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
!

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!

Flashback to Elementary School
Oct 30, 2007 | 8:27 PM PST
Tags: sick , Bachelor's Buttons , lemon seeds

Sorry folks, I'm just too used to the small type I guess :) Though sometimes it's too hard for me to read when my contacts are acting up! Thankfully I just got a new box in, which means I have at least three months before battling the overly dry, itchy, blurry contacts again...anyways is this size better?

And another apology for being gone for...what now, a week basically? I've been sick. Again. What is this, the 8th time? In just a little over two months? The OT assured me that all new teachers go through this, and that after a year or two I'll build up such a tolerance for the common classroom germs that I will practically never get sick. I sure hope she's right, because this is driving me crazy! I need to buy stock in Halls cough drops or something....

Anyways, very little has happened. My Buttons are kinda tipsy...they like to fall over, but the stems are intact. it's like they are suddenly top heavy and there isn't enough dirt to hold them up or something. I'll try transplanting them into another pot (which I'd been looking at doing anyways, if you remember....well, if i remembered to tell you! now i can't rememeber)  and maybe i can get them a little more stable then.
My grandparents were in town this past weekend to visit with my brother since it's his senior year of high school. They both grew up on farms and they were the ones that had the big ol' garden to feed all 6 of their kids, so they were very interested to see my little pots. They weren't really sure why I would grow only four little strawberry plants ("that won't be enough for even a handful of strawberries" they said, puzzled at my space-saving logic) and were equally impressed with the white pines....I think, since they have really only gardened/farmed for the sake of feeding their families, they didn't really understand why I wanted to grow a tree that would produce nothing they would eat. But they were trying to support me, and I appreciate that fact at least.

I do have one new addition! well, two, kinda. My boy and I went out eating with my grandparents and my granddad pulled the lemon seeds out of the lemons that came with his water. He gave them to me and told me that I could grow just about any seed, no matter where it came from, so I should try growing those two seeds. I thought I remembered reading about someone on here who had done this before, some night when I was reading lots of blog archives, so I decided to try it. They're currently sitting in wet paper towels in a clear glass on my windowsill...you know, like how you used to sprout seeds in elementary school science class? I figured why make a whole new pot with dirt and everything if they aren't even going to sprout, right? So I'll let them sprout there if they want to and then I'll put them into a pot.

Field Trip!
Oct 20, 2007 | 1:58 PM PST
Tags: Louisberg cider mill , pumpkins , apples , Bachelor's Buttons

Uh, I typed out this whole thing and then forgot to copy it before posting. Of course, I was logged out :( Okay, how about a list summary...because I'm too lazy to type all that out again.

-Friday was a field trip day for our LIFT class! We went to the Louisberg cider mill/pumpkin path (in Louisberg, KS, just a touch south of us).
-We went through a corn maze, saw farm animals including the most adorable black piglets I've ever seen in my life, and generally tortured the LIFT teacher, who is a city slicker to the extreme and was totally lost/grossed out being in the country.
-The pumpkin patch was a huge disappointment. It was pretty much just a spot where a bunch of people litterally threw their extra pumpkins; at least 85% of the pumpkins were smashed open and rotting. But since we only have 6 students, we managed to find enough good pumpkins that everyone got one. The speech path ran around putting the good ones in clear spots so that the kiddos could "find" their own. It was so bad, the OT gave me a few (read: 4) pumpkin seeds one of the kids had picked from an open pumpkin, saying, "You should grow these so we'll have some good pumpkins next year."
-The cider mill was nifty and smelled great! One of the other paras asked me if you could grow apple trees from the seeds inside apples from the grocery store, and I had to admit I didn't know for sure, never having tried it, but that it made sense. I know there are some things where the grocery store foods can't produce viable seeds or something to that effect, but I couldn't tell you what produce that was or even where I heard that. So I guess I can't really say I know that, eh? Details.

-One of the Button seedlings toppled. About halfway up the stem, it looked like it suddenly got smashed - paper thin and more white than green. Mi padre suggested cutting off that part and leaving the bottom of the stem, which is still healthy, and waiting to see if it will come back, so I did. (Is it obvious yet that I have no idea what I'm doing? but that's half the fun) I planted three more seeds in the same pot to make up for the smashed one and the two that didn't sprout. When those sprout, I'll probably move all of them to a bigger pot, as the two survivors will be fairly big by then and I don't want to crowd them in too much. It is, after all, a pretty small pot.

In the Beginning....
Oct 10, 2007 | 5:02 PM PST
Tags: strawberries , Bachelor's Buttons , beginning , Norcal little blue pot

Let's start with an offical disclaimer, eh? "The author of this blog has no idea what she is doing, and has admitted to making it all up as she goes. Any advice or examples given hereafter should be treated with great skepticism unless validated by legitimate outside sources." ;) Funny, yes, but also true. It's also a pretty decent first-impression-maker. So here is your offical warning: I am a rambling fool! Except lots of stories, random details, obscure allusions, jokes that aren't funny to anyone except me, and other cross-categorical nonsense.

Okay, so now that introductions are out of the way, let's get down to business, shall we? I'm restricted to container gardening, as I live in an apartment and therefore have no lawn to dig up. My apartment doesn't even have a balcony, so I'm further restricted to a (admitedly very long) windowsill until I can be creative and think of somewhere else to put my plants without management kicking me out onto the streets. As of today, I have a grand total of three pots hanging around: two pots with two baby strawberry plants each, and one much smaller pot I just finished planting with some Bachelor's Button seeds. I haven't decided if I'll plant anything else tonight, but I might. I have tons load more to plant, mostly seeds, and more space, but I'm trying not to go too crazy all in one night, lol! I'll try and borrow my folk's digital camera sometime soon so I can try and get some pictures of my cute little strawberry plants posted too!

ETA: I broke my favorite little blue pot today. I tripped over one of my mom's dogs and dropped it on the patio. After a little pouting, I figured out it was made by a company called Norcal. I guess I bought it as a part of a set, because I have three others that are the exact same except in different colors - yellow, green, and pink. Hopefully I can find one online or in a store to replace it...and then maybe buy an extra set too. You know, just in case.