Day 58: Seattle- Disaster Strikes!

OH NO!!!!! Seattle decided to go from a week of sun and 70 * to windy, WINDY, WINDY!!! I thought Devon lived in the windy city. We had up to 60 mph wind!! DOWNTOWN!! So needless to say, disaster struck on my beautiful plants. Man!

My tomato plant got completely turned on its side, so now I had to tie it up with pantyhose.

The whole top of my bean plant was blown off!! Will it survive? Can they generate new leaves? Look at that pathetic stick!

My two strongest, most beautiful strawberry leaves were blown over and snapped! I just cut them off at the root to try and ask it, nicely, to regenerate some leaves.

And on top of it all my blueberry plant has committed suicide. I'm thinking about switching to a new plant. It looks so sad I can't even bare to put a picture on. Picture a stick with shriveled up leaves. I can't seem to bring it back. I don't think my patio gets enough sun. :( So, it's not green gables here in Seattle. I am trying to recover it.

Some good news though, Devon is coming in T-minus 3 weeks to visit! Maybe she can coax my plants to health. And another little catnip sprout has popped out of the soil. So, I guess it's not all bad news, but it's mostly bad news. Looks like a stall here and in Chicago.

What's next?!

Chicago- Day 56: Under Construction

Though it appears that I have been a slacker because I haven't posted in so long, the truth is that I actually have NOT been a slacker- I've just been really busy with work/school/research. Even my weekends have been busy because I have had to go in to take measurements on my liver transplant subjects. Ah, good ol' research. It's for the betterment of science...and so I can graduate. haha. But needless to say, I'm a bit exhausted these days (this will not include a photo of my dark, under-eye circles).

My lack of gardening has not been completely my fault either. My landlord is having work done on our porches so I will have to delay any more planting or beautification until it has been completed. As you can see, my garden temporarily has been moved indoors so that the painters don't paint over it!This hasn't stopped me from harvesting though. I was able to harvest all of the radishes and they taste delicious! Home grown really is the best. As you can see my lettuce is overflowing and even my carrots are getting a bit out of hand. Hopefully the construction will be finished up next week and then I can add my warm weather vegetables and some flowers. I sure the transformation will be beautiful. My cilantro is also popping up! Hooray!

Seattle- Day 45: Many Successes, One Failure

Let's just get that failure out of the way and move on to the good stuff. My basil died. Slowly but surely, my basil died. I knew picking out the plant at the store that it wasn't the healthiest but I was just so anxious to get everything I wanted. Note-to-self for the future: just pass on the icky plants. But basil is my favorite! This is just my excuse to go back to the De-pot and find two plants! I think maybe the issue was too much water in the tomato plant it was sharing a pot with, not enough sun, and chilly weather. So the next run-around should be great.

And now for the successes!

My spinach is actually starting to look like spinach and has created these amazing little leaves. I can't believe I'm going to eat this stuff eventually!! It's too cute!

Praise God the beans sprouted!!! Take that Doubting Devon! They sprouted strong as ever!! I found another coming up and have one yet to show his head. I am SUPER excited about it. MAJOR success.

My lettuce is kicking butt! (Mom's read this blog, so I have to say butt) I'm sure you can see that I have thinned them out a lot. Next year? More pots of lettuce. Well, that's what I think now, we'll see how often I harvest it when it's eating time. I don't want to be inundated with lettuce. Although, I'm not sure that would actually be a problem.

And now, for my favorite and most successful accomplishment- STRAWBERRIES! This is the most amazing plant. I can literally see it reaching for the sun in the morning. It has just grown so much, more than any other plant, and it has 5 beautiful white flowers that will soon yield fruit. Well, I don't know about soon. I'm still learning. But look how beautiful!!

Funny Story: Matt and I started eating the cilantro, since it is taking over the pot. I made yummy beef vegetable soup (Grandma's amazing recipe, my favorite) and put sour cream and fresh cilantro on top. Matt took the first bite and asks in a horrible, disapproving, tragic voice, "What did you do to the soil?" "Oh, no!" I said, "Does it taste bad? It's just regular potting soil! Is it really that bad?!" He looks me straight in the eyes and says, "No. This is the best cilantro I have ever eaten! Can we grow more?" Haha! Needless to say, Matt is now a full supporter of the garden and can't wait to eat more. See our pretty soup?

Chicago- Day 36: New Additions

Although this weekend should have been jam-packed with homework (stupid Metabolism), I instead decided to add to my garden. So spontaneously on Saturday I decided it would be a great time to plant my herbs, much to the detriment of my metabolism grade. I headed over to the De-Pot (aka. Home Depot) after fighting tons of traffic (which brought on fits of anxiety) and found a huge array of plants! Although they already had tomato and pepper transplants out, I opted for herbs that I knew would thrive in the still slightly cool weather. This week's lows are in the 50s and I don't want to risk killing anything if the temp dips too low. New additions include: common sage, German thyme, Greek oregano, Italian flat-leaf parsley, and cilantro. I wasn't as brave as Dina and opted for cilantro seeds instead of the transplant. I would surely have messed up the taproot and then been disappointed.

By the way, how can you plant all those plants in your apartment? I made SUCH a mess on the porch. I had dirt everywhere and crap laying around. My house would have been a mess if I had to do it right off the kitchen. Thankfully, Joe was also there to be my muscle-man!

Luckily, my mess was cleaned up and my plants potted in time to go out for a Joe-family function and STILL not do my homework. Oh well. The stress-relief from gardening was more than worth it.

Also, I decided to test out a radish since it has been about 30 days since they sprouted. It was so cute! Taste testing revealed a good, mild flavor but the radish wasn't quite firm enough. I guess I will leave them in the soil a couple more days to see how they fare.
Since my spinach is growing pretty big I had to pull out one of the plants because it was getting overcrowded. That gave me an early taste of the spinach as well. First tastes of the season!