Diary 3/7/12

A very cold start on what turned into a warm afternoon.  Tomorrow promises to be even warmer.  Good growing days, grow stuff grow!  Walla Walla onions are coming along and compared to the red onions I started they are doing so much better.  Hope the reds didn't suffer from the cold and are just having problems getting started.  Working on beds in the lower greenhouse as it is more moderate in there than in the upper greenhouse which I will save for those early cucumbers and beans.  More clean up tomorrow on the asparagus patch.  Hope to prune back the fig trees.  They are trying to poke through the plastic roof, so they will have to be pruned back to where they were trimmed last year.

Diary 3/6/12

                                                   Beautiful snowy day

Diary 3/5/12

Town day with lots of loose ends getting tied up and some others coming undone.  Ah well, that's life.  At least the taxes are done and I can relax on that one.  Tomorrow looks cool with snow in the morning, but the rest of the week is looking good, so hope to get some strides accomplished in the garden. 

3/4/12

Purple sprouting broccoli

Writer's workshop was very informative.  It was given by Robert Duglioni, a crime and court mystery writer.  He was a lawyer and made a major life change to become a writer, not immediately at all.  He did not advise others to follow his lead, and to some degree, he lucked out.  The workshop was about the structure of a novel and how to a, write to keep the reader turning the pages, and b, avoid the mistakes that agents and editors look for and throw you aside for.  He was funny and an excellent teacher.  So glad I went. I have lots of work to do before my first manuscript will be ready for reading, phew!  Really nice day, sunny, warm and felt like plants were growing.  Cleaned the upper greenhouse and hauled some compost to start making soil mix and fill planter trays.  Only a couple weeks until I will start the first seeds. Purple sprouting broccoli is a great choice for over-wintered broccoli.  The plant will keep making sprouts for at least the next month.

Cat Update

Just wanted to let anyone who was curious about what happened with the new cat know that we have named her Felicity, one of the few good suggestions I received.  My grandchildren had some doozies.  Gopher Tender whose real name is Miles, has accepted her into the fold, mostly because she really didn't give a hoot whether he did or not!

Diary 3/2/12

Storm broke up and the sun came out.  I turned waters on in all three greenhouses, it was pretty dry in there, actually.  It is a fine balance between watering and temperature at this time of year.  If you get the soil too wet and it is cloudy for a few days in a row, it can rot the bottom stem of baby plants called dampening off. Basically the soil eats your plant because it isn't growing. On the other hand, I am trying to germinate seed, so I have to keep a certain degree of dampness in the soil to do so. Tricky this tenuous time of year.  More bright days, warmer temps, and longer hours of daylight start to change how plants grow as the Equinox passes and Spring begins, only three weeks away.  Before the snow storm, this Red Tailed Hawk ( or maybe two ) was hunting gophers at the bottom of the garden.  I hope he returns with the good weather this weekend.  I am off to a writer's workshop tomorrow, expect great blogging in the future, ha-ha.

Diary 3/1/12

March certainly came in like a lion with another 6 to 8 inches of snow this morning.  On top of what was there from yesterday, that makes a foot to 14 inches out in the yard.  It is clearing off now, so it will freeze tonight.  That will hold the snow on the mountains.  Here, the weekend is promising some sunny warmer weather that will melt most of what we have.  Not sure what is in store after that, but I am glad for all the moisture.  So sorry for those folks facing tornadoes night after night.  That line where there is the mixture of warm and cold fronts is so dramatic in satellite images. Obviously, it brings dramatic events to the ground.  Garden Dog, who is afraid of most things, loves the snow.