every day's like Christmas around here

There's bread in the breadmaker, and I made mom's mac and cheese for a pot luck last night - but instead of updating you on the details of what's been going in my belly, I'm going to give you updates from the greenhouse. From yesterday. Which means everything probably looks totally different, but I'm pooped and this will have to do. When it comes to that greenhouse and the Burpee catalogue and the Lowe's and my fingers in all that dirt, I feel like the kid in the candy store that just can't get enough and then collapses after the sugar-high crash only to rouse herself a few hours later to devour candy bars and twizzler sticks and red hot fireballs ALL OVER AGAIN. It's crazy, but it's so so much fun.





That's all of it minus the three trays of gerber daisies, confelowers, and holly hocks that I started on the last two trips out there. I'm tempted to list everything we've started (I'm keeping a garden journal to document my gradual disconnect with reality), but I'm too embarrassed that you'll judge the girl who knows little-to-nothing about gardening for her over-indulgent seed-planting. And I figure if I write in third person, you'll never know who that is...

I will give you a list of what's sprouted though: patio princess tomatoes, dahlias, petunias, lobelias, oregano, cabbage (golden acre - the reds haven't done anything), romaine, leaf lettuce, and geraniums. Once the starts poke their first leaves through the soil, I draw a diagram of the tray in my journal. That way, I can track what's been there for a little while and what's brandy-new. After hearing my excitement level sustain itself in squeals day after day, the handyman commented, "Every day's like Christmas around here." It's true. It's better than Christmas. Those seeds are so tiny. It's amazing to think that anything can grow from them at all!

The dahlias are getting bigger.

The lobelias will need to be thinned soon, I guess. These were seeds that I shook haphazardly on top of the container - almost like salting a big ol' plate of potatoes. Looks like I got a little close to the side of the tray. Have I mentioned the tininess of it all?

The handyman took some raspberry starts and threw them in a bucket with some random dirt. If "random" doesn't raise flags, the caption for the last picture is. "Hey, I think there are aphids in here."

(The raspberries were quickly moved outside and to the handyman's home where he said words of magic and sprinkled fairy dust to make them all better... Or something like that.  I'm still learning.)