Adventures in Mama-Land

Late, late, late, but tomorrow night it’s supposed to go down to -2…  and I’m not taking any chances.  So:  welcome home, Tenders! Spending another winter indoors are: Big pot of mixed aloe Bit pot of mixed coleus Long rectangular planter of mixed cactus, aloe, etc. Lemon tree from a seed Mango tree from a seed Miscellaneous kitchen-windowledge coleus… picture to come. I’m kind of sad and scared at the thought of another summer ending.  Almost November and still in denial, I guess.

Yes, I know, you have all been dying to know what my garden is up to this spring. Most importantly, I posted a photo back in February of the winter indignities this poor garden gnome has had to suffer.  You’ll be happy to know he’s back in his (warmer) element, and today I gave him his own little coleus to supervise. I love May!  Green, green, green… everywhere you look, the world is GREEN! Front yard, Spring 2011:   Same picture, from 2008: More green!  Here’s how the emerald cedar hedge is doing.  The trees have been there for three years now and they’re definitely growing.  Ignore the front and back ones… look how bushy and healthy the others are! This is how they looked when they first went in in 2008.  I bought $5 trees, to save money, and they were so small, I swore they wouldn’t make it.  Little Naomi Rivka is giving this one a hug.  Now, they are ALMOST taller than her.  If you buy $20 trees, they fill in quicker, but I bought ten of them, so it would

Inspired by Mrs. S. over at Our Shiputzim – check out what people are finding at her blog ! (previous fun and navel-gazing search-engine roundups: Roundup #1 , (mini) Roundup #2 , Roundup #3 , Roundup #4 and Roundup #5 – or just click on the “roundup” tag below to see them all!) Most of the searches have been Pesach-related, naturally, but there were a few stray “others” that have made their way here. A few searches for the unscientific last little while: chalakah – a lot of you want to know about chalakah, perhaps in early preparation for Lag b’Omer.  If that’s the case, mazel tov!  I use the Yiddish word “upsherin” and you can  find some information, but not much, here . shekel poems – not exactly, but I did do a cool half-shekel math worksheet if you want to get all Biblical during math time! dinosaur math – Embarrassingly, I think this is my #1 non-Pesach related search at the moment.  I do have one worksheet pack .  I wish there were more… it seems there a

I’ve been dreading this job – but now, it’s done! I’m actually a full three weeks earlier this year to rescue the coleus that have been languishing since the summer on the kitchen windowsill.  SEVEN glasses’ worth, at least 4-7 stems per glass.  Often very crowded – terrible conditions, as you can see from the drinking-glass-shaped tangle of roots at the right.  Plus, thanks to a few breakages, we have almost no drinking glasses left… I keep wondering where they are every time I go to take a drink, and then realize – there they are on the windowsill!     There is something nice about taking this nightmarish chaos of roots and transforming it into something kind of orderly:   Of course, I was cheerful and optimistic last year , too, but that didn’t stop the plants from almost all dying.  Hence the question mark on this post.  Whether they will make it to summertime is far from a sure thing.  It may FEEL like winter is almost over (to me, it always feels like winter is al

This is my regal “RedHead” coleus that performed beautifully all summer.  Frost:  the one adversity it cannot withstand…. …But the Toad Lilies are still putting on a great show!     And it’s a fabulous time of year for parsley (I have had parsley survive the winter in the backyard, so I suspect it’s marginal here), which seems to be stretching out and grabbing all this mid-autumn sunshine.  The sage seems to be thriving, too.   But soon enough, this little gnome (we just call him “the man”) will be standing all alone, surrounded by snow…

Toronto’s “average frost date” – the date cautious gardeners should anticipate the first fall frost, came and went on October 6th.  Naturally, I did nothing to mark the occasion. But the 10-day forecast is showing some pretty low temperatures this week (going down to 3, which means possible frost, on Thursday and Friday.  So things MUST start coming in. For some things, I bring in the whole plant, like these spider plants…   Others, like coleus, do better and stay healthier if the plants are propagated from cuttings each year.  I’m hoping to avoid last year’s Coleus Disaster , wherein I lost about 30 baby plants due to cold house temperatures (I let it get down to 14-15° some days) and damp and mold.   This is the Coleus Class of 2010:  about 35-40 cuttings from my favourites of this year’s coleus, lined up in glasses on the windowsill.  I took a few last week; those ones are starting to root already.  You just stand them in a glass – getting them started is the easiest thing

A little concerned about the “vigourous” growth habit of these.   I don’t know if you can see here, but there are two huge clumps of this plant in the left-side foreground. From two small plants last year ,  they have grown to occupy almost the entire front bed.  The foliage is not that beautiful, though it does appear to be big, bold and bug resistant. I may have to divide this sooner than expected. You can see a few coleus peeking out here and there.  When the  persicaria quits flowering, I plan to lop it back mightily and by then hopefully the coleus will have grown in to take its place in the (metaphorical) sun.

Well, not really, because if you’re reading this, I’ve found a WiFi connection, which probably means we’re home. I was hoping Ted’s brother Richard would have WiFi at home, where we’re staying, given that they have the best of everything out here. But they don’t really have the BEST of everything… just a comfy middle-class sort of everything. Their ranch-style single-level home on a huge property is very, very comfortable (I’d imagine) for two, and not too difficult to imagine being quite comfy for even all six of us, were we to have to live here full-time. But we won’t, because the only catch with this house and huge property is that it’s about 45 minutes east of Ottawa – well, that and the mosquitos. To my kids, this must feel like unbearable wealth, but to me, it just feels middle-class, the type of thing I grew up taking for granted that my children do not: matching towels, clean dishes, everything sorted and in its place. Oh, and a LOT of fire extinguishers, CO2 detectors

Coleus cloning, and sweet potato cloning!  And okay, no wars , as such.   But “friendly side-by-side plant cloning” would have made such a bland title! Read on for a cool sweet potato thing you can do with your kids indoors which will also help you have free and beautiful ornamental plants for your garden (for the cost of a sweet potato)!  Coleus comes first because, well, I love coleus and it’s my blog.  Sweet potato last. On Friday, browsing through Plant World, I happened to spot something dark-red down at the end of an empty aisle that will soon be filled with annuals. Amazing:  coleus!!!   (did you guess already?) Just four types, but four that were nice enough to make the cut.  Henna (which I loved from last year), Electric Lime (which I had, but killed over the winter), Redhead (nice deep red shade) and Mint Mocha, which looks very similar to a frilly, spotty one I loved last summer. Well, at $2.99 each, I sure wasn’t about to buy more than one of each… and who wou

…But I’m a sucker, and I saw a mixed-seed packet at Plant World this morning and decided, why the heck not?  With bottom heat, I hope these will sprout quickly and grow fast.  I can always hope, right? I also bought a cell-pack (79 cents) because, snapped in half, it fits in the square Jiffy 5 x 5 greenhouses I have been using.  I have decided to avoid peat pucks because they are SO hard to keep watered, and I’ve also installed self-watering mats under the plants I do have in pucks. So half of the cell pack in a square greenhouse tray holds 24 plants.   I decided to use 12 for the new coleus seeds and half to transplant the “Black Dragon” coleus seedlings , which are getting too crowded in their peat pucks (and are too valuable to thin by snipping).  Just noticed, by the way, looking back, I sowed these Black Dragon seeds just a bit less than a month ago, on February 14th.  So this is what they look like at ALMOST one month.  Not bad…   To replant these, I tore off the wrap