Saturday, August 07, 2004

7aug04 Plans, Winter hort.

75ºsunny back to watering pots.
I found a kale eating caterpillar today. They are hard to spot because they are the same color as the cole plant and they spend time on the back and the stem. I felt bad squishing it. Not because of the loss of it's single life, but because of the butterfly effect. Also it reflects badly on my own understanding of the ecosystem in the backyard, I wasted food for some other creature. I squished it anyway.
I saw a Yellow Finch on the clothes line today. Felt good to have the thing there to hang up laundry and for the Finch. I still don't know how to decorate the whole large cement apron behind the house. It looked awsome for Patricia's party with two large tents. I need a space to start seeds etc, a place to grow lettuce and cole crops away from the bunnies. Is a tent use and a growing space incompatible?
Some of this years pots are awsome and not too exuberant. I love the one by the back door with Impatiens and Coleus and Pelargoniums. Atomic Snoflake, considered a scented geranium, grows into a cascade over the side. It gives the effect of cup running over, rich and flowing. The 3 pots full of geraniums that I kept in little pots on window sills for winter and massed in 14" pots early in spring are awsome, full and showy.
I need to start some little pots of geraniums for window sills soon, summer is getting on. I gotta have most of the fall stuff done before we go away in Sept. It is fun to cut and arrange scented geraniums because they smell so nice and you can smell them on your hands later. They are slower to start than other geraniums and the ones I pulled up and put in a bag didn't survive like the regular geraniums. Maybe because they were on the porch and got too cold. Also I must not forget the one blue geranium I started from seed that survived the cold snap this spring- can't leave it outside to freeze. I started 8, one made it.
I will put some peppers in the window sill pots too and some tomatoes, even though these will get white flies and aphids in February. Often they survive enough to be the first to bear come summer. Some year I'll figure out an environment that will make them so happy the aphids won't have a chance or read about a spray that is nontoxic and easy to use. The meijer dish soap I used this winter killed peppers.
I am considering putting each plant in it's own little container and put the little containers in the window sill pots, then filling in with soil so as not to dry out so fast. Will it make things easier to transplant? Stay tuned.
It's Saturday, Prarie Home companion tonight. Gotta go.

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