January 2010 Archives

raised vegetable garden last year.

Tomatoes, beans, catnip and other herbs did well. I'm going to have to cut an oak tree down this spring to get more sun, or move the raised beds so they get more sun.

Luckily I don't have to decide today.

In the meantime, the vegetable garden looks lovely covered in a blanket of fluffy white snow!

Uphill from the vegetable garden is one of my large wildlife flower beds, this morning masquerading as a lovely snow-covered scene out of Narnia!

Snow has a way of making everything look special. When sun hits the snow crystals, the ground looks like it's covered with diamonds!

Missouri cedars are the mainstay of the nearby hills.

Besides staying green all year around and providing cover for wildlife, cedars also look beautiful covered in snow. And their smell still reminds me of Christmas.

Closer to the front of my house,  a white porcelain cat that used to sit in my mother's much colder Illinois garden sits next to the front.

My mother loved to visit Bluebird Gardens. I think of her often when it's cold; she lived closer to Chicago but rarely complained about bad weather. I, on the other hand, make a hobby of complaining about being cold.

Seems fitting the white cat found a home here after Mom died.

I'm always surprised I can still see the cat in all the snow, and not one complaint.

It's comforting to think about Mom during these cold months.

Charlotte
Gardening to Distraction

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There's little that excites a gardener more than a good handful of good mulch.

Well, maybe it's just this gardener but it feels like a handful of lovely fluffy compost, black gold from Rolla's Recycling Center.

It's crumbly and dark, a combination of shredded fall oak leaves and chipped tree limbs and discarded Xmas trees.

In other words, great mulch!

January and February are good months to check with your local recycling center to get a mulch stock pile.

Some places charge a fee during the growing season, and often are in short supply, but you might be able to get it free this time of year.

I'm storing my mulch "stash" uphill along the edges of my property. When it's time to use it, I can easily move it into flower downhill flower beds. Some of it will move on it's own.

It will take a few months to cure before I can use it in my vegetable garden but it will be great to cover my lined garden paths this spring to minimize weeds.

 

Do you have a stock pile of mulch?

Charlotte

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Ok, so I don't always use my garlic cloves right after I buy them.

And yes, I'm missing my quality time in the garden, growing things - any thing, actually.

 So when I opened the refrigerator drawer to make soup a couple of weeks back and found garlic cloves sprouting green little tips....

I didn't have the heart to cut them up.

 I found empty spots in my indoor, wintering deck pots, watered those spots well and wondered if they would even sprout.

So far, so good!  (photo)

Think they'll make new garlic cloves before spring??

Charlotte
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Over the holidays I found water rings on the top of an old radio console cabinet (photo).

I don't have any idea how the rings got there, or how long they've been there, but I didn't want to wait until spring to get rid of them.

After taking picture frames off and dusting, I applied a coat of Walnut Howard Restore A Finish, which is the closest match to the original wood color.

I got distracted by a phone call so this next photo was taken a few minutes later, when it felt dry to the touch.

I poured Howard Restore A Finish walnut tint into a used clean, cotton cloth and gently wiped it across the furniture.

It's dry to the touch now.

Still amazes me every time I use it how simple it is to use Howard RestorAFinish.

Charlotte
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So did you pick up any of those sale Xmas cactus available at home improvement stores a few weeks back?

I did, and typical of me, I didn't think first about where I would put them.

Finding the right spot for any plant is important; most have  little tags that quickly tell you what kind of light and watering requirements they have, although some sale plants don't.

 

If you're not sure what you're buying, ask the sales rep. Then at least you can go home and find instructions online or in a gardening book.

With inside plants, sometimes space is an issue. I've found two good companion plant combinations for small spaces: old-fashioned African violets for years have done well under a ficus (photo).  Another gift Xmas cactus has also done well in that same window exposure so I tucked the sale Xmas cactus in their pots, with saucers, at the base of a corn plant. (photo)

Now three weeks later,  they've perked right up and have already started to bud.

 

Do you have a favorite plant combination?

Charlotte

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PS It's early February and the cactus is not only blooming, but the sale Xmas pot had three different colors: red, pink and white.