Friday, 10 May 2024
at home
It was hot! I couldn’t think of a shady place to conveniently pot up plants outdoors, so with Allan’s help I set up a work place in the garage to pot what seemed like an endless amount of tomatoes and cucumbers from six packs to little pots. I did an experiment on some of the cukes using the soil Margarita brought me (Miracle Grow organic with some manure, coir, feather meal and other ingredients) in pots of black color (because it is darker) and some of the usual potting soil (Gardner and Bloom, which is the one mostly available around here) in tan coloured pots. Will be interesting to see which one might do better. Mostly, though, I would mix the two soils when I wasn’t doing an experiment.
Tomatoes I grew: Rosella, leftover seeds so only got one, Gardener’s Delight, Sungold, Black Cherry. Maybe one other. Too tired to remember! Cukes: Market More, Boothby’s Blonde, White Wonder or something like that, ummm….one other, I think. The little celery seedings are too small to pot on yet.
I also divided four houseplants for my plant sale: a huge clivia, which I potted in some pretty plastic pots, a queen’s tears, some sort of aloe type plant and a tradescantia plus some little begonia starts I had made. Kept one each of the four plants for myself. I am not very big on houseplants, partly because my house has small windows and because I don’t like bright lights indoors. I would love to have bigger windows, though. Double-wides are not easy to remodel in that way, being made of flimsy stuff.
I have so much respect and awe for people who work on plant propagating, seed planting, and potting on day after day. I find it so very much more painful than spending the day weeding, because of course weeding at least has a greater variety of movement even if it is just moving from one weed patch to the next. My back hurt so much by halfway through the day!
I schlepped the tomato and cucumber plants tray by tray on the rollator to the greenhouse.
The trays over some flats are because it appeared some critter…a mouse? ruched all around in three flats I’d made of cerinthe seeds, of which out of whatever 3×18 pots comes to, I only have three little plants coming up. Once I had cerinthe seeds in a bowl on my table in my previous house, to be cleaned and saved, and a mouse ate them all, leaving just the petal fluff.
Except for this photo that Allan took of my ‘Radway Sunrise’ rose….
…that is all I have to offer for today.
Well, here is Faerie being thoughtful by the scratching post, with catnip toys.
But wait, we went out at 11 to see the northern lights. I have always wanted to see them. We drove to the dark Seaview beach approach and could see a haze of green blue pale light across the sky. That was thrilling, but I thought that was all we were going to see, and, being tired, we drove home at midnight. I guess we left too early because we heard it got better after midnight. Argh!
Our friend Wendy Murry took these. She says the camera picked up more vibrancy than she could see with her eyes.
Tony Hofer took these.
My ancient iPhone 6S took a black photo and then went from 75% battery to completely dead in an instant, as is its wont. Allan’s little camera just got pictures like this…
…which was way more colour than our eyes could see, because the camera takes in more light.
I got up at midnight to catch the aurora borealis but between the neighbours security lights and the street light, I could not see them. I briefly thought about walking to the water, but the s/o was fast asleep and I did not want to venture out on my own. I regret not going.
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I read this morning that we should be getting more chances.
Seeing the difference between what the camera sees and what the eye sees, confirmed by friends who got great pics that showed way more than what they actually saw, makes me wonder about all the photos I’ve seen of northern lights and whether they show much more than folks in the far north actually see!
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Those are very impressive clivias!
You’re plantings from seeds are so impressive.
So glad you got to witness the Aurora. My stepdaughter was visiting, enjoying the nighttime sky, and didn’t think that we would want to be awakened since she heard us snoring In the next room. Next time she will know To wake us up. She did get some nice photos.
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The news says there should be more opportunities to see the lights this early summer. If we get clear skies, which we often do in June. I hope so.
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RAD! The sky supposedly glowed slightly here. It glows slightly to the north anyway because that is where San Jose is. It was more colorful with photography that makes ultraviolet or infrared visible.
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Great sights of the lights.
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