Mondays

Week 9, in full swing here. Monday in plant land, lots of seeds to sow this week. We are going to start our greens too, day has dawned sunny and grand. The week is mapped out and there is a ton of work to do. Lucky for me, the dream trio will be arriving soon to get things rolling. Of course there are a slew of pictures to take and get onto the web site and the desk surface is starting to disappear under waiting piles of paperwork. It must be spring in green land.
Since the house has been finished my dog has taken to trying out different napping sites, unusual for her and quite funny for us. We also had our first dinner party with the new kitchen!

Bring it on!

Spring is around the corner, I can feel it in my bones. The days are getting longer, the daily late afternoon dog walk is no longer in the dusk! The pansies are all planted and growing nicely, so far so good. Grasses are all divided and rooting out, the greenhouse critters are all at bay for now. This may be the last resting Sunday for a while, I am enjoying it fully NOW!

Wind makes me crazy.

Wind blowing hard all night long, sounds like a freight train running at top speed directly at the front of the little propagation house. I don't sleep well on nights like this, waiting for the alarm to go off, wondering if I will know how to fix what ever is broken when the alarm goes off. It is just howling. You know it is cold when the arborvitae are black green, standing like frozen soldiers and the rhododendron are all hunched in, curled leaves dancing around. My favorite oak tree is waving and rattling like a Shaker dancer. I wonder what life is like when hard weather doesn't make you fret and fume. This is the part of horticulture/agriculture that you don't learn about until you live it. We are at the mercy of the elements. You have to do your work to plan, build and maintain accordingly and then it is up to faith.
It's Monday and that means seed day. Any seed crops for week 7 get started today, we fill our seedling trays with a peat perlite germination mix, get them nice and moist and then in goes the seed. These weeks that are early in the season are the nice because we still have space! We have some perennial plugs arriving later and will be opening up the big greenhouses for the planting season. That means cleaning, fixing, and getting all the systems ready to roll.

Getting Started

Here we go, my first entry into the bloggosphere. I've called this plant rants but you know I'll be branching out from there. No pun intended. I've been a professional grower for too many years to mention until I know you better. Right now we're in the greenhouse propagating our vegetative plants and planting seedlings. Actually, Katie is doing all that because I am still repairing all the systems that broke when I was in Guatemala and one of my house sitters let the greenhouse freeze in December. Really, just my huge collection of Coleus got blasted so it was an opportunity to update the gang AND it was my fault because of the crappy back door latch and the malfunctioning alarm system.
This is the apple tree out the dining room window. It has been snowing, cloudy and misty for days now. Great for the mist bench because the little rooting cuttings don't have to fight the sun drying and excess heat.