Yasaibatake's Blog

First Snow of the Year!
Nov 21, 2007 | 11:54 AM PST
Tags: snow , Bachelor's Buttons , strawberries , lemon seed , white pines , nanowrimo

I'm baaaaaaaack! Did ya miss me?

November is a hard month for me to get anything done, for one reason and one reason only: Nanowrimo! For those of you who don't feel like clicking the link, let me explain (briefly, I promise): Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. Participants have from 12:00 am November 1st to 11:59 pm November 30th to write a 50,000+ word novel. You don't have to finish it, as long as you reach the 50K mark by the deadline. This is the first year I've done it and I didn't even start until November 5th, plus I'm crazy far behind on word count right now, but by golly I'm going to make it if it kills me! Which it feels like it just might.

Anyways, I know you are not here to read about my faaaaaaaaaaabulous novel, but about my little garden! My strawberries are doing fantastically, as I stated last time...a little too fantastically, to be honest. Some of the plants are so tall, they're tipping over. My tallest plant is actually horizontal for about five inches before turning upwards (all told, it's around 8 or 9 inches tall...er, long?) My dad told me quite seriously that I should think about a stake for the poor thing. Who ever heard of staking a strawberry plant??? I'm thinking about getting a slightly bigger pot so I can kindof mound some extra dirt around it and hopefully hold it upright; the pot it's in right now is a little small for that sort of thing.
The one Bachelor Button seedling is doing smashing as well! He put out a new set of leaves and is just fabulous. I think I'm going to try one more time to get him some little Button buddies, and if that doesn't work out, well, maybe he's just a loner.
The pine trees are 2 for 3 right now. 2 of the little babies are doing fantastically, putting out new growth and just generally doing awesome. The third (the smallest one, too) is really struggling. He hasn't put out any new growth, and some of his needles are starting to turn brown. He has pretty darn close to the exact same conditions as the other two, but for some reason he just hasn't caught on. I read on the internet that he might like having some dirty fish water (you know, from like fish tanks when you clean them out) because it's full of ammonia which equals nitrogen, so I gave him a little bit from my beta fish, but that was like a week ago and it hasn't seemed to help him any. I thought about asking if I could gank some of the neighbor's pine needles too, the ones that fall at the base of his trees you know? but those would take such a long time to decompose that I don't think that would help much either. My dad's going to bring me some root simulant to try and help the poor guy out, but if that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do.

The lemon seeds look like they won't sprout. The only change that's taken place is that they are now covered in black. yay for mold. I haven't thrown them out yet because I figured the mold might help it break out of that hard shell (might break it down a little) but i'm pretty sure it's more or less a lost cause. Ah, well, I'm making Swedish Apple Pie with my mom for Thanksgiving, so maybe I'll plant some apples in the lemon's place! Bwahahahahahahahahaahahahahaha
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Oh, yes, and even though I didn't really talk about it, the title is correct - today is the first snow of the year! It's pretty thin, as usual, but it's still the unoffical start to winter, IMHO. Let the holidays begin!

the Gardening Bell Curve
Nov 4, 2007 | 9:24 PM PST
Tags: Bachelor's Buttons , strawberries , pepper seeds

subtitle: The Failures, the Successes, and the Daydreamers

I haven't the slightest what is going on with those silly Button seedlings! I lost another one today and a third one is still refusing to stand up. Only one of them is nice and tall - just put up the second set of leaves! Though mi padre said the first two leaves weren't really leaves for whatever the reasoning was, so I guess it's the first set of "real" leaves. I have half a mind to get the biggest pot I can find and plant all the seeds I have left in it just to see what happens - how many sprout and how many of the buggers stay alive and upright!

But I have to share - my little tiny strawberry plants, the little babies that were so tiny and fragile and half-dead just a month ago...if only you all could see them now! They've litterally doubled in size and are so nice and tall and green and leafy and...and...beautiful! I must admit, they've caught me off-guard; I was hoping they would look this way by spring. Though, as I'm thinking about it, why wouldn't they grow? They have warmth, lots of sun, good soil (versus clay), pleanty of water, no weeds to combat...much better conditions than in my parent's backyard! Makes me wish I'd potted more than four plants...

Then again, if I had as many strawberries and little baby trees and flowers and other plants as I wanted, I would quickly be out of room on my windowsill!

On that note, I do have more pepper seeds (from my co-worker again)....I forgot, did I already say that I got more peppers from her? Well, I did! Both bell peppers and banana peppers. I held off on processing most of them because I was sick, but felt pretty good today so I stripped them all of their seeds and froze their hollow green bodies :) I have more banana pepper seeds than I know what to do with! So maybe I'll plant some of those too.....you know, just to see.

Goodness. I'm unstoppable!