Green Gal

It rained today at my house, which means my plants are happy as can be and the world smells amazing outside. Sadly, I didn't see or feel any rain today since I was indoors at work, but the signs and smells and evidence of rain was everywhere on my bike ride home and in the garden out back. Rain drops on leaves, damp soil, and the smell of wet earth and asphalt. Finally, fall seems to be here! (Knock on wood!) Sunflower and my mystery bulb, which I'm straining to remember if I maybe did plant... I planted a bulb in the plastic container in front of it after finding bulbs at the bottom of a dead flowering plant I received as a gift (it was alive when I received it as a gift!). I must have planted the second bulb in this spot. I feel silly for forgetting!  The mystery bulb has emerged!  Rain-soaked garden!  Look at those little rain drops! (Click the image for a larger view.) Today is also special because we harvested our first veggies from the garden t...

Yesterday, I picked up the white watering can on the right from the garden center, and then last night, my Aunt Diane surprised me with the one on the left! Thank you! They have different spouts, so one is for getting close to roots and the other is for watering larger patches. I went from having zero watering cans to two! Since I didn't grow my own pumpkins this year, I bought some small ones and put them around the garden, front porch, and inside the house as festive decorations for fall and harvest time. These new flowers were on sale at the nearby garden center for only 50 cents each! I couldn't resist. Thanks for watching with me as my garden grows! Green Gal

I mentioned yesterday on the blog that there has been an infestation of ants in my worm bin this week. They started showing up after I put squash in the bin for the worms two evenings ago. The morning that I put the squash in, I had discovered many of the worms were escaping. Thinking they were lacking food, I fed them more. In retrospect, I realize that part of the issue may have been that the bin was too acidic, with so much food in there. (More on this below.) Here are some worms enjoying the fig that I gave them Thursday morning after frantically searching for food they could eat during the day since most of our food scraps were frozen. I did a quick Google search on Thursday evening and read that making the bin more moist might stop the ants, so I watered it with a sprinkle of water, added some avocado skins after dinner, and went to bed. Yesterday morning, there were more ants. Like, a lot of ants, all swarming on the food that is supposed to be for my worms. I wasn'...

Here's an end of the week update on most of the plants growing on my windowsill and in the garden. Happy Friday!   Tomato and cilantro seedlings.   Nasturtium seedling.   Tomato seedling.   The arugula were getting crowded, so I thinned them into separate containers. The Silk brand soy yogurt is my favorite for mixing in granola and enjoying for breakfast at work. I've been saving all of the containers to use for growing seedlings, and they certainly came in handy this morning!   I did end up leaving three in the same container; we'll see how that goes. I ended up pulling one of the seedlings out entirely because it was the smallest. I actually ate it, and it was delicious! I can't wait for these to grow big enough for salads. Nasturtiums on the windowsill are doing great! Above: tomato plant and basil are doing really well. The close up of a seedling is a cilantro plant growing with the tomato and basil.  Sun...