Bok choy seedlings! My first.

I want a uniform like this.

Soon it will be time to plant my Beer Bars for Slugs. A few sips and they turn into instant compost.

I cut out the bottoms of plastic yogurt containers, leaving a small 2" edge. I bury the cups in the soil around plants slugs like to eat. I keep the cups filled with beer.

Here's another very nice way to defeat slugs in your garden. I wonder if it will work for me? Going to try it, along with the beer bar too.

Photo from ehow.com.

Last August in my 5 by 5 garden. soon....

Blooming today in my garden.

A grass-free backyard in Takoma Park. It's all groundcover, largely sedum. Imagine how great it'll look in July. And a word on The Economy.

Matt Taibbi has an understandable piece about some aspects of the economy. He makes me laugh. Be advised: adult content.

Susan's first March (I think) with absolutely no grass in her yard.

What's left after ivy is pulled off the foundation of a house.

Global warming / climate change is a subject I really want to understand. So I read and listen and think. But every time I think I've arrived at a comfortable position, I find something else that confuses me. The latest bit of confusion comes in this article by Nicholas Dawidoff about a physicist named Freeman Dyson. Dawidoff writes: "Dyson has said he believes that the truths of science are so profoundly concealed that the only thing we can really be sure of is that much of what we expect to happen won't come to pass." That sounds really, really logical to me.

Erica and Evan.

I mean really. Adorable is such an inadequate word.

New scarfs. A mini-obsession.

Fungi from the park.

Daffodils.

Go Lady Terps!

Thought for the day.

Houses in Takoma Park.

Peonies popping up!

Trifecta tonight!

Bruce with Jon Stewart, Barack with Jay Leno, and March Madness.
And Maryland won!

Picture is from somewhere in Takoma Park yesterday.

Lamb's ear in March.

This volunteer plant is unusual. I don't know whether to cut it back or just leave it alone. No other plant stays this green this long. Except for evergreens of course.

Curious cat behavior.

Every morning we find wool sweaters and blankets in the kitchen. Oliver, not the cat shown in this picture, drags them out of a bedroom where I keep them in a basket (just for him). We've never known what message he's sending, but we assume it's some sort of "look what I killed and am delivering to my food area" message. I gave Oliver all of these woolen garments and blankets a few years ago when it became obvious that he considered them his own. (Note: that old nasty kitchen floor will be replaced with newer, fresher flooring when I get myself in gear.)

Ohboyohboyohboy!

I ordered some bamboo from Oregon. My hope is that it will grow fast and tall and thick and eventually become a screen between my yard and a neighbor's yard. This is the clumping kind of bamboo and isn't supposed to be invasive. We'll see. Oh yeah, it's totally non-native which is a big no-no in much of the horticultural world. Oh well.

Tomorrow I dig holes and plant these babies.

Skeptical.

"The average gardener spends nearly five hours a week grubbing in the dirt and often contends with failure early on." (http://www.comcast.net/articles/finance/20090316/Recession.Gardening/)

This is a quote from an article about how vegetable gardening is undergoing a huge resurgence this year because of the economy. I'm a very skeptical person (I learned how to be so skeptical from he-shall-go-unnamed-but-he-knows-who-he-is. He who questions everything). Last year I had a smallish veggie garden, about 5 by 5 feet, plus tomatoes, peppers, and herbs tucked into my flower beds here and there. There's NO WAY I spent 5 hours a week "grubbing in the dirt" of my veggie garden. Simply no way. Maybe if you include all the time (over the winter) that I dug up the turf AND the time I spent driving to a nursery to buy seeds AND all the time I spent taking pictures and blogging about gardening and cooking the food. But folks, there just isn't any reason to "grub" in the dirt after the seeds or seedlings are planted. A few weeds here and there but that's it. I say that if you have a smallish garden, let's say 10' by 20' or smaller, you simply couldn't spend 5 hours a week tending to it. So there.

Picture taken in November 2008. I enlarged my 5 by 5' to a 5 x 10'.

Mushrooms from the Takoma Park Farmers Market.

Letter E in the Tchotchke Challenge: Eyeglass cases.

Yes, that's it. A pile, and not a large pile at that, of unused eyeglass cases.

But inspired by God Bless Y'All's entry, I'm posting a picture of my one Ukrainian Egg in a bed of Eucalyptus petals.

The first seeds.

I'll start the tomatoes and the buttercrunch lettuce indoors in the toilet paper recycling pots. I'll move them into the garden in May.

Tomorrow I'll plant directly in the garden: bok choy, peas, green onions, and those cute little carrots. Parisian carrots they're called.

Black cotton Amish scarf.

I'll probably plant pieces of this potato but I've read bad stuff, now forgotten, about mass-produced potatoes.

Look at how ugly that tile is. Just like the over-the-hill potato. I've been procrastinating on replacing the kitchen floor tile. I'll have this hallway tile replaced at the same time, probably. Why do I procrastinate?

At a local hardware store. A $3.29 head massager. "Great for home or office use."

I've pulled out pounds of this stuff. I don't know what it is.

My first spring plants! All the other lettuce will be from seeds. This was too pretty to pass up.

Wha'!?

I spent a good part of the weekend fortifying the deer fencing around the back yard. Last night, I looked down from the deck to find this guy. Inside the fence. He's one of the twins born last spring. His mom and sister/brother are next door, in the unfenced yard. When I told him to leave, and started down the steps to enforce my command, he skittered under a big rhododendron to rejoin his mom and sibling. There is fencing behind the rhodo, just not enough apparently. Boy-deer just nosed his way down, under the fencing and zipped up to join the others. As they ambled away to the yard across the street, the twins did a bit of that youthful sparring I saw them do last summer. They're still not really adults yet. Bastards.

Tulips. Supposed to be dark dark purple, almost black. Can't wait!

My dying snake plant. I've heard that it's hard to kill a snake plant. I disagree. It was easy. Too much TLC?