outdoors, fruit, vegetables, ornamental plants or anything you can think of!

I mostly need to keep up my knowledge. I got my degree in horticulture about two years ago and since at the moment, I am a stay-at-home-mom, I haven't kept my information sharp and always in my brain. I want to be able to answer questions better and to know things for my own family garden!

Gardening, Again!

I am so excited to be gardening! I went out this morning, with Princess, while Doodle was sleeping.

I didn't actually make anything grow, but I weeded, moved rocks, removed lots of random trash, and pulled out two of the dead fruit trees. Don't be too impressed. The trees have been dead for years and were really brittle. But, they did make my muscles sore.

Princess is a great little rock collector. She had a lot of fun and it was a job that she could be truly helpful at! The kids are now making piles of rocks to go in their personal gardens. They are so excited and cute about their gardens! I love it!

It is nice to see definite progress that I caused. CM has done a lot out there, but I haven't been able to. I like it. I wonder how many days I'll be able to do that. It is hard to catch the long naps before they are gone. I never know if it is going to be a good one or not.

I'd post pictures, but there isn't a lot to show at this point.

In My Pretty Garden...

...I wish more flowers were nodding! I went out to take some pictures of the plants that we bought with this yard. In the front, the irises are mostly done blooming, but are gorgeous. The roses are especially beautiful and this one smells wonderful.

Hubby loves roses and fire and ice is one of his favorites!


There is also a Japanese Snowball bush. It is waning, so here is one of the last pretty blooms. I love this one already. It spreads beautiful, white blossoms all over! It looks really neat. It's huge, though, so we are not sure what to do about it. It hasn't been cared for, so we aren't sure if we can get it back under control and out of the power lines without killing it. (There are also lots of lilac bushes, but they are done blooming and aren't very photogenic at the moment!



Oh, and just so you aren't deceived into thinking we got a beautiful ready-to-go garden, I thought I'd share this picture! It is a huge garden plot in the back of the yard, with a water turn. The problem, as you can see is that it has been neglected for a while and needs a lot of love! My goal was to weed and plant some melons, but with how late it is and only 5 weeks until the baby comes, my new goal is to get it under control enough to maybe plant some new fruit trees (do you like my dead ones there in the right of the pic?) and have less to do next spring.



One more thing. Here is an almost casualty of moving. I put my houseplants in the window sills and a few of them have been knocked down. I thought that this one was kind of funny hanging on for dear life!

The Story of a Plant

A few months before we got married, I moved into what would be "our" apartment. At one point, I acquired a beautiful hanging plant. It had cute and dainty little leaves that flowed over the edge of the pot.

I realized that there was very little light coming into our apartment and so I found a spot where it could get as much light as possible. The problem with this was that it was up high and I am short. It was hard to remember to water it and hard to reach to water it. As a consequence, my lovely plant died.

I haven't been able to identify it (even with all the books and websites I've aquired while getting a horticulture degree). I think it is some kind of baby's-tears, but it isn't exactly like the others I've seen. I've looked at just about every place that sells plants to find another one and I've even bought plants that I thought were it. I've never been successful until yesterday!!!

I was about to go to the checkout at the grocery store, when I was looking down at the plants they had out on display. There it was! I can't believe that I've been searching for this lovely little plant for about 7 years and I finally found it!!!

Now I just have to keep this one alive!

Amaryllis

I keep thinking that I don't have enough pictures on here. It really comes down to the fact that I don't get them off of my camera and edited very often.

I received this amaryllis as a gift at Christmas! I love to get live plants as gifts! Cut flowers just wilt and die. If I can keep it alive a plant can last for years! I also love the challenge of trying to get an amaryllis to bloom a second time.



I took this picture to show how tall the flower stalk is. I guess it is still kind of relative, since Belle is little.

Speaking of keeping plants alive. I am usually really good at this, but I have a plant that I got some really poor potting soil for and it has just suffered. The soil clumped together and it couldn't get and keep water as it needed to. It was a jade plant and it was huge and beautiful! After that soil, it drooped and looked awful! I have several starts from it, so I decided to get rid of it. I took several weeks or maybe months to finally dump it. I just couldn't bring myself to do it! I didn't want to kill that plant. Now that I have, I feel bad. I feel guilty for killing that poor plant!! (I learned not to buy cheap potting soil!)

Twilight Zone

I have been teaching a community gardening class here in town. Last night, I started to wonder if I was in the twilight zone or something. I got there early, since we were going to talk about landscaping and I had a bunch of stuff to carry. I thought I'd need to make two trips from my van. Anyway, I got there about 15 minutes early and the door was locked and I was the only one there. I started wondering if it was really Thursday and almost 6 pm. I called home just to make sure. I was right. Anyway, normally the woman that unlocks the door for us is there waiting on me. But, last night she was no where. There were also no participants. It was just weird. And it was raining. So, I was out in the rain, with all my stuff for class--in the cold rain! Then, they started showing up. So, we waited a while and decided to try to find a place to go. We found a little nook with built-in benches and sat down to start. The lady who helps us get in, found us there and unlocked the door. She had forgotten us. :( She felt really bad! So, we got to have class and it went really well.

I always feel weird teaching people. I feel like I don't always know what I am talking about...or at least that I don't have enough experience with it. Aaron hates it that I feel this way and really hates it when I tell people that I don't know, and then go on to answer their question.

Okay, so it really wasn't all that twilighty, but it was hard to believe that 6 people had all, independently not been where they were supposed to be...

Teaching Horticulture

I have really enjoyed teaching this community horticulture class. I have learned that I like teaching. I have learned a lot about horticulture. I have found so many websites and books about gardening. I have had a lot of fun. I have about 2 1/2 weeks off and then I'll start up another session. I am excited to have most of the information ready. That way, I don't have to spend the whole day stressing about getting notes ready. Now, I can focus on drawings, a few minutes here and there that need to be added and other things to embellish and make the class a little better. I hope I get enough people to go again!

Class Tonight

Class went great tonight!! I was able to answer a lot of questions and I am working on others that I did not know. One is about canning seeds as a part of emergency preparedness. If anyone who may be reading this has ever done this and then used the seeds successfully, let me know!! I am having trouble finding anything. One problem with this class is that it is from 7 to 9 in the evening, and 9 is my bedtime. Aaron gets up at 5 am and I have to get up soon after that to make breakfast and help him get ready. I am so wired after teaching that late at night, that I have a horrible time getting to sleep. It is almost 10:30, now and I am starting to wind down and be ready to go to sleep. I think I want to do this again, in the spring, but I want to start at 6 pm instead!

Talks with Trees

Okay, so I was looking for a certain plant book on amazon.com and I ran into this: Talks with Trees. Just go look. Make sure to read the customer reviews. I love plants, but talking to them and telling them thank you when you put them in the refridgerator? Wow!!

Gardening Class

Well, I taught my first community gardening class, last night! I think it went really well. It started off looking really bad. I wasn't familiar with the high school where it was being held, so I parked and went into what looked like part of the school. It was actually the parks and recreation building. I then had to walk over and try to find the door. I did find it and then I got lucky and saw some people that weren't high school kids and followed them. I finally made it there, but I was winded from all the running around and stairs. Plus, my bag was really heavy, since I packed it without testing its weight. Okay, so I got to the classroom and it was arranged really strangely. It is a photography room, so there were odd pictures all over the walls. At least for me, it wasn't really set up to teach. I had a hard time figuring out the best way to arrange myself so that I could teach effectively. I had to walk from one section of the room to another. I didn't really liike having to ignore a part of the class no matter what I did. Other than the weird classroom, I think things went quite well. I had a really good time and they asked lots of questions, which is what I was hoping for. I am looking forward to nest week!!

Turn Your Thumb Green!

I am so excited!! The community class that I am teaching starts next week!! I have never done anything like this before. It is exciting, and a bit intimidating at the same time. I hope I do well. I hope that I enjoy it. It is a horticulture class. I have another blog devoted to putting all the notes, questions, and any other info I can think to put on there. I think it'll be a lot of fun. It has already been fun to set it all up. I even had to be fingerprinted, because I am working for the school district and will be in a school. That was an interesting experience. I don't think I've been finger printed since I was a kid---for security reasons. I was expecting the whole ink and paper thing. Well, she pushed my fingers on a wet paper towel and put my finger prints straight onto the computer with a little scanner. It was really cool.