Category Archives: gardening

May11

New plants for the garden

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We had a cool day and I only managed to plant some coleus in the ground that were starting to shrivel up and die on me.
I had to get groceries as Sean is now home and he likes to graze all day. ; )
I finally cooked the ‘post’ Mother’s Day dinner-it pays to marinate chicken overnight. I just used some rib seasonings and veggie oil and the outside grilled chicken was as tender as turkey. We also had red potato salad and romaine and tomato, se we enjoyed it.
Shown above are the plants I bought-believe it, cost $20 for that few. Sean did buy the perennial-the Oenothera in the box. It is blooming a bit displaying it’s yellow bell-like flowers to me.
Sean has all his grades and almost got a straight ‘B’; missed a ‘B’ by a few points. He was waiting on one grade and got a ‘C’ which he hoped would have been a ‘B’. What counts is he is finished all is requirements and that degree is waiting for him on Friday. He will probably go to grad school next year. He needs to work and make a little money now and pay his own loans. ; )

I saw a ‘neighbor’ (we all live acres away except for the new developments) at the grocery store who I knew had been fighting cancer. She was going in line to check out and I was coming up an aisle. I didn’t recognize her at first and they it hit me how different she looked-at least she was food shopping, but she had no eyebrows or lashes and her face was much thinner. Broke my heart.

Apr28

Late April 2009

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Late April 2009, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

I went around the yard after dinner and took some quick snaps before my head exploded from the pollen! I got my first cold in a while-I think over a year. I just bought the daisies last Friday. I had the herb pot and did plant herbs in it-Rosemary, Oregano and I think Thai Basil. My pond is running well.

Apr25

Photo Hunt-Protect

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PSHunt

This almost century old conservatory shelters many varieties of gorgeous plants, which include orchids, from the elements outside, whether it is heat or cold. There is a maze of different rooms from a desert room to an bonsai room. There’s always something new to see each time I go, which is frequently.

Longwood’s Conservatory is one of the world’s great greenhouse structures. It shelters 20 indoor gardens and 5,500 types of plants. The Conservatory was built in 1919 and has been periodically expanded and renovated. At present, there are 195,668 square feet—or 4.5 acres—of covered display, production, and research greenhouses.

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Yesterday, I bought my first trunk load of flowers. I had saved a bunch of money from eBay sales. Loews was having a buy one get one free on 6″ pots and had a few other good sales. I bought most of my plants at a local nursery because you get a lot for the price. Here I am happy to be in gardener mode again-
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Mar31

A little better

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I didn’t get my act together until after dinner. Brian and I both slept better, but he’s still having GI issues. He brought home cheesesteaks and only ate half of his-I ate all of mine. I took kitty for a walk as I see I’m not the only one who gained a few more pounds this winter. ; ) I then got the rake and cleaned out a few more spots and completely wiped myself out. Bri did come out and clean up the debris, hoping that moving around would help. I can’t believe how much tall grass got in my irises and roses. They are going to be a bugger to weed.
I was happily stitching on a new cross stitch piece-Herb Bouquet, and lo and behold-that blasted linen-I was a stitch or so off. I was thinking about stitching around it, but it messed up a stem on a plant. Rats.
Herb Garden Bouquet cross stitch begins
So that’s about all the excitement besides Sean having to write 5 papers by May and not getting a good grade on one he worked so hard on. A Facebook friend and former high school pal John, said he would take a look at Sean’s papers to help him. He use to help under grads at Harvard with their papers. What a nice guy. I told Sean and I think he appreciated that.

Mar22

Longwood Gardens 2009 Orchid show

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This past Friday, I decided I needed to do something different. I hadn’t had my van for 3 days and it was nice to have wheels again. I headed to Longwood Gardens to see their orchid display and to get a walk in. I want to try for a mile or so a week and build up. Here are some of my 85 photos, the rest are on Flickr. I love the blue poppy too!
I came home to a message that Brian’s father that he had fallen down on an errand to get a watch battery-the town he went to wasn’t around the corner. He tripped on the curb and hit his nose enough that it had a wound that bled a lot. They called an ambulance too. He was at the hospital and no one knew it. We tell him to carry his cellphone on him. To make a long story short, he’s doing good-Bri checked him out on Saturday. We want him to get his eyes and ears checked (he hasn’t been to an eye doctor in at least 15 yrs). He seems to be getting more frequent falling or tripping episodes. I even called Bri’s aunt to talk his dad into going to the eye doctor as she use to run the optical dept of a nice store in Philadelphia before she retired. Crossing fingers.
Also on Saturday, Bri’s car’s brake lights decided to stay on and we had to drop that at the shop and disconnect the new battery. When it rains it pours! I was outside raking out some garden beds too.
We are all anxious for Sean’s trip to Las Vegas-bon voyage to him!

Mar8

One of the newest PHS members!

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I did join the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society this morning-actually it’s a ‘dual’ one and for a year’s membership, we got two free flower show tickets ($26 each!). We were all dressed and ready to go at 10:30 (the daylight savings messed us up) and Brian couldn’t get a hold of his dad. He tried for an hour and the answering machine kept coming on. So Brian didn’t get to go to the show and Sean and I decided to at least go to my mom’s and wait to see what was going on. Here he was sound asleep in his bed, the phone was in the other room, the tv was blasting downstairs and the stove was left on. Brian had to physically shake him to wake him up! He said he’s always been a sound sleeper, but I’d say the phone must have rang 100s of times and he didn’t hear it! The next room isn’t that far away. We thought he had fallen down.
We took my mom again (she had gone with my brother Don on Thursday) and Sean got the student price. My membership and tickets were waiting for me at the booth in the convention center. I thought for sure I’d have to wait to use them next year as it said I had to give them 24 hours to process. Before we went into the show, we ate lunch in the Reading Terminal Market-such a bustling places with lots of sights and sounds. I will share a few photos, but need to upload over 100 on Flickr during the upcoming week.
Mom and me in front of an awesome exhibit mainly with orchids in test tubes:
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This is a neat one:
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The show had an Italian theme and there was lots of gorgeous statuary:
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I can’t forget Sean!
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And this is one of the miniature shadow boxes-all the tiny plants have to be real!:
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My brother Don was at my mom’s and he treated us to a nice dinner up in our hometown. It turned out to be an adventurous day for sure!
I made a video too and will edit that sometime this week too-all the water features are on it plus a silly son!

Jan10

Photo Hunt-Aftermath

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PSHunt
A bonsai forest, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Since ‘aftermath’ means-results, this is what I stopped on when I was going through my recent photos. Now Bonsai is definitely an art form and is achieved from the results of careful and tedious trimming and training of a variety of trees and bushes. I would say these are a white birch maybe? I didn’t get the name. These were under two feet tall. They don’t have their leaves as it’s the wintertime. I saw a photo on the web of it in full green tiny leaf that I can’t seem to share here. There were other fine examples of Bonsai here at Longwood Gardens. These are usually decades old.

Jan5

About 200 photos later

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Sean and I tried again at Longwood Gardens and practically had the entire place to ourselves! Yeah. I think I took at least 200 photos and narrowed it down to 175, which I will upload to Flickr. The gardens are using LED lights, so all the wrapped trees and hand fashioned trees look brighter. I really need to see how people are getting tri-pods in there, that would make a difference. I’ll share a few shots, first of the face I’ll be missing in a few days:

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Taken through a window in the orchid room. Sean treated me to dinner in the ‘fancy’ restaurant at Longwood. He had pasta with olive, mushrooms and capers and I had Citrus grilled chicken with white beans and spinach. I treated him to dessert in the cafe section. I had chocolate chip cake and he had a creme brulee type of cheese cake.
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The water in this area was decorated with cranberries!

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A natural themed tree with white and gold lights. I’d like a tree like this next year.
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A sampler from 1802 found in the DuPont House.
Thanks Mr. DuPont for Longwood Gardens!
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Here is the slideshow from today. I only got up to 60 uploads. The above photos are the unedited versions of what will be on there. Enjoy!

Oct28

Ah, sweet technology

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I was a bit nervous this morning, but I was home in one hour following my mammogram. They have a new digital machine, so it was faster (though still uncomfortable and you don’t have to hold your breath). I had a nice 50 something lady tech that was the spitting image of my grandmom Ruth’s sister Edna. Now what’s weird, I just had a dream about Aunt Edna within the last few days. (I had been looking at a lot of family photos lately too). She was in my living room plain as day, and I said to her ‘I thought you were deceased?’ She had plenty of breast issues in her long life. Maybe she was confirming to me that I would be fine. I got to see the images on the computer screen. I didn’t realize how much is going on in your breasts. The digital images are really crisp and clear. Crossing fingers.

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They just said on the news that the suspended game last night was the first ever for a World Series. I doubt they will play tonight as it is still really lousy. We are still hoping for a win. I think it would be nice for a new generation of fans to see a championship. I loved it back in 1980 and still have an entire container of memorabilia from that Series plus an autographed photo of Tug McGraw.

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I’m helping Sean edit some summaries for a Geography course that he was struggling with. This last article was a doozie and took me 2 hours to read and then to edit his paper. So far ‘we’ have gotten a ‘C’ ‘B-‘ and ‘C+’. Not bad for an Early Childhood Ed major who isn’t into such dry material. I did read in the last article that overtilling is bad for soil, which makes sense. They suggest planting a winter cover-like alfalfa (I guess) or just to poke the seeds in the ground without tilling it. As I had said in a previous post, our vegatable garden failed miserably this year. We need to do something if we want to continue to grow things. I like learning how to help the environment too!