Japanese Fantail Pussy Willow

I had seen these last week at the Home and Garden show, but resisted because of what I had heard about growing willows. When my fellow booth mate brought back the coveted gnarly willow and the black one I had to pick her brain about it! She said it was just the curly willow so I bought a bunch of the gnarly looking one, but what I have read online said any water loving plant is an issue. So I dunno....what do I do now? Where do I plant it? It is rooting in a bucket of water now.

Spring!

While the spring equinox doesn't arrive till the 20th it is currently
56*F right now and most of the snow has melted. Even my hose has
thawed out! I was finally able to rinse my car of the salt it had
accumulated since the last visit to the car wash.

Today I noticed my daffodils, hyacinths & allium have made their
presence known! I think winter is finally behind us! February's four
feet of snow was enough!

Because the snow has receded from my garlic patch, I was finally able
to plant my sugar snap peas! Planted all I had left from the packet I
bought, but I also planted the seeds I saved last year. It'll be
interesting to see if my saved seeds do well too!

The snow had also receded some from my front yard and I was able to
plant some radish seeds to improve the soil. I should've planted some
in the backyard too, but didn't think about it at the time! Maybe when
I get home I will do so if there is enough daylight left to see still.

Anyhow, on my way to the home show to volunteer for Phipps!

Signs of Life!

That Bud is Getting Bigger!

Bananas For My Paph. lowii

Yep, you heard that right! Bananas! I am getting desperate LOL I'm hoping that the fruit in the same room thing works and that it will speed up the flower development! So before coming home after work today I went and picked up 5 bananas. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Blooms for Show

Now that we are less than two weeks away from the show I don't think my Phal. equestris' are going to bloom in time. Interesting, especially since everything else bloomed early! Maybe leaving the keikis on there delayed their growth? I think I will have a Dendrobium kingnianum and possibly a Paph. lowii if that bud would just get fatter faster! Those big fat petals might take some time to make! I also may have a Masdevallia with two buds on it bloom in time, we'll see! Anything else we won't have in time. :(

My New Hat

Spring Show Installation at Phipps

So I signed up to help with the spring show installation at Phipps and forgot since I did not make it an alarm on my phone. Luckily I was up early today, but still not quite early enough to make it there on time! I had to pick up dog food though since I had forgotten to pick it up yesterday and had to decide whether to skip volunteering or not so I decided to see how frozen the dog food was. I did end up going, albeit quite a bit late. I got there slightly before noon and stayed till 2:30-ish. It went pretty quick with so many people helping. I guess I should've taken a pic of our work, but that didn't cross my mind at the time. I did take some pics of some of the other stuff though.

I always have to visit the gift shop every time I volunteer there. They had these white sweatshirt hoodies with the Phipps logo on them, but they were asking $45 for them! Still wasn't worth it after my discount unfortunately. Instead, I got a baseball cap instead. I got khaki. There was a green, which was really nice, but I thought it was too manly and I also already have a dark hat. I didn't want the white one b/c I thought it would get dirty too easily so khaki it was!

More Spikes

The show is in two weeks and I think I will have maybe three plants ready! Found another Phal in spike! Wish some of my paphs would bloom! But it is only about 65˚F in the basement so....not seeing much going on with those guys. Replaced a bulb too that had been out for a long time, but I never got around to changing it till now! I'm sure they'll be MUCH happier now! Paph lowii needs to move along a teensy bit faster!

Carnivorous Plants

Pinguicula 'Aphrodite' blooms

Pinguicula emarginata

Just got these....Drosera lake badgerup
(nitidula ssp. omissa x occidentalis ssp.occidentalis)

Just got these too....Drosera roseana

I didn't realize how TINY pygmy Droseras were until I got these! Of course, they may not be full grown yet b/c my last pygmy was much larger! It's hard to tell how big they are, but they are real small!

Paph. Lowii's Growing Bud

Apologies to the Squirrels

My suet cakes had been disappearing really fast lately as well as the cable ties that keep the door closed on the feeder. I thought the squirrels were getting to it. Afterall...they have before! But the last time, even though the cable ties were gone, the door was still shut! Mysteries! Well I think I have figured it out....bravely I put out another suet cake and it was devoured in no time! These robin sized fat black birds with skinny yellow beaks have been visiting and they are voracious as heck! They are also a bit bossy preventing the other birds from feeding! At least the birds are eating it instead of the squirrels stealing the whole dang thing! Anyway, my aplogies to the squirrels for suspecting them! :)

Paph. lowii in spike in my kitchen window.

Bees & Butterflies

Just finished reading my March/April 2010 Gardening How-To Magazine and there is an article on how to attract bees and butterflies! Bees are something I have been striving to attract and they seem to love my thyme and this other plant.....forget the name! I love watching them go from flower to flower. Turns out that thyme is one of the plants that bees love according to this list!

I'm not sure how I am going to feel about attracting butterflies so they will lay eggs on plants to feed the caterpillars though. I am not familiar with what are good and bad caterpillars. I would hate to accidentally kill the good ones!

Orchid Meeting Flea Market

I brought seven Pinguicula morananesis that were in bloom or in bud and sold them all for $5 each. I also brought a nobile Dendrobium and sold it for $1 as well as some dragonfly clips for $1 also. I brought two books too, but no one wanted them. :\ They're more coffee table type books though, nothing informative, just pretty pictures to look at.

I did pretty well. I only managed to buy one orchid only! A Paph. Delrosi! Had no idea what it would look like, but I love Paphs and at $10 it was the right price! I googled it on my phone and to my surprise it's a really pretty flower! I am definitely excited :D If you don't know what it is, do a search for it. If it were my picture I'd put it up on here, but I don't want to be stealing anyone's images!

Pot Skirts

Tonight I decided to tackle making my pot skirts for the orchid show next month. I had a heck of a time getting the tension right and had to ask for help! I finally got it close to right, except I think I measured the fabric a bit too tight. It will work, but only for the types of pots I use! I will need to make some other sizes too. The elastic proved tricky, but I got the hang of it after a few missed pieces!

Tomorrow is an orchid meeting so I probably won't have time to do more, but I may cut up more fabric so they are ready to be sewn just so I have an excuse to not put away my mess in the livingroom! :) I so need a craft room! Well...I do have a room that I could use for stuff like this, but it's no where near warm enough for me to hang out there for long periods of time! Plus there isn't exactly a table in there that I could use. I could haul one up there, but bringing one up from the basement to that attic room is a bit much! Not sure where I would put it anyhow...if only that bed wasn't there! In the five years we've lived in this house that bed has been used ONCE! So not worth having it in that room!

Master Gardener Re-Certification

Tonight I went to the Phipps Master Gardener Re-Certification Ceremony. It's hard to believe that I was certified back in 2005 and this will be my fifth year doing so!

Our guest speaker was Doug Oster from the Post Gazette. His book was what made going organic so easy for me! He has a new book out called Tomatoes Garlic Basil, which he brought a few copies tonight and signed them for those that bought one, which I did! Those are the three things that I must grow every year! He remembered that I had gone organic a few years back and asked how it was going. I told him that my grass looks great! There are far less bare spots from the dog! Who woulda thunk? He said that the lawn was the hardest for people to do so, but it didn't seem that way for me. It was all or nothing! I chose to go for it all and chose nothing!

I do put down corn gluten meal as a pre-emergent as well as fertilizer, but really nothing else besides that! If I see a weed I don't like I pull it. I have been working on a patch of clover for two years now. Clovers are good actually....they put nitrogen back into the soil, but they sure don't look nice! I did find out a bit of calcium slows their growth!

Anyway...I am awaiting my time to put down some of that corn gluten. I think I'm out...going to have to pick up some! I also just realized the down side to an online gardening journal....I can't really sketch on here. Oh well...

Today was sunny and above freezing so a lot of snow melted! Check out the icicles on the back of my house!

Dendrobium kingianum

I discovered that Dendrobium kingianum is in spike tonight as I
searched my light stand hoping that more of my orchids would spike in
time for next month's show! Hopefully it will bloom in time!

-
Cindi
Rabies Challenge Fund :: www.rabieschallengefund.org

Pinguicula 'Aphrodite'

From Other Plants

This is one of my new butterworts in bloom. One of its parents is Pinguicula morananesis, hence the large pink flower. It's not quite as magenta as its parent flower, but rounder. Pretty eh?

Still No Spikes :(

I keep looking and looking, but there still are no new spikes coming! Of course, the more I look the more likely I'm not going to get them probably. That's the way it goes usually! Paph. lowii's spike is doing well. The Masdevallia with one flower spike is opening now, but that's it! Phal. equestris and Aphrodite are in spike. Hopefully those bloom in time for our display. I have yet to master the timing of orchid blooms! I did give most of them another shot of bloom booster tonight. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Epies Fertilized!

So I'm supposed to start fertilizing my epiphyllums in Feb with a low N, but high P fertilizer. I had none of that type of fertilizer and since I'm trying to go organic I decided to put bone meal into them instead and water with aquarium water to water it in. I wasn't able to put worm castings on unfortunately because I had just added some dry matter and mixed it all up and it needed more time to break down. Hopefully I will get some blooms this year now that I have some guidance!