Gardening Up North

 Greetings! I have had some time to reflect  on my indoor seed starting gear.  I mentioned in my last post that I had purchased two T5HO Strip Lights with the NanoTech Reflectors.  These light fixtures fit into the two grooves of the rigid plastic humidity domes which fit neatly over a standard size seed tray.  The light strips fit perpendicular to the long side of the tray allowing for four seed trays to fit under the light fixtures.  Now that my seed trays have sprouted seedlings across each of the trays, I have noticed that the seedlings growing on the outside of each tray are bending inward towards the light.  The stems are not long and lanky like they would be if the plants were struggling for light, so I think everything will be OK.  I will keep an eye on everything, just in case. The photo is of my seedling station parked on my dining room table.  The neat thing about this is that I can fit two  groups of four trays on my tablet s...

  Every year my two great joys in life collide in an almost Armageddon-like battle.  My beautiful, delicate, sprouting seedlings meet my cats.  Not just my cats, but specifically Cringer the Battle Cat whose alias is the Plant Terminator.  Cringe is my princess.  At least that is what my vet calls her, so it must be so.  She is a beautiful medium hair tabby who is also highly strung.  OK, let us just say she is our neurotic cat.   Cringe pays no attention to me or my planting efforts.  In fact, if anything, she completely ignores the entire process - that is until my plants start to emerge from the soil.  This is when Cringer goes into the Plant Terminator mode.  She swoops down into action batting the poor little sprouting seeds into submission.  By the time Cringe is done, most of my poor little seedlings are no more.  I have to admit it can be quite heart-breaking to come home after a long day at work only to see t...

  Greetings from the north! I do not think I am alone in this, but as I grow older I tend to look back over my life lived to try and find those "formative moments" that somehow steered me, or maybe nudged me, down the path of life I am on.  Sometimes it is not clear to me how I wound up where I am at.  Other times, I can point to a specific event in my past that explains why I do this or that.  Such is the case for my love of gardening.  I can trace it back to my early childhood and a project I did for my mother in kindergarten.  You might say it was putting the garden in garten. We decorated an empty soup can, placed dirt in the can and we each planted a single pumpkin seed in our planters.  It was a Mother's Day gift.  The teacher, Miss Tuma I think her name was, had us place our planters in the sunny windowsill of our classroom waiting for the day we would proudly take this wonderful treasure home to our mothers.  We all kept watch on our ...

  I created this blog some years ago and never published a thing.  Just like Robert Burns said, or at least I think he said, "The best laid plans of mice and man can still go wrong."  I also might add that "life" has a way of  creeping up on us and then slapping us down just when we think things are finally going our way.  I know I am not alone in this, but over the last few years I have been quietly sinking down into an emotional hole that I just cannot climb out of.  It appears to me that our society is suffering a severe case of political diarrhea combined with an unwillingness to accept the fact that no matter how different we may seem, we have far more in common with each other than difference.  This blog is going to be my little place on the 'Net to help me work through my feelings and to share my love of gardening. Gardeners are an optimistic lot.  We have to be.  To plant a teeny tiny seed in the earth and to nurture it, water it, fee...