It has been a chilly week in central Oklahoma and the snow still has not melted in the shade. However, it seems like the coming week will be beautiful, like early spring. I was so excited to start my indoor seeds for spring today. I am using the same 2 Jiffy hex pod trays that I used last year. However, I am using the Burpee eco friendly pods, which are round. I also have one warming mat and a simple led grow light. I want to do more but my seed starting space in my apartment is limited. At the farm, we have a lot of space to grow but we have limited areas with drip lines set up. Also, since the farm is in a rural area there is a lot of competition from weeds and grasses. The soil is red clay at the farm. So we plan to do raised beds for our veggies once we move there. This is my early indoor starting seed list for this year: butterfly pea flower, scarlet sage, Italian basil, Thai basil, jalapeno, habanero, big Jim pepper, mystery tomato (gifted seeds), French marigolds, Crackerjack marigolds, oregano, sage, thyme, true lavender, delphinium, foxglove, larkspur, sensation cosmos, seashell cosmos, four o clocks, Russell lupine, African daisy, balloon flower, blanket flower, alyssum, helichrysum, black hollyhocks, stock, white hollyhocks, sweet William, Mexican sunflower red torch, malva sylvestris zebrina, and snapdragons. If at least half of them germinate, I will be quite pleased. I have put the covers on the trays and I will take them off when I see the first seedlings appear. I will plant the leftover seeds outside after the last frost. We went to check on the cat as soon as the roads had improved. She is doing well and has plenty of dry food. I put out more wildflower seeds on top of the snow. I also did a lot of pulling weeds in the bulb garden. I’m hoping to get more ground cover plants for the bulb garden to help keep the weeds out. I saw some pansies that were still blooming after all that snow. I also have four carrots still growing from last fall. My boyfriend moved the walnut tree farther away from the area where we want to put the grape vines. We plan to transplant our existing grape vines to a sunnier area. But walnut trees have negative effects on some plants, including grapes. I continued to work on the sparrow I drew last week. I am going to mail it to my sister because she likes birds a lot. I painted it with my new watercolors following a tutorial from a book called How to Draw Animals by Sadao Naito. I really liked this book and may try to do a couple more animals from it if I have time. I want to paint a rose next week also. The new watercolors were so fun to paint with and I am excited to use them more in the future. I got two new books from another library about watercolor techniques to study. I have recently found out that I can request books from other libraries to be sent to my library. This is so convenient and I really appreciate the service. I prefer paper books to electronic books when I study. My boyfriend also ordered some new plants for the far. He bought some sunchokes to plant, although we were unsuccessful with them last year. I think we failed last year because we tried to transplant them and they prefer to be directly sown. So we will plant them directly outside in late February or early March. Strangely enough, I happened to find sunchokes at the Asian grocery store this week. I’m not sure if they have always sold them and I only noticed because they were on my mind. Of course I bought some so we could try them. We roasted them and they tasted a lot like artichokes. My boyfriend also bought us two pomegranate trees that will arrive in April. I am planning to prepare steak au poivre for Valentine’s Day dinner. I want to make a tiramisu for dessert but have not decided on side dishes yet. My boyfriend is a real foodie so food is always the best gift for him. We tried a really great prosciutto and arugula pizza from the brand Better Goods at Walmart this week. Now we want to try the other flavor made by the brand, which is some type of mushroom pizza. The crust was really exceptional for a frozen pizza. I will have a busy week at work this week since it is the start of the month. I want to enjoy the nice weather and go hiking next week but it may be too muddy.
Lisa Ledbetter 