Fly By Notes, 28 March 2019

Time to write just about anything in a focused manner lately has been hard to come by, so here’s a sort of organized bullet list both for me and anyone that is curious about what I’ve been up to in the last few days.

• When I went to get the terrarium to start setting that up as a seedling heater, I could not find the lamp, and realized it really won’t hold much at all anyhoo.  (Guessing how much room the trays would take up, and seeing them when they were organized is a very different thing.)  I still have not found the lamp, in fact.  So that led to a Plan B…
• Which is a reused store rack placed in the upstairs bathroom by the only south facing window up there for seedlings.  (This is a half bath if anyone is curious. So no steam, but there was room.)  I took a used plastic bag that had a small tear in it that is big enough to act as a cover over most of the top and sides to help keep warmth and moisture in.  You can see in the image that it doesn’t make it down to the bottom shelf.  It’s not pretty, but it seems to be doing its job.  Now that all three shelves are being used, I may take another similar bag to close the gap.  (For what it’s worth, I feel very fortunate the kitties have not tried to make the stand their own cat tree instead.)
• I planted the potatoes two days ago, and realized yesterday I need to mound one with more dirt already.
• I’m starting to think ALL of the cilantro/coriander seeds germinated.  I took a risk with them because it was getting subway style rush hour crowded in that pot.  After reading that they don’t like to be moved, I still gently moved what sprouts I could around the inside pot edges that were getting squished by the upside down mason jar greenhouse anyhoo.  The center is still quite crowded in that pot, and will likely only get worse–but I figured it was best to start small with the removing notion and see how that did before going whole scale.  They, like the taters, are in reused seeding trays and pots (below).

  

• I bought a spray bottle just for the seedlings at the dollar store yesterday because my small watering can was displacing the seeds even when I poured the water through a small kitchen strainer.  I thought I had a spray bottle that only held water in it before, but then remembered it cracked during a move.
• I’ve been walking the grounds for at least 20 minutes a day for I think three days now, cleaning up winter litter–mostly branch bits so far, some spent leaves on flowers like the day lilies.  I heard the oddest sound yesterday, and thought it was maybe an Acorn Bomber dropping something (cleaning a nest?), then after staring at the trees for a while, I noticed a few long icicles up in the trees, and now with the temperature rising, drip-drip.  Right after I took this shot, one of them separated from the tree and fell.

  

• Seeds–I am both still working on the seed list #3 post, as well as the calendar of what needs to get started indoors when.  We may need to steal a rack from my comic book portion of the library to set up another seedling starter area.  We have what used to be a rolling tanning light that we had swapped the bulbs out for white lights to use for photo shoots.  I may use that as the light/heat source.  We’ve been pretty lucky so far since I planted any seeds indoors in that it’s been mostly sunny each day–but it won’t last.
• Lastly for now, in between all sorts of other life stuff that needs to happen, I am trying to figure out what is most realistic for us to maybe possibly get done with a greater chance than the garden getting hit by an out of orbit satellite.

There’s more, but my brain is sleepy and the warm kitty in my lap is only helping that feeling.  Still, much was done (new batch of chicken broth!), and more can be done after rest as well.