Green Thumbelina

Bonnie, my little garden destroyer, I mean helper. Actually she just likes to roll around in the dirt. I think she wishes she was a black cat.

A project that my mom and I have been talking about for months was finally put into action in April. We started a garden. We're doing a few "landscaping" projects but the main focus was the herb/veggie/fruit garden. So here are some pictures of it's fruitful progression. ;)

so many decisions. We opted for the Miracle Grow Organic Choice.
We also used this compost.


I had originally wanted to build the raised beds, but materials and assistance was not available in the time frame I wanted, so I caved and went the easy/cheaper route. Our raised beds were purchased from Home Depot. They went on sale so I got 2. My mom only wanted one, but after planting everything in the first one, we realized we would need two so everything was spaced nicely. So I went and got a second one. Now she wants more! If you are able to build a bed (it's much more satisfying) here are some references Home Depot , Sunset, eartheasy.

This is another little pre-garden project we did in a jiffy.

We planted Butterfly weed, aka milkweed which is the larval food of monarchs and queens. Literally a week after we planted them, they were completely eaten by monarch caterpillars.

It was pretty exciting, even though they looked pathetic with NO leaves. But I'm happy to say that all the caterpillars have moved on and our milkweeds are doing great.

List of butterfly attracting plants.
Native butterfly gardening.
Good info on butterfly gardening.

Ok moving on.

This picture was taken about 10 days after initial planting. What's in the box you ask?

From front to back.
Starting with the Left column: Strawberries, Spinach
column 2: Sweet Basil, Lemon Basil, Thai Basil, Stevia
Column 3: dirt w/ cucumber seeds/sprouts
Column 4: Thyme, Cilantro, Ichiban Eggplant, Black Beauty Eggplant.

This picture was taken 2 weeks post planting.

This is my niece and not-so-good helper. :( She likes to step on the garden bed and knock over my potted seedlings. Ohwell.

This is about 3 weeks post planting. You can see the cucumber plants just to the right of the basil. I planted seeds and never thought they would grow. Well let me tell you a little story about cucumbers...they GROW FAST!!

Again up to no good.

This is what my/my sister's arms looked like after installing the second raised bed. Can you tell who did more work? Put it this way, my sister gardened from a chair the whole time. :P

These are the cucumbers. We moved them into the new bed with the tomatoes and peppers. We neglected to install a structure for the to creep onto. Again not realizing they would grow so big so fast. They latched onto the wire cage for the tomatoes.


1 month post planting. At this point we added Parsley in between column 1 and 2 and removed the cucumbers. The Sweet Basil is HUGE! The spinach is coming out.

Black Beauties are fruiting!! 1 month post planting.

Cucumbers 39 days post plating and attached to their new home. I think we are going to need an extender soon. :/

Black Beauty 39 days post planting.

I'm super excited!

I will take more photos soon. I need to take some photos of the tomatoes and peppers. I'm grateful for the rain lately too.

Till next time.

testing

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my extreme frustrations

I don't understand why I get frustrated so easily. I tend to get upset at things that seem ridiculous to other people. I sometimes have a hard time overcoming obstacles, I sort of prevent myself from accepting certain things and letting go. Why does this happen? Is it how I was raised? Is it my conservative way of thought? Maybe I need to get a massage and let all my troubles melt away. Maybe hypnotism to see where it all stems from. But I thought that's what yoga was for. Aside from some sort of semi-spiritual growth, I enjoy it so much because for that hour and a half all that matters is my breath and balancing on my mat. All other cares and thoughts are gone. I escape into a state of meditation and sweat out all my frustrations and anger. But then I have to come back into the real world. Why won't this battle I have with my mind just end? I've almost reached my maxing point before I explode. I hope it passes soon. I think I may go play in the rain.

Not for the squeemish

This morning started out with a text message that Aussie had 4 puppies! I missed yoga to tend to puppies. 4 at first, 2 were dead. She then had another around 10ish am. I got to the clinic at 12 and she had 3 pups.
Then she had another around 1:30, we videoed it coming out, pretty gross.



But at the same time it was beautiful. She was getting impatient and walking around a lot, took her a little while to calm down and let the puppies nurse, but in the end she got it down well and was being a wonderful mommy. She was struggling about 4 hours after 1:30pm and some nastiness came out. We weren't sure what it was, but about 1hr after that another puppy started to come out. She was having a really hard time, so I had to pull it out and unfortunately it was dead. We still had 4. While we are looking at the x-ray arguing over how many puppies were still left, Lauren's mom went to the cage and yells "She just had another one!"

That was the last one. The Dr's count was correct. So total puppies- 8, survived- 5. 3 males, 2 females. They are beautiful and I am so happy that I was able to help Aussie and see her have her babies. I can't wait to see how they turn out. Only problem is that she is most likely going to her foster home with Paws4you this week. So I'm not sure how much of her I will get to see, but I really hope the Dr will let us keep her until the puppies eyes are open. :(

cats like gardens

Bonnie was helping us garden. More like getting in the way rolling in the dirt and chasing our tools as we used them.

Today I started my day with an Ashtanga class w/ Loren Russo. She's awesome! There are random explosions going on outside right now.

So the garden I fina;;y planted at my mom's is doing fantastic! The eggplants are growing FAST, strawberries are strong, Basils are getting tall and spinach is also doing well. Everything is growing well aside from the cilantro. I'm not sure if the cat is eating it or it's just not surviving. Bonnie does like to go in the garden but she's not digging holes, that's good.


This was day 1 of the garden.


This was the other day.

The milkweeds are full of monarch caterpillars. How exciting, I'm so happy we could provide a home for the, only problem is that they look like crap all eaten up.


"Aussie" is still up for adoption along with her 4-5+? puppies she is about to have. Please if anyone is able to adopt a dog or if you know someone that can, please let this mom and her pups have a chance. I REALLY don't want to send them to the humane society. I will update on when the puppies are born and their health etc.


well, our tickets are purchased for Ink N' Iron so I'm pretty excited about that.
Til next time.

Aussie

She's going to be the death of me. Licking my face while I drive, next time she's getting a seat belt.




Australian Cattle Dog up for adoption to a good home, preferably with no cats. Not sure how she is with other dogs but I imagine that she would love a play mate. She's a sweetheart, loves her belly rubbed, loves giving kisses is VERY affectionate. She'll lay all over you just to be close to you. Listens well, very loyal, fairly house trained (most likely was an outside dog) she just needs a little fine tuning. She's very happy to be indoors. Please help me find her a home with room to run around or someone that will walk her regularly. Barely sheds, smells cleeean, had two baths, HW prevention and Flea prevention. She's a great dog that just needs a home that will love her as equally as she'll love you. She's a lovebug and she needs a forever home. Please help, I don't want to send her to the Humane Society.

Mom, It's not a threadmill.

LA Fitness not "La" Fitness

So I finally went to LA Fitness tonight (I hate going to the gym) but I'm doing it for my mom (as well as my fat-ass self). They are pretty state-of-the-art with LCD screens attached to every cardio machine. Holy crap I just realized my mom left me a glass of ice water next to my bed, YES! for moms.

So I get to the gym at like 8:45, most of the cardio machine TVs are on abc watching Dancing with the Stars. So I get on an elliptical machine and bam I realized how royally I screwed up! Lost is coming on in 15 mins and I didn't bring my headphones! I can hook up headphones directly into the machine and watch TV! Amazing what inventions there are. In a way it's kind of funny, watching TV usu requires a couch/bed, but at the gym the TV is workout entertainment. I thought it was pretty cool that you can choose the channel of your choice. There are also machines that you can hook up a USB cable, or an IPOD and charge it! Insane!

So first day at the new gym was partially successful with the workouts, failure for missing Lost. I got parts of it but with no sound and I couldn't get the subtitles to work. Ohwell. My mom working out was entertainment enough.

So I know no one will read this which is fine, I don't get offended.