Monday, 15 April 2024
at home
I got some plants from Annie’s Annuals and Perennials…my excuse for the order being that I had stepped on the one nice Nicotiana langsdorfii that I had carefully brought through the winter in the greenhouse. It seems thoroughly smushed. So I got three to replace it, and one iochroma, a very handsome tender buddliea-sized shrub. (I have one of those already that may not have made it through winter in the greenhouse.) For years, I thought it was “Lochroma”, because that is what iochrama (starting with an upper case “I”) looks like to me!
As always, I admired Annie’s packaging.
You pull the inner box out by the round hole.
Then it unfolds so nicely. Below is after I had removed one two-plant inner box.
The other inner box, with the cardboard supports pulled forward:
Though maybe it is not the best for conserving cardboard, it is certainly gentle on the plants.
The day had been looming, not as tax day, but because it seemed like the right time to plant tomato and cucumber seeds in six packs and put them on the kitchen windowsill and west bedroom windowside plant table, with attempts to protect them from cats.
I don’t much enjoy planting seeds. I did my best to be patient and to enjoy the process.
First, I planted some flats of annuals, mostly cosmos, and some leftover Nicotiana langsdorfii from last year, and a couple more kinds of nicotiana. I decided to wait on the amaranth and foxglove and plant seeds out after frost time is over..
The cosmos amounts were generous, with enough Seashells for 12 six packs and the others with enough for 6…except for my second favourite, Cupcakes and Saucers, which had barely enough for 3! My favourite is Cupcakes, and I couldn’t find anyone selling it, or at least not selling it and enough other seeds I wanted to make a minimum order. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough. My third favourite (used to be my favourite before Cupcakes came along) is Seashells. My least favourite tall one is Sensation, which doesn’t bloom for me till October…and last year Seashells behaved like Sensation. I don’t grow any of the short ones but will probably buy some Sonata from a local nursery for Diane’s garden.
Cupcakes vs. Cupcakes and Saucers:
I even used an actual seed planting mix, expensive compared to potting soil. I forgot to examine it for peat moss; it is very peat moss based. But around here, you can’t find “peat free” potting soil, unless maybe some kind that is $20 plus a bag. And I went so far as to using vermiculate for a topper like a proper seed grower. Or at least a proper British one. I planted the nicotianas in old salad trays because they need heat.
When I bought the N. langsdorfii seeds three yearsago, the packet held what seemed like 1000 teensy seeds. I actually managed to germinate some (but none of the plants in the garden made it through winter; they are rather tender). The two other packets this year (from a different company) held hardly any. I wouldn’t mind except that I find them hard to grow. Pinetree is reasonably priced and usually smaller quantities, which I should have remembered. If they all grow, it will be plenty.
The flower seed flats all went on a long narrow green house bench, cleared off by squeezing other plants together. It is still three or four weeks before I can clear out the greenhouse of all the wintered plants.
My good friend Cheyenne from down the block dropped by.
I stopped him from drinking murky water, so he left.
The crab pot wall next door continued to grow.
I was sore from planting seeds standing up so dragged a chair over to the greenhouse patio, put the tray on that, and sat on my rollator to plant the tomatoes, peppers, cukes and an attempt at celery. It was much more comfy.
I had a few seeds of Tomato ‘Rosella’ left over from last year, which was favourite of Jim “Every day’s a school day” McColl, beloved retired presenter of The Beechgrove Garden (now just called “Beechgrove“) and thus sentimental to me. About retiring at age 84, he said “I just want to grow old in private … but I’ll still garden.”
Our weather is not warm enough to grow tomatoes outdoors, and only small or cherry tomatoes ripen well, even in the greenhouse.
I had sworn to myself that I would do better labelling this year! I planted about four of each variety. Allan brought the trays indoors for me. I did not trust myself not to drop them.
Seed trays on the kitchen window sill, where rows of sticky tape seem to discourage cats:
And on the bedroom plant table, a different attempt to keep cats off:
A ridiculous thing is that I have my mom’s good old three-tiered lighted grow table but have not made anywhere to put it. It could go into the second bathroom (where a bathtub should be, but the former owner of this house removed the tub to make room for her rolltop desk!) but first I need to accomplish the item that has been on my indoor list (along with making a garden map!) for three years, sorting out boxes of paper. Another problem is I do not like bright lights, but pink grow lights might work (will have to research if they work for seeds).
Having boxes or a desk in a bathroom is not as disgusting as it might sound. It’s a biggish room and the toilet is discreetly tucked behind a partition.
Because of not enjoying the seed planting, it was a relief and quite an accomplishment to get it over with.
Allan had taken another photo of the gorgeous Tulip, ‘Leo’.
reading
In the evening, I started a book which, even though it is under 200 pages, I only had time to get halfway through before 9 PM and time for dinner and an episode of Lewis (which we are rewatching after having rewatched Endeavor and Morse).
I have a feeling some people might be cynical about the very tender and sentimental Anne Lamott. I am not, just astounded at how much she reveals of her very private and very human thoughts. Example: “Someone once wrote that there is our public life, our private life, and our secret life, and my secret life now showed.”
“.…other people, especially those who love me most, were somehow seduced by the Annie pheromones, or felt terribly sorry for me, or were obliged to stick around. My terror default from childhood was that critical people were right about my faults. They were being honest, not mean. Any meager good things about me paled in comparison, were outweighed by my character and personality disorders.
Trust me, she does not write this in a self-pitying way. I also just love this, during the crisis that she is describing above: “Before bed, I offered myself what I would offer any visitor: a hot bath, an apple, kind words, a good book.”
Maybe I like her so much because I identify with this: “To make this flaw [the need for perfection] worse, some of us grew up in families where mistakes felt like matters of life and death, where you might get the belt or sent to your room without eating (as in my family), which bred the sickness of perfectionism and a lifelong fear of making mistakes, especially in public.” That was my family indeed, where a childish error could lead to black marks on a calendar, which, while not following me literally for the rest of my life, was shown to the guests at a family party (who looked bemused and uncomfortable). I just realised this is why I so much love the phrase from the Ramones movie Rock N Roll High School, a film which not only changed the course of my life (even though I didn’t like some of its humour at ALL and I hated when food was thrown at the lunch ladies), and which gave me the useful phrase “a black mark on your record that will follow your for the rest of your life.” And I guess those calendar black marks did, in my memory. And I guess that is one of the reasons why I love Anne Lamott.
(This post was bracketed by two Annies: Annie’s Annuals and Ann Lamott.)
I opened a packet of larkspur seeds to direct sow a couple of weeks ago, and there were a dozen seeds enclosed! About fifty cents a seed. So much for the custom of thinning out, one can hardly afford to do so now.
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Sad! I thought I had looked in the description at the number of seeds per packet but I guess I forgot on Cupcakes and Saucers.
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Everyone is selling ‘peat free’ here. I don’t know whether it is more expensive but peat based composts are frowned upon.
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I hear it every time anyone mentions potting soil or bagged compost on Beechgrove, Gardeners’ World etc. We are behind the times on this.
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