Spring greening

Ah, spring! When a young lady's fancy turns to...plants?

Yes, it is all plants, all the time around these parts. When Josh and I go for a walk, I coo over the tiny purple stars blooming in the myrtle. I envy the flocks of daffodils cheering up the still-drab grass. I tend lovingly to the starts toughening up under my grow light.

Now that the weather is warming up, I'm slowly getting the plants ready to go outside. This is a process called hardening off, and you have to take the plants outside in the sun over a period of days, letting them stay out longer each time to get used to wind, sun, and fresh air. I've also started moving some of the biggest starts into actual containers for the official growing season. (You can see the results of using Cow Pots below--the roots just grow right through the pots!)

So far, I've had mixed results. The plants are hardening off just fine, but last week I left some of the snap peas and peppers outside during a rather serious few days of rain, which meant the plants went swimming. The poor guys got so waterlogged that I had to pour off rainwater on more than one occasion. But they seem to be perking right up now that the sun has returned, and I'm looking forward to moving more starts into containers.

And perhaps the most exciting news around here is that I got permission from our landlords to spruce up the yard! I've been busily drawing up plans and completing soil tests to prepare the yard for planting. Because we live in an old house (danger of lead) and the yard isn't huge, I'll be sticking with the container plan for my edibles and planting only ornamentals in the actual yard. But it's still tremendously exciting. Plus, it gives me more of a reason to admire other people's plants...right?