Winter Came Back

"It looks like winter came back!"  said the security guard as I walked into the plant this morning. 

"I know, right?" I replied.  "I had to go back inside my house to get my hat."  And I needed it, too.  It was a chilly 43° when I got up this morning, and that hat felt good on my head.   It didn't last long, though.  It was a balmy 75° when I got home from work, and that was most likely the last cold snap we will have this year.  

The first thing I did when I got home was to run out and pull the Walmart sacks off of my little tomato seedlings so they can get some sun.

Full sun, I mean.  Walmart sacks are pretty translucent, so they were getting decent light even covered up.  They all seem to be doing well, except for that one little cup that nothing has germinated in.  I'm hoping now that it's pretty much done with being cold, something will come up pretty soon.  If it hasn't grown anything by the time the others are big enough to plant, I'll just buy one.  Someone somewhere will probably still have some 'maters.  Maybe not Roma, but someone will have something. 

Once it had cooled off just a bit, I gave everything a good watering. 

Including the zinnias, which are really taking off.   

They say the best time to water is between 5:00 AM and 8:00 AM, but that's just not going to happen.  Maybe sometime in the future, I can set up a drip system on a timer, but for now, they get watered when I get home in the evenings. 

According to AdTube -- which is what I'm going to start calling YouTube because of all the ads you have to sit through -- I'm pretty much doing everything wrong anyway.  My beds aren't deep enough...I bought wooden ones...I filled them wrong...Oh, well.  It's a learning process.  

In other news, I was getting ready for work this morning in my kitchen when I heard something that sounded like rapid gunfire coming from the direction of town.  "Huh,"  I thought.  "The gangbangers are up late today"  Well, late for them, early for everyone else.  

It's kinda sad that this is where my mind went first, but this is the world we live in.  

Sometime later, I heard a car door close and someone driving away, and I thought, "What's going on?"  It was when I left for work that I found out exactly what had been going on.  It would seem a branch fell out of an oak tree -- which was the gunfire sound I heard-- and was blocking the road.  The car door was someone stopping to move it out of the way, because when I walked outside, it was in my front yard.  

After I got home, I grabbed it and dragged it to my back yard where it will be cut up to use for firewood.  The leaves will go into my newly re-started compost pile, and hey, it's free wood.  We don't turn down free.  And I'm hoping the cat will use the compost pile instead of my garden beds as her litterbox.  Getting the mulch down ought to help steer her in that direction...I'm planning on using cardboard for the tomato and pepper beds.  I have plenty because I've been saving boxes for like six months now.  

I don't know what I'm going to do in the zinnia bed.  I'm thinking wood chip or bark mulch, but I'm not sure if that will be enough to discourage the cat from digging.  Cardboard would be better, but not very pretty in a fairy garden bed.  Maybe I'll put down cardboard and put wood chips over it. 

Now for a bittersweet moment, it looks like bluebonnet season is about over.  But my plants are absolutely loaded with nice, fat seed pods. 

I'm hopeful that I'll get a stand going...wish me luck. 

In the midst of all of that gardening, there has also been knitting.  I finished the most recent sailor hat, but have not yet cast on a new one. 

Yarn:  Red Heart Supersaver Jumbo Stripes

Colorway:  Neon Stripe

Pattern:  Basic beanie

Needles:  US 8 / 5 mm

On the bright side, I finally got all the tags attached to the hats I'm going to send off to the Seaman's Church Institute.  I still need to seal it up and go to my favorite place in the whole wide world -- the post office.   There really isn't any rush...but I do need to get them send.  Twenty nine hats -- for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.  

And finally, Salena, I found a t-shirt for you!  

 Perfect, huh?