this little life of mine

So, we're on to week two of our garden this year. So far everything looks okay, although the Longneck Squash and one of the peppers look a little anemic. Apparently our plants aren't drinking, either, as mom has reported that she goes out to water the boxes every day, and the water is just running out the bottom. Since she's not sure if they're getting any water at all, she's been watering from the top. Hmm. I'm not sure if this is due to it just not being hot enough yet, or if the plants aren't drinking, or if the Earthboxes aren't working properly. I guess we'll see as time goes on. If the garden doesn't make it, oh, well. We'll be disappointed, but it won't be the end of the world.

The rest of our backyard looks really good, too.

My irises finally bloomed:

And my wild rose bushes are covered with blooms:

We though these three plants had frozen to death over the winter, but after we cut the dead parts off, all three of them came back:

I'm still not sure if my Madrone tree will survive or not. Parts of it look okay, but other parts not so much. Last week it was covered with bugs, so I sprayed it, but I'm not sure if that did any good or not. There don't seem to be any more bugs, but there are some dead, black leaves and stuff on it.

Oh, well, I guess we'll have to wait and see. If it lives, great. If not, oh, well, we'll just replace it with some other tree , or plant, or maybe even a statuary or something.

Out in the front, my Midas Touch rose is doing fantastic! It, too, has been covered with bugs, but they don't seem to be harming it any:

Any the lavender we planted in the blue pots appears to be coming back:

So, thus far our front and back yards and the Earthbox garden appear to be doing okay. We'll have to wait and see what happens over the next few weeks to see if stuff survives or dies. Either way, it's all fun and interesting!

Cheers!

Last year, because we had our backyard landscaped, mom and I didn't set up our EarthBox garden. However, we really missed having the fresh tomatoes and peppers and squash right at hand, so today we headed up to the local home improvement store and picked up some veggie plants and set up our garden!

We bought two hybrid tomato plants: the Early Girl - 50 Day, and Bush Goliath: 

Then we got two bell pepper plants: the Red Bell Sweet Pepper and Big Bertha Bell Pepper:

And, finally, a couple squash: Zucchini Squash (Black Beauty) and Straightneck Squash:

Hopefully our little plants will grow and produce lots of delicious veggies for us to enjoy all summer long!

We also picked up some marigolds to add some colour to our back patio:

 
Everything looks fantastic (so far!) and I'm excited to watch the garden grow this summer!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

•Grab your current read
•Open to a random page
•Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
•BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
•Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 
This week I'm reading The Sight by David Clement-Davies. It's the story of a pack of wolves in Transylvania, mysterious powers, survival, love, and the struggle between good and evil. Here are my teasers:

Kar swung left and right, snarling and snapping, his muzzle illuminated by a halo of flame and his eyes burning with pain as he searched desperately for a way out. But try as she might, jumping again and again toward him, Larka could not reach her friend. The wall of heat kept forcing her back.

A beautiful Saturday morning called for a walk around the Atascadero Lake. The lake was full to the brim after this past winter's rain, the plants were all green and the wildflowers were blooming. It made for a very pleasant walk.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

•Grab your current read
•Open to a random page
•Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
•BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
•Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week I'm reading the latest Gone novel, Plague by Michael Grant. It is SO good - the whole series has been so far. I also love the cover art for the books. I particularly loved the way the girl's (I think it might be Astrid) blonde hair is back lit so dramatically on the cover of this one! Here's my teaser from page 193:

Sam glared at the barrier near at hand. And wondered, not for the first time, what kind of welcome they would get if that barrier ever came down.

This evening I tried a recipe from the latest Clean Eating magazine I got in the mail this past week. I don't often cook scallops because despite liking them, they are difficult to cook. I think the last time I cooked scallops was 1993 and it was an abismal failure. Tonight was not much different.

In spite of rinsing the scallops several times, there was still sand in the damn things. It was the same problem I'd had before. I really wish I knew the trick to desanding scallops because it would've been a pretty good meal if not for the grit. Then again, maybe I'll skip the scallops altogether and just stick to cooking fish, which I'm pretty good at!

This is a page out of  my notebook made for a Textiles class I took in college. It's a swatch of fabric taken from an antique Korean Kimono.

I made a trip to Buckets of Books in Atascadero today to trade in books I've finished reading  and pick up some new-to-me books I've been looking for. I managed to find three more Redwall books and two Maximum Ride books, plus I picked up a vintage Ray Bradbury that sounded really good:

We've had some really strange weather this week. It started out sunny and beautiful and warm, and ended with a cold wind and rain and hail:

 
The storm brought in some really gorgeous clouds, though. Pity about the stupid power lines in the way:

 
 
And, of course there was a lovely rainbow at the end of all the chaotic weather!

 
Pretty nice way to end the week!

 
I saw this interesting cloud in the sky the other morning and luckily was able to capture the shot before the bus arrived. That was early last week before catching a nasty, disgusting and painful cold that laid me low for almost four days. At least I think it was a cold. You see, I spent about a dozen feverish hours running from the Unconsecrated, and was convinced I had been bitten and was infected and would turn into a zombie. That's what I get for falling asleep reading The Dark and Hollow Places!

Luckily I'm feeling MUCH better and since I haven't found any bite marks on me (yes, I checked. what? it was a VERY realistic dream! i swear i felt the teeth of a zombie scraping across my arm!!!), I guess I won't be going zombie any time soon!

Cheers!