5 things

[truepenny]

1. cmpriest has a pair of wonderful posts about the oil spill and what you can do to help.

2. The Planckendael Zoo in Belgium has a snow leopard cub (I particularly recommend the second video, in which Laila demonstrates her ferocity upon a hapless rubber glove.)

3. So in January, the local high school's Future Farmers of America chapter has a seed sale. Everything they don't sell, they donate to a local small animal welfare group, who then has a plant sale, which I went to this afternoon. I came away with two flats of marigolds, two Wisconsin 55 tomato plants, two Long Thin Cayenne Peppers, and three (or hopefully four) Chocolate Beauty Peppers. I spent the afternoon digging a small vegetable garden in the side yard.

I've never tried to grow vegetables before. We'll see what happens.

4. Also! The Anthropophagous Rosebush, the Grandfathered Rosebush, and one of the Cerise Bouquet climbing roses are blooming! So is one of the hydrangeas (and the other is looking happily leafy)! I'm restraining myself from grabbing passersby and dragging them into my yard to admire things. Especially with the Grandfathered Rosebush, which is all but invisible unless you're standing right in front of it, and which is blooming in this FABULOUS deep purplish-red color, the restraint required is greater than you might think.

5. This is amazing, and if I ever get to Australia, I want to see it.

Comments

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the snow leopard cub link. Exactly what I needed to cheer up a bit... (iz ded of the cute, here :) )

[georgiamagnolia.livejournal.com]

ooh! Roses blooming! Take a sniff for me please. (but not so close that they get you) They sound really gorgeous.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

About the tomatoes, the one thing I have learned is that they absolutely must be staked and/or given some sort of framework, or they will trail along the ground and you will have rotten semi-ripe tomatoes, which are not fun at all.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Happily, the previous owners of our house abandoned several tomato cages in the backyard, which I have appropriated. So the tomatoes are properly confined.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Yes, they cannot be allowed their liberty.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

If you have a spare tomato cage, they also make great stations for heroic insect-eating spiders to construct domiciles.

[heresluck]

One of the things that I have learned the hard way about growing tomatoes in the upper midwest is that both the plants and the fruits are much, much happier if you keep them pruned. I found this hard to do at first, because the thrill of having managed to avoid killing the plant was very strong, and threatening it with anything sharp seemed counterintuitive. But I have found that, when pruned, the plants are much healthier (especially in hot humid weather), the fruits ripen faster, and a much greater proportion of them FINISH ripening before frost, which is not a negligible benefit in our neck of the woods.

You can probably find guidance via Google, or let me know if you want a walkthrough -- it's pretty easy to explain over the phone. Honestly, the hardest part about it is deciding to do it in the first place. ("I just got it to GROW! You want me to WHAT?")

[alex51324.livejournal.com]

Good choices! Growing tomatoes and peppers from started plants is probably the easiest place to start with vegetable-growing. Plus tomato plants smell nice, so that's a bonus! And you know the that marigolds will help keep bugs and critters away from your vegetables, if you plant them together, right?

I'm not growing anything this year--my yard is small and pretty much devoted to being a dog toilet, so I have to do my gardening in an allotment in the community park. The deer and groundhogs are a significant problem. (My tomatoes and peppers were among the few things to survive every year I did it. Also spaghetti squash. And potatoes. Potatoes are really fun to grow, but a lot of work.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is the purpose of the marigolds. Aside from the fact that I like them.

[grass-angel.livejournal.com]

Laila's squeaks are indeed very ferocious.

But that last link is absolutely gorgeous, and there should be more random architectural art in the countryside.