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Mar. 25th, 2025 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wyld_dandelyonGot woken up this morning to learn that My Angel's PT was out sick today. (Someone recommended a PT that specializes in helping people with balance issues caused by eye problems, and the lady is fantastic.) I got the receptionist to schedule a replacement appointment and put it on the calendar. Then, since I forgot to do it yesterday, now that my new health insurance card has arrived, I called to order new CPAP supplies and cleaned the ones I currently have. Naturally, by that time I was quite emphatically awake.
I did a bunch of unexciting little things, figuring that when My Angel got up we could go out and make a new archway for the entrance of the garden. The old one, constructed mostly of saplings we cut down and wild grape vine (and wire) had lost structural integrity last autumn, due to age, wind, and My Angel falling against it. I'd pinned it to the tomato cages to keep it from falling on the car over the winter, and took it down before the big wind storm a couple of weeks ago.
By the time she was awake and almost ready to do stuff, it wasn't quite too cold for the planned work, and I'd moved the car to give me a place on the ground to build the arch, and had just gotten started pulling stored saplings out to assess which one would work best without additional cutting when she told me she would be talking funny for a bit. What? What are you talking about? Her temporary crown came off. So in I went to have her call her student dentist, who said it was too late to get her in today and sent her off to the pharmacy to buy a "lost filling and loose cap repair" kit.
I consulted with her about the arch; the best sapling was taller than I'd hoped for, but I didn't want to get the axe out and cut it shorter, and My Angel is too tall for a short arch anyway. She headed off to the car and I decided to get the shovel and dig the post hole I'd need (one because one of the supports was still there from last year) and found the door was locked. Thankfully she hadn't driven off yet, or I'd have been locked out without my tools while she was gone!
So, door unlocked again, off she went to the pharmacy and I got to work on the arch alone. Sigh. That wasn't the plan! But I did ok, taking the wire archtop I'd made from an old piece of roof antenna and the sapling, some still-limber branches, some lengths of grape vine, and gardening wire, and made 3/4 of an arch on the ground, looping the metal sun-and-moon and butterfly decorations to it, wiring it all together, and then, with the bit of metal fence we'd put up earlier this spring next to the woodpile as a support, got it into place, wired to the metal fence on one side and to the support sapling that's still attached to the twine fence on the other side, and at least that bit is done.
I still have to pull down the bean and morning glory vining from the rest of the twine fence, and probably replace a couple of other supports. But first, tomorrow if the weather remains sunny, I want to get peas planted. And probably spinach. Hmm...I wonder if I could plant anything else this early. Cabbage maybe? Google says early to mid April, and we're near enough to the lake to be in a warmer planting zone than most of Milwaukee, so yes. Onion starts? Google says mid to late April, so no. Turnips? yes. Beets? Possibly. Carrots? No, wait until the threat of frost has passed, unless it's an "early variety". (But the seed packets I have say "as early as the soil can be worked". I'll trust the packets, since those instructions were written for the variety in the packets.
So, there's a bunch of things I can plant tomorrow! Probably more than I'll have time for.
By the time My Angel returned, it was windy and the sun was low enough to be behind the houses on the west side of the street, so it was quickly getting colder. We went inside, and I looked at the flats I'd planted with tomato seeds.
A couple of days before Equinox, I'd planted a flat with "volunteer" tomato seeds. Volunteer meaning I'd taken tomatoes from my garden that were starting to rot and smashed them on a dry pot of dirt and let them dry there (because I read that tomato seeds need to sit in spoiled tomato juice for a while to sprout well). Later, I needed the pots and dumped the contents into baggies, making it really hard to tell what was seeds and what was just dirt. So I just spread about a tablespoon of the mix onto each pot in the flat, covered it with seed starting mix, watered it, and put it on a heating pad and under a rectangular plastic "dome". These seeds will grow children of one or more of the tomatoes I'd planted, so things like Northern Lights, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Black Krim, and other heirloom varieties, usually ones that are striped, yellow, green, or purple.
Then on Equinox, right before and after the "moment", I planted two more flats, one all tomatoes from seed packets, and one 1/3 tomatoes and 2/3 peppers (cayenne and sweet Italian peppers, mostly, some from seed packets and some from plants grown in the garden last year. Seedlings were already starting to show on the first flat at that point. Wow, that was fast!
Today, I found two tiny sprouts in the second flat, a Purple Russian (from a free thank-you packet sent by a company I'd ordered other stuff from) and one, well, I don't know. Apparently I was tired enough I forgot to label the last two tiny pots. Argh. There are no sprouts in the third flat yet. But in the first one, most of the pots had at least a dozen happy seedlings. I prepped a fourth flat (adding dirt to the 18 little pots), took out three of the most crowded pots, and filled the flat and four other small pots with 3 seedlings each, leaving three or four each in the original pots. All those babies (roughly 75) were from just two of the little 3" pots. The other one I returned still-crowded to the flat.
I've gotten really good at transplanting tomato seedlings, and three to a pot is too many, so even if I lose 1/3 of the transplants, unless there's some other problem with the babies, or I get sick enough to forget to water them, I'll have lots of tomato seedlings to give away. I plan to put a fan into my sprouting room this year, to hopefully get stronger stems and leaves; since I haven't done that before there may be a learning curve on doing that well; that's one possible source of losing some of the plants before outdoor-planting time.
We tried to glue the temporary crown to My Angel's tooth with the recommended product, with a lot less success than I had with the arch and the seedlings. The tooth is not bothering her, so she said she was done trying. I hope they can see her tomorrow to glue it back on properly, as I'm afraid the tooth might be fragile without the temp covering it. We'll see tomorrow, I guess. If nothing else, she has another appointment Friday.
And, I got distracted and didn't hit post. So, an update: I have the seeds that it would be ok to plant tomorrow in a plastic thingy for easy transport outside, and I should sort some papers or play some music. I'm not doing that until after I post this, so I'll just say see you soon. I'll try to take a pic of the arch to share tomorrow too.
I did a bunch of unexciting little things, figuring that when My Angel got up we could go out and make a new archway for the entrance of the garden. The old one, constructed mostly of saplings we cut down and wild grape vine (and wire) had lost structural integrity last autumn, due to age, wind, and My Angel falling against it. I'd pinned it to the tomato cages to keep it from falling on the car over the winter, and took it down before the big wind storm a couple of weeks ago.
By the time she was awake and almost ready to do stuff, it wasn't quite too cold for the planned work, and I'd moved the car to give me a place on the ground to build the arch, and had just gotten started pulling stored saplings out to assess which one would work best without additional cutting when she told me she would be talking funny for a bit. What? What are you talking about? Her temporary crown came off. So in I went to have her call her student dentist, who said it was too late to get her in today and sent her off to the pharmacy to buy a "lost filling and loose cap repair" kit.
I consulted with her about the arch; the best sapling was taller than I'd hoped for, but I didn't want to get the axe out and cut it shorter, and My Angel is too tall for a short arch anyway. She headed off to the car and I decided to get the shovel and dig the post hole I'd need (one because one of the supports was still there from last year) and found the door was locked. Thankfully she hadn't driven off yet, or I'd have been locked out without my tools while she was gone!
So, door unlocked again, off she went to the pharmacy and I got to work on the arch alone. Sigh. That wasn't the plan! But I did ok, taking the wire archtop I'd made from an old piece of roof antenna and the sapling, some still-limber branches, some lengths of grape vine, and gardening wire, and made 3/4 of an arch on the ground, looping the metal sun-and-moon and butterfly decorations to it, wiring it all together, and then, with the bit of metal fence we'd put up earlier this spring next to the woodpile as a support, got it into place, wired to the metal fence on one side and to the support sapling that's still attached to the twine fence on the other side, and at least that bit is done.
I still have to pull down the bean and morning glory vining from the rest of the twine fence, and probably replace a couple of other supports. But first, tomorrow if the weather remains sunny, I want to get peas planted. And probably spinach. Hmm...I wonder if I could plant anything else this early. Cabbage maybe? Google says early to mid April, and we're near enough to the lake to be in a warmer planting zone than most of Milwaukee, so yes. Onion starts? Google says mid to late April, so no. Turnips? yes. Beets? Possibly. Carrots? No, wait until the threat of frost has passed, unless it's an "early variety". (But the seed packets I have say "as early as the soil can be worked". I'll trust the packets, since those instructions were written for the variety in the packets.
So, there's a bunch of things I can plant tomorrow! Probably more than I'll have time for.
By the time My Angel returned, it was windy and the sun was low enough to be behind the houses on the west side of the street, so it was quickly getting colder. We went inside, and I looked at the flats I'd planted with tomato seeds.
A couple of days before Equinox, I'd planted a flat with "volunteer" tomato seeds. Volunteer meaning I'd taken tomatoes from my garden that were starting to rot and smashed them on a dry pot of dirt and let them dry there (because I read that tomato seeds need to sit in spoiled tomato juice for a while to sprout well). Later, I needed the pots and dumped the contents into baggies, making it really hard to tell what was seeds and what was just dirt. So I just spread about a tablespoon of the mix onto each pot in the flat, covered it with seed starting mix, watered it, and put it on a heating pad and under a rectangular plastic "dome". These seeds will grow children of one or more of the tomatoes I'd planted, so things like Northern Lights, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Black Krim, and other heirloom varieties, usually ones that are striped, yellow, green, or purple.
Then on Equinox, right before and after the "moment", I planted two more flats, one all tomatoes from seed packets, and one 1/3 tomatoes and 2/3 peppers (cayenne and sweet Italian peppers, mostly, some from seed packets and some from plants grown in the garden last year. Seedlings were already starting to show on the first flat at that point. Wow, that was fast!
Today, I found two tiny sprouts in the second flat, a Purple Russian (from a free thank-you packet sent by a company I'd ordered other stuff from) and one, well, I don't know. Apparently I was tired enough I forgot to label the last two tiny pots. Argh. There are no sprouts in the third flat yet. But in the first one, most of the pots had at least a dozen happy seedlings. I prepped a fourth flat (adding dirt to the 18 little pots), took out three of the most crowded pots, and filled the flat and four other small pots with 3 seedlings each, leaving three or four each in the original pots. All those babies (roughly 75) were from just two of the little 3" pots. The other one I returned still-crowded to the flat.
I've gotten really good at transplanting tomato seedlings, and three to a pot is too many, so even if I lose 1/3 of the transplants, unless there's some other problem with the babies, or I get sick enough to forget to water them, I'll have lots of tomato seedlings to give away. I plan to put a fan into my sprouting room this year, to hopefully get stronger stems and leaves; since I haven't done that before there may be a learning curve on doing that well; that's one possible source of losing some of the plants before outdoor-planting time.
We tried to glue the temporary crown to My Angel's tooth with the recommended product, with a lot less success than I had with the arch and the seedlings. The tooth is not bothering her, so she said she was done trying. I hope they can see her tomorrow to glue it back on properly, as I'm afraid the tooth might be fragile without the temp covering it. We'll see tomorrow, I guess. If nothing else, she has another appointment Friday.
And, I got distracted and didn't hit post. So, an update: I have the seeds that it would be ok to plant tomorrow in a plastic thingy for easy transport outside, and I should sort some papers or play some music. I'm not doing that until after I post this, so I'll just say see you soon. I'll try to take a pic of the arch to share tomorrow too.
