Carleen and Mike » 2004 » March » 09 http://www.huggin.net/blog Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:05:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 en The novice gardener and the blurry photograph http://www.huggin.net/blog/2004/03/09/the-novice-gardener-and-the-blurry-photograph/ http://www.huggin.net/blog/2004/03/09/the-novice-gardener-and-the-blurry-photograph/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2004 00:42:40 +0000 Carleen Huxley http://www.huggin.net/blog/?p=105 Finally had a day free on Sunday to work in our garden. Mike has finished our compost bin (it’s wonderful, complete with latch and door!) so I spent the afternoon cleaning things up, rakeing leaves, pulling some weeds and cutting down some of the dead plants left over from last summer. I’m still quite clueless when it comes to this gardening thing but I enjoy it tremendously anyway. I sort of feel like Francis Hodgeson Burnett’s character in her book Secret Garden, just walking around pulling at things that look ugly or seem to be “choking” other plants. I think this got me in trouble though because Mike seemed a bit concerned when he noticed I had cut down a certain flower bush. I think it’s what they call a “climbing” plant. It blossoms these beautiful purple flowers in the Spring and again in late Summer. Well, I cut it completely down to the ground because all that was left was dead stuff. I guess we’ll see when May gets here whether it will grow back.
Mike has been busy trying to design a new plan for our garden but because we’re so unfamiliar with plants and flowers we’re not really sure what should go where, whether it needs more shade than sun, etc. I checked out a bunch of books on gardening the other day and we’ve been busy reading ever since. I’m also trying to learn more about houseplants. I’ve killed off a lot of the ones we have. We still have our three aloe vera plants that mom gave us but their not doing so hot. I’ve moved them into the sun room now that it’s not so cold to see if that will help. It would probably help more if I would just remember to water them enough :(. Our african violets aren’t looking so good either. The leaves are starting to turn light green instead of the deep green they used to be.
Our plan so far is to 1)build some large wooden containers that we can grow some fruit and vegetables in 2) redo most of the large flower bed, pulling up a lot of the bushes and plants that have gotten to big, and replacing them with more flowers 3) start growing herbs (I’m going to start with sweet basil which I just bought some seeds for the other day).
I’m also going to try and grow an avocado tree. We originally thought the climate down here wouldn’t be good for it but I just found out from this web page that you can grow it indoors as a house plant (as long as you water them of course).

Today was strange, like a blurry photograph. My work hours were different (came in at four instead of one). I had to take comp time off because of the crocheting program Cindy and I are doing on Thursday. So, it feels like I had this really long morning where I really didn’t accomplish a whole lot considering the amount of time I was at home (although I did take a nice nap with Chani). I came to work and a few hours later it was dark outside. Time to go home. I have a loving puppy, a cute sleepy husband and delicious potato soup waiting for me :).

More gardening websites:
Gardener”s Net
Gardening Guru
Gardening.org
Organic Gardening

]]> http://www.huggin.net/blog/2004/03/09/the-novice-gardener-and-the-blurry-photograph/feed/ Vebjorn Sand http://www.huggin.net/blog/2004/03/09/vebjorn-sand/ http://www.huggin.net/blog/2004/03/09/vebjorn-sand/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2004 22:44:34 +0000 Carleen Huxley http://www.huggin.net/blog/?p=104 I’ve been reading Michaelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King. He had an interesting footnote on page thirty-three. In the fifteenth centurty Leonardo da Vinci designed a bridge that was to link Europe and Asia. He presented his proposal to the sultan of Constantinople who later rejected it because he thought it too unrealistic, but in 2001 Norwegian artist Vebjorn Sand constructed a scaled-down version of the bridge (220 foot-long) to span a Norwegian motorway, proving the design would have been successful.

Vebjorn Sand

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