A couple days ago I noticed that Target was having a sale on the MIO Composter ($25 down from $100). The ratings don't look so good, but it's because a lot of people didn't know it was for worm composting (vermicomposting). I've never tried worm composting, but it's hard to not hear about it. It seems like it's everywhere and people are raving over it. So I ordered 2. Plus if you log into your Chase Freedom Rewards account, you can get 5 bonus points for every dollar you spend at Target.com.
I was shocked to see them outside today! They shipped extraordinarily fast. I'm also very impressed by the modest amount of packaging. 1 cardboard shipping box, 1 bag, 1 piece of twine to secure the trays and lid together, and instructions/label. Very impressed. They're actually bigger than I thought they would be. The parts are also stamped with a recycling code, so when they eventually break, which I hope won't be for a while but you never know in this house, they can be recycled.
FINALLY! I was able to get a good picture of one of the lizards that have been living in our stone facade and vinyl siding for years. There are several of these, and being a smoker, I've been able to get to know them during my quiet smoke breaks. They skulk up to prey (moths, beetles, flies) and very quietly and deftly snatch them and eat them. It's amazing how big of prey they can eat for being so small. They also squabble a lot amongst themselves and seem to be quite territorial about the little holes and crannies. They'll make odd chirping noises when doing battle. They also blend in almost perfectly into the particular limestone facade and vinyl siding on the house. The most obvious color differentiation is with their gut and eyes - you can tell when they've had a good hunt as exhibited by the one I managed to catch on film/SD card.
Please click for big to see all the funny detail on this guy:
Rock City, a popular tourist destination, is located on top of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, TN. It is a kitschy mix of scenic beauty, gardens, and gnomes. You can see 7 states on a VERY clear day from Lookout Point, and as a testament to how to tall the mountain is, or rather how short everything else is, one of the Civil War battles was named Battle Above the Clouds. Locally called The Mountain, it is a beautiful place to visit disregarding the gnomes which make me happy in their own way. One of the most famous aspects of Rock City are the barns advertising the attraction.
Rock City officially opened as a public attraction on May 21, 1932. It got off to a slow start, because advertising in those days was difficult; especially since Carter’s mountain-top attraction was not located in a place that people would just happen to be passing by and take notice. It was at this point another brilliant idea of Carter’s was born. He enlisted the help of a young sign painter named Clark Byers, who was hired to travel the nation’s highways and offer to paint a farmer’s barns in exchange for letting him paint three simple words: See Rock City. The distinctive black-and-white signs appeared as far north as Michigan and as far west as Texas. The advertising soon began to produce the desired effect and, by the close of the 1930’s, more travelers than ever had seen Rock City Gardens.
There are books dedicated to the barns, and there are still a few barns still standing that have been advertising Rock City for decades. Most advertisements are now on steel billboards dotting the interstates and highways.
As a commemoration to this spectacle and a part of Tennessee that I still love, I decided to create my own See Rock City barn. It's a recycled cedar trunk from a cedar we chopped down, and the mailbox is an extra large USPS-approved mailbox. Apparently there are all sorts of regulations on mailboxes, so we decided to take the safe route by purchasing one that was already approved. I coated the entire box in white spray paint, taped off the bits that would remain white, coated the box in red, taped off for the roof, spray painted the black, removed all the taping, and coated the entire box in a few coats of clear paint for a bit of added protection. It took a few days because coats need a good amount of time to dry before using tape, but I'm pleased with how it came out.
Everyone else in the blotanical world seems to be talking about autumn coming and being able to actually feel it coming. I feel nothing but the heat, lack of rain, and paradoxical humidity. All I feel is this neverending summer. I started a container planting for autumn, but it's an attempt to delude myself into thinking that autumn is approaching. I need to get out of Texas. I suspect we'll have triple digits into October, and I'm trying to cheer myself by thinking that in February, when it's cold everywhere else, it'll be nice here. February just seems an awful long time from now.
Tonight we got another salesperson at the door wanting to sell us a security system under the guise that it would be free if we put up a sign in our yard. We've had a few of these "salespeople" and had already looked up the scam via internets.
My old man is the one to answer the door, and the conversation went something like this:
Scammer: Hi, I'm going around the neighborhood offering a free home security system, and all you have to do is put a sign of our company in your front yard.
Old Man: I really don't like to advertise my security system in the front yard.
Scammer: Well, the sign won't affect the security of your home.
Old Man: I really don't like to talk about security systems with complete strangers. Bye.
We bought it directly at the nursery when we made a special request seeing as we were newly married and in the area. This is spineless cactus with cool, fun flesh. It kinda looks like a ghost from Super Mario Bros. in my opinion. WoooOOoOoooOooOOoO!
It has a few problem spots that I suspect will correct themselves with the fresh potting soil. Compost and correct drainage cures all.
Georgia ain't on my mind - overwintering is on my mind. Idly, I decided to see what greenhouse kits were selling for, and WOW! They're hella spendy for being so flimsy. I was not impressed. Searching further, on the DIY greenhouse side, I found this article on solar greenhouses.
The idea is that you store up solar energy in the walls and floors that maintain a consistently warm temperature inside the greenhouse. It's sort of like adding a slab of stone to your oven to keep it consistently warm even when you open the door. Similar to an oven, a greenhouse can quickly get zapped of its warmth as soon as you open the door because the warmth is stored in the air.
Oddly, I was watching a Renovation Nation episode where the flipper installed a thermal wall which consisted of a lower section of wall made of glass on the outside of the house and cement blocks painted black on the inside. It was only on the lower portion of the wall for winters when the sun dips lower, and it was on the North side of the house. Pretty smart, right?
I figure I can build a lean-to solar greenhouse with attached shed and planters surrounding it to give it a cottage/non-shed/non-greenhouse look. Paint it white on the west facing portion and brown/black on the east facing portion to make it friendly for all seasons. Make the glass/Plexiglas removable. Make it small so as to not break any laws. Use cheap materials and spruce it up with paint and plants and veneer. Plant deciduous fruit trees just east of the structure for shade in the summer and sun in the winter.
There'll be a Guest Post Week at GardenRant.com, and I just sent in my submission. I hope I get a slot. Take a few minutes to write something up and submit.
This is the first time I'm participating in Cactus Monday, and I wanted to show the progression on a few cacti and one new acquirement.
Here's a mammilaria cactus that's been blooming and producing seeds all summer:
You can see a bright pink seed pod dangling from the cactus, and a few blooms starting to open. Not pictured are the tiny pinhead-sized cacti growing around the base inside the pot. I've harvested a few dried seed pods, crushed, and scattered them in another pot. They'll be going to my old man's cubicle for him to baby.
It's probably put on 3-4", and it's beginning to worry me. I haven't moved it from it's original pot - just stuck it inside a clay pot for extra stability.
Here are my rescue roadkill cacti that I bought after Christmas:
Wow. They've come a long way. This was my first ever cactus purchase. I bought six 12" pots of very sad looking cactus, cut off the fungus, lopped whole chunks off, pulled off some of the branching, and started whole new cacti growing. The above is the large clumping, and it's probably put on 6-8" of new growth. You can see scarring from what the fungus did.
Here's what this exact same planter looked like back in March:
Here's one I started which has branched magnificently and put on about 12" of new growth:
And here's the new acquirement:
It's a brain cactus, and it just amuses me to no end. The best part is that it's pretty much hardy here, and I placed it in a sheltered section outside along with my other cacti and succulents that need a bit more sheltering than the old prickly pear.
I've managed to go to the farmer's market for the past two weeks. For some reason it's a struggle for me to get there on Saturday mornings. Hmmmm...
I got a bag of okra, 3 eggplants, 3 cantaloupes, 3 sweet peppers, an English cucumber, an Armenian cucumber (the weird gourd looking thing), 8 onions...
AND A BOX OF TOMATOES!
The tomatoes are going to be sauce. Lots and lots of sauce. I'm impressed it was only $15.
The holidays?? Am I crazy? I don't think so. Ok, yes. Yes, I am. The holidays tend to sneak up on me and throw me in a panic. My favorite of the fall/winter holidays is Halloween by far. Had it occurred to me that Halloween is now less than 90 days away, I would have started my plantings as soon as I got back from the wedding. I have a pack of orange and black pansy seeds, and I have a pack of Ruby Queen corn. I'm searching through the seeds on Botanical Interests, and I'd like to get the Purple Majesty Ornamental Millet and the Jack Be Little Pumpkins. I'm hoping that I have just enough time to pull a harvest and grow some plants in time for Halloween. If not Halloween, then at least there's Thanksgiving. I might stick with what I have already though. The Ruby Queen corn is actually very attractive in my opinion and very in keeping with Halloween/Thanksgiving as well. I've already tested it this year too, but it got too hot too fast for it do more than fizzle with puny ears of corn.
I'm also toying with the idea of Christmas/New Year's planters filled with tulips and crocus and such since our Decembers are VERY mild. Theoretically, I could start bulbs chilling when they ship in October, throw them in the veggie crisper drawer of the fridge, and yank them out Dec. 10 to bloom around Christmas/New Year's. It works out in my head as being feasible, but I have NO idea. I'm thinking about getting Erlicheer narcissus bulbs because those will come back regardless. Then there are the amaryllis bulbs. I'm particularly drawn to Papillio (butterfly) and Chico.
However, I still have about 14 Red Lion amaryllis bulbs outside right now that I somehow managed to rescue from death's door when my sister bought them after Christmas from Lowe's. They were in kits. My sister kept the cute red pots, and I got the mushy, shriveled amaryllis bulbs. lol. That's actually more than fine by me. They've all made it through, and I'm now considering forcing dormancy to force a bloom near Christmas. If I do that, then I'll have the spectacular red blooms, but I'll also have plants to keep alive until March/April when I can set them back out again. The Red Lion is one that isn't hardy here theoretically. Some sources zone 10+ and other sources 8+. I'm in zone 8b which is more like 9a/b.
Thoughts? Opinions? What are your plans? Are you crazy too?
Last night I managed to prep the planting medium and get the plants inside. By the time I got done with all my work, it was too dark to take pictures. However, now it's nice and bright. I have them on the South-Eastern side of the house so they get lots of light but a bit of a break from the heat so the "soil" (peat and sand) doesn't dry out and destroy the roots. I have them clustered close together for now, but I'll be upgrade the garden sometime in the next year. There are a total of 7 plants. I don't have their names memorized, but I did manage to find 'Doodlebug' which was a variety I've had my eye on. It's the smallest of the bunch as the name might correctly suggest.
I've been busy with general yard chores that have been neglected for probably 2 months now. My old man and I mulched the hell strip with 22 bags of pea gravel - here's hoping it keeps the rest of the plants alive. I've mulched some of the garden with 24 bags of cedar mulch, and there's still more mulching to go. I'm hoping this will keep all the plants alive through the rest of the hottest-summer-on-record summer. Last year I was spreading cedar mulch without gloves, and as I was pushing it around, a piece shot up underneath one of my finger nails and was probably 1 cm long. It took me a week to finally pry it out, and that's why I ALWAYS wear gloves when spreading mulch now.
Yes, we're set to beat the hottest summer on record, and we've been consistently beating highest temps for 2-3 months now. I thought last summer was bad, but this is even worse. I'm now convinced that the rest of the turf has to go, and we have to xeriscape.
Today I repotted the American Pitcher Plants from exotic North Carolina. I have them potted in a galvanized steel tub submerged in another steel tub. I found out that to make the potting soil (1 part sand to 1 part peat), you have to rinse the sand, and oh lord, that about killed me. Sand is filthy and finicky and blah. The plants aren't looking all that hot, but I know close to nothing about carnivorous plants. I have a fascination with pitcher plants in addition to caudicoforms and euphorbias. I think I'm a sucker for all things euphorbic and caudicoformic and carnivorous. Right now I'm having the best luck with euphorbias, but that'll get tested this "winter"...
Also while mulching, I pulled out a tuberous looking thing from under a lantana and thought it was a bulb. Looking closer, I realized that it was a poor caudicoform that got knocked out of its pot. OH NOES! All the leaves are gone and the roots look sad and crunchy. The trunk is soft in places, but part of the trunk is still firm. I'm going to repot it tomorrow in a hanging basket to keep it from getting knocked over again. Hopefully it's still salvagable.
I'm beginning to worry about overwintering all my plants. My plant collection has tripled with regard to non-hardy plants this year. I'm going to put my old man in charge of caring for some at his cubicle since he'll have some room for tending to plants there. I asked him what he'd like to overwinter at work, and he wants a bonniwa arrangement of cacti and succulents. There are some plants that I might stick in the ground and take cuttings from as insurance. I also have a large metal shelving unit on caster rollers which will be tripping inside for the winter. I need to start researching appropriate light sources that aren't too spendy.
I have 3 bags of mulch set out for tomorrow morning and we'll need to get more. My love-hate relationship with mulch continues.
