YOU get a fairy garden and YOU get a fairy garden...

Since I feel that the world could be just a little bit happier [that's a lie - I feel the world could be a lot happier, but I'm figuring others think maybe just a little bit happier] with more fairy gardens, check out the adorable one I made for my friend for Christmas!

I took a jar and painted the bottom a matte clearcoat so it would sort of fog out the dirt at the bottom.

I transplanted some of my clippings from my large garden.

I ran outside during one of the few mild moments of December to steal moss from the backyard.

I cut a little section off of the mini fencing I have.

I hand-painted a sign made with a chunk of husband's woodworking shavings (and yes, silly question, of COURSE I added sparkles to it!) and glued it to a stick.

What to do for a little path...hmmm...couldn't find any small pebbles...hmmm....
ooh! I know! I'll check my button stash! Score!
The perfect thing: awful, dated, hideous buttons that are terrible for any sewing project, but perfect for a "cobblestone" path!!


The plants didn't take as well as I would have liked and the smallness of the jar meant it condensed up real quick.

But it was so stinkin' cute!

So I gave it to my friend (a wildly successful keeping alive of plants gardener) and told her good luck! :-D


More Fairy Gardens!!!!

Seedlings!!

As mentioned, I was definitely checking my planted seeds way more often than the "7-14 days" germination listed on the package (in my defense, the color of the lighting reflecting off the little white balls in the soil looked an awful lot like green from a distance, ok?!)

So imagine my amazement when Wednesday (4 days after planting!) I saw this:

And then each day after several more popped up!

Until this morning where we almost all of them growing and the one sunflower absolutely skyrocketing!

I'm so excited!!!

So as suspected, the soil makes a very big difference! This is a very fine soil with those little water-holding (I think that's what they do?) styrofoamy balls instead of what comes out like mulch from most normal potting soil bags (even the ones that say for containers! {angry eyes})

The only bag I could find for seed starting was Miracle Gro, soooo...not entirely sure what else is in there and how much that's pushing the seeds along beyond just finer soil :-D

The Dirt Calls and I Must Answer!

Well, right after whining about needing warm days so I could tackle the cilantro...we got it!

It hit 70-something on Tuesday and I raced home after work to put in an hour before the sun set.

Glorious!


Oh to be on hands and knees digging in the dirt again, sun shining down. Magical.


The wildflower border is looking just peachy now with tufts of [non-cilantro or weed] green popping up!

Before:                                                            After:

 Now you can see the bulbs popping!

Wednesday we broke a record by hitting 83!!

So I sneaked in a bit more weeding as well. 

I also realized that I should have saved and re-planted some of the cilantro seedlings and put them in the edible garden. DOH!

Aaaaand I should not have just thrown them on the top of the compost pile before drying them out. DOOOOOH!  Oh well; at least they're still resting on a bunch of leaves, so can dry out before I turn the compost.    ("Please no millions of reproduced compost seedlings, please!!")

Now we're back to colder and rainy, but I'm feeling great about that taste of spring and what I accomplished!

In fact, maybe I'll get myself a cake like this 😁:

Seeeeeeeds! And Indoors

Here we go!!

The seeds are planted!!

We majorly scaled back this year, so right now I'm just starting flowers* and 2 kinds of tomatoes.
Several others are direct-sow and we're going to try getting established melon plants from the nursery since those have never done well for us from seed.

Cute as those little toilet paper roll pods were last year, I saved the trays from my annuals last year since they're larger (hopefully not too large for starting seeds!) and so should hold water better and allow for more growth before needing to up-pot them (which I should have done weeks earlier with last year's! :-/ )

I'm a few weeks early on starting, but I plan to up-pot them before putting them in the ground and hopefully come April, I can start putting the pots outside - at least during the day to get them all hardy and strong for permanent planting!

Here's hoping!

Now I just sit back and wait (and check them every hour when I'm home because, naturally, they could sprout at any moment! Oh wait...the package says 7-14 days. This could be a long 2 weeks.)

*I planted some zinnia and 4 o' clocks leftover from my friend last year
as well as sunflowers and butterfly weed which were Christmas gifts!
How brilliant is that?! Seed packets for Christmas?!

After previously trying to fit pots into those ugly and highly impractical (for this purpose) round plastic pot bases, I'm very happy with my discovering the perfect alternate: pet food trays!

They're rectangle to fit more pots, black so they look fairly decent in the house and are only about an inch tall which is perfect for catching water and dirt, but still small enough to store well when not in use. (And they were like 3/$7 or something on Amazon!)



Great for starting seeds or plant clippings or those little friends just waiting for spring in the great outdoors!


Unfortunately I didn't get my coleus clippings planted quickly enough and so I lost a few :-(

But the ones there are doing great and ready for the shade garden!

Pretty jazzed about the $5-10 I'll save not having to buy that annual!


The "bedraggled" plants in the corner (husband's word) are recent acquisitions from a friend who started talking about her spider plants.


So she clipped some off and a couple of us divided them up and now they're planted and won't be bedraggled for long! They'll do wonderfully! I'm sure of it!


The other fabulous surprise is the apple tree!

The what?

Well...gardener extraordinaire (shared plot partner) found sprouted apple seeds in an apple and planted them. And they took!

She gave me one and it did so well and got new leaves and grew out of its little pot and so I re-potted into a bigger one and yay! happy, happy, happy!!

And shortly after that it started turning brown and one by one the brown leaves dropped off.
I was sure I'd killed it.

I kept watering it, though, a little bit...just in case!

But it wasn't coming back.

😭

And then husband says, "well, they do go dormant, right?"

😮

But indoors?


So I kept watering, just a bit and finally this past weekend, though I could not for the life of me get my camera to focus on it....

There's a green bud right a the top!!!!

So comes spring will be its first adventure outdoors and then once it's hardier, I'm planting it!!

And what do you to when it's snowing and so you can't take your indoor pots to the deck for adding more dirt*?

*PS - where does the dirt go?!
Does dirt evaporate?!
It's not like rain is slowly
washing it out of the pot!
It's not like there's a hole at
the bottom draining it out!
How did I suddenly end up
with 2" less dirt than when
I re-potted it months ago?!

You carry up mixing bowls full of dirt from the bag left in the tiled mud room!

Gotta get creative with that indoor gardening!

More Spring Peeking...

Pardon the million new posts, but.....


The spring bulbs are bursting forth everywhere!

The wildflower beds are filled with them...

A bit hard to see among the weeds and dried leaves, but they're there!

The beds overall aren't horrible, horrible, weed-wise but that cilantro infestation that I never got to in the fall really needs to be dealt with! Really hoping for a nice weekend to get out there soon. 

Last February  we had crazy nice weather that seemed to land on the weekends.

This year it's been rain.

Or in the case of these pictures - it was soooo cold and within a few hours of these sunshiny hopefuls, they were covered in several inches of snow.

I know, I know, winter's not over yet, but I really needed some time to get out early because come spring, we have projects planned that will put gardening on the back-burner for awhile.

We'll see how it goes! May be dealing with a weed jungle this year. Hey, what's new?! :-D

I trimmed my clematis down; seems so sad to do while they're still such spindly little sticks, but they said it's important to prune it back every year to keep the roots and stem strong. And certainly "they" can't be wrong! So snip snip I did.

I'm hoping that the Jackmani on the side closest to the house (facing us in the picture at right) gets enough sun before all the plants in this corner start erupting (the peony gets the largest, though it should soon have competition with the new hibiscus I put near the house at the end of the summer!)

Perhaps my next project can be figuring out some winter interest for this spot; it's a little sad. 

And the sedum looks super creepy and worm-like when it's all dried like that!

Very exciting developments realizing that sure, March is a total lottery, but that the winter actually flew by and we're nearing the finishing line!
(My apologies to those who love winter...well no, sorry...not really sorry at all :-D)

Community Garden

We interrupt this regularly scheduled program to bring you what I meant to post months ago!

.........

With gardening on the slow time of year, I'll fill in the emptiness with some other content.
Let me take you back to the fall...

One of the benefits of being a part of a community garden is getting to see the other gardens!

Our community garden is pretty enormous, I think. (I don't have much experience with them, actually.)

So one day, at the end of the season, I took a walk and decided to share some of the loveliness that I saw...

(Disclaimer: I did not get permission from my fellow gardeners before taking or posting these, so if you've stumbled upon this blog and happen to see your garden...well...uh...sorry? But it's only here because it's truly impressive!!)

Gorgeous flowers still in bloom...

...in abundance!

And then there are those with truly impressive gardens - either very large or with incredible trellises or other structures or just beautifully producing...

Some have a lovely mix of edibles and flowers...

And then there's the gardener with the outhouse toolshed. Well done, my friend - well done!

 And then there's our neighbor, just a few plots away. We watched this corn grow...and grow....and GROW!
Garden plot partner getting increasingly jealous and me getting increasingly horrified...corn shouldn't be this tall! It's not natural!
Definitely where the children of the corn come from, no doubt...

I placed my orange bucket right next to it for scale...it's insane!

So even when our plot doesn't do super well, it's fun to be part of this little community cheering each other on and getting inspired by seeing what the "veterans" are capable of.

I know return you to our regularly scheduled SPRING!!!!

First Bloom!

It's official...February 15 the first blooms of spring appeared!

It's Time!!!

It hit me yesterday, "wait...it's February! Things start coming up in February!!"

Sure enough, I get home and look who's peeking up in the tulip border?!!

It's crocus season, y'all!


To me, this means gardening season is officially open...things are growing!


Normally those first little shoots make me go "Spriiiiiiiiing!!!!!" (even though we typically have another month of winter), but it has been SO cold here that I'm definitely still in bundling-up winter mode.
Soon as one of those fabulous Maryland sunny and 60 (or occasionally 70+!) degree days comes around, then I'll be in spring mode (even though we typically still have another month of winter! Darn those teasing warm February days that this year seem to be severely lacking!)

Sometimes I Get So Excited About Gardening That...

A fabulous Christmas gift from my sister-in-law!