Today I assembled the tabletop greenhouse given to us by my folks. It’ll be nice for starting our plants this year. In previous years we’ve used plastic containers on the window sills but this should be much better.
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It is raining today, but when I went out to put the greenhouse on the porch I saw that the Primroses are blooming.
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While I was out there I also took a couple more pictures of our plants that wintered over. With the warmer weather and more sun lately the plants have been taking off already!
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The winter garden has meant that we’re getting an earlier start this year. Our seed potatoes will be arriving soon. We’ll need to go out and get a straw bale or two since we’ll be growing them vertically in the straw-filled cages. It should be interesting to see how well this works.
Poor, poor, pitiful me!
That is Poppy Seed’s current theme song. On Friday she went in to the vets to have her teeth cleaned and to have a growth on her side removed. This isn’t the first time she’s had her teeth cleaned so we already knew she’d be in pain from that (they really scrub them good!), add to that a gash in her side and our poor baby is miserable. All night long she was crying. And I mean ALL NIGHT LONG! I finally convinced Ryan to go sleep in his study since he had to work today and I tried to sleep while Poppy whined and whimpered all through the night. I felt awful, she was in so much pain. Or so I thought.
At about 4:30 her e-collar (the cone of shame) got caught on the blanket and was pulled off. Suddenly she was no longer crying! In fact she was bouncy and happy. All night long with the crying because she doesn’t like the cone! And I was all worried because I thought she was in agonizing pain.
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Normally I would give her a break from the cone but I guess at the vets she was messing with her stitches because they said she needed to keep the cone on constantly for all 10 days, he even underlined it multiple times on the chart. So even though it is making her miserable she must suffer with the cone of shame. She is still fussing but is getting a little quieter, hopefully by bed time she’ll have accepted that we are not removing the cone.
They sent the growth to be analyzed and we should find out next week what it is. Then on Monday the 26th she’ll get the sutures removed and be freed from the cone of shame. At least this time she will walk with the cone on. The last time she had to wear a cone it was opaque and she turned into a statue, transparent plastic works much better.
Red Wagon
This morning I rearranged the porch garden, removed the bench, firewood and cleaned it up. We also moved some of the small planters into our Radio Flyer red wagon.
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The days have been warmer and the weather has been warmer. The plants all seem to be doing well.
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In the process of cleaning things up I put out most of the cages we will be using for the potatoes. I still need to take out the swiss chard but the potatoes aren’t coming until next month so I’ll wait awhile longer before removing the chard.
2007 Porch Garden!
We’re starting to get ready for the 2007 porch garden — but we still have plants from 2006!
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The Fall-planted garlic is doing well. Plus we still have some kale, spinach, chard, broccoli, and a lettuce plant. The greens haven’t been growing much with things being so cold but they seem to be doing fine. The broccoli plants look okay but aren’t producing anything.
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We’re going to be looking at more productive plants this year. Potatoes! We plan to order a few heirloom varieties from Ronniger Potato Farm. The potatoes will be grown vertically in cages with straw. Those are going to be in the boxes currently occupied by the chard and broccoli.
When the garlic comes out we’ll be planting zucchini in those containers, maybe some cucumbers too.
We’re also going to try some strawberries in the smaller containers.
More Snow
With the cold temperatures recently we’ve been getting some more snow. Last week it was snowing pretty well when it was time for me to go to the library. I had a nice walk through the snow flurries.
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This morning it was snowing again, although it has already mostly stopped and looks to be turning to rain soon. Most of it will melt today. I took a couple pictures, but they’re a bit dark.
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Temperatures are supposed to be getting warmer across the week but the nighttime lows are still expected to be below freezing.
Cougar Cheese
For Christmas my folks, knowing our love of cheese, ordered a round of Cougar Cheese – American Cheddar. If left in the can it will continue to age, which was tempting, but we finally gave in and opened the can.
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McCoy is also fond of cheese and was on hand for the opening.
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The cheese was very good. Nice and sharp. We used a little for dinner after opening it and it was quite tasty. There’s still lots left so we’ll be enjoying it for awhile.
