Gone Feral In Idaho

This is the first petunia seed I've ever started!  This is a Coconut Tidal Wave petunia, well, hopefully in several months this will be a massive plant. This is my first time starting petunias, so well for me at least, this is kind of exciting. The Hollyhocks seem to just know what to do.

I was surprised to find two germinated seeds this morning. This is a foxglove with the push pin for scale. This is a coneflower seed. Its a good thing we have a lot more space, because I have a feeling we are going to be up to our eyeballs with plants this spring.

I know, it's still January, but I'm getting an early start on some summer flower seeds. Petunias are notoriously slow to start, but since I was successful with teenie wild strawberries that took forever to grow, I am confident these will work. We have two light rigs for our seed starting and a south facing window that these guys will go in when they get big enough. I got some seed starting mix from Edwards, our local nursery. They didn't have the pallet opened yet, so they sold me some directly from the nursery's own stock, that's how cool they are there. It is magical stuff with flecks of mica in it, so it is figuratively, black gold. I've never used a seed starting mix, so I'm excited to see the results (I've always used Miracle Grow potting soil, but have had slight mold problems). So why am I growing my own flowers from seed? The seed packets I bought for 16 varieties of annuals and perennials cost me $50. I am growing at least 6 of most of the...

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Here's the Chicago Tribune story very, very, creepy

This past summer we picked up our first Meyer lemon tree. They are small trees that you can grow in a pot and move out into the sun in the warm months and then bring it in over winter. This is our first citrus tree and we had no idea how to take care of the thing. It did great out on our back patio and even produced four lemons. Now that it is inside and it is really cold out, we moved it into our main bathroom so it can stay warmer and get humidity from the shower. It had been loosing leaves, so I became inspired on how to care for a Meyer lemon tree. First thing we did was harvest the big ripe lemon. I didn't know what to do with it and I understand they don't last long once picked. I found a bunch of recipes for candied Meyer lemons and thought that it would be a good start. The process is really simple. This was the biggest lemon, so we picked it  These are pretty tiny and they are on branches at at the bottom of the "trunk" so these little branches will ...

O.K. maybe just some of it. We bought a boring 1990's house that had no real character and have a lot of work to do. We didn't get an awesome creepy Victorian, those were way outside of our price range. We also moved all of our hand-me-down or otherwise free furniture into the new house. It had been completely utilitarianly perfect, but I felt the need to do some long needed updating once I realised that new furniture won't be bought at some sale in a group. None of that stuff appealed to me.  We had a lot of perfectly 1990's era furniture. Actually most of it is, unfortunately.  Not to complain too much though, the kitchen table and end tables were basically free and real oak, I think. I have never liked the kitchen chairs, they are just not my style, but I can't put form before function on our budget. I learned a lot about the history of the pressback chair and appreciate the mass produced manufactured ones in a Warholian way. So my dilemma was tha...