Elephants

Way back in February I bought an elephant ear bulb and put it in a pot in the living room. For months it just sat. There was absolutely no action going on that I could see. About two weeks ago I had given it all up as a lost cause, so I dug up the bulb. To my shock there was quite a bit of root structure!

I'm not sure if the plant was angered by my uprooting of it, or if it was indignant in my lack of faith, but about 6 days after my attempted planticide, it started growing. And now it's really going good!These leaves are tiny compared to what I'm expecting out of it, but they're very pretty! I'm hoping to get lots of growth out of it so that it will fill the pot.

Does anyone else have an elephant ear plant?

Nasty Gnats!

The moistness of the banana plant's soil is attracting some pretty serious gnats. I hate them. With a passion. I may run around the house randomly clapping like a seal at the aquarium just trying to send them to their graves.

But that makes me look bizarre. So I'm trying something new. It's apple cider vinegar in a bowl. Supposedly they're lured in by the smell and then they land in it, but that's when the tiny bit of dish soap I mixed in gets them and they're stuck and they die horrible horrible deaths. Ah ha ha ha ha ha. Wow, that's a lot of anger towards something the size of a large pencil dot.

I'm hoping it will work. If it doesn't, do you have any better ideas?

Stamps

Look at these stamps from the US Postal Service!
They're a little bigger than normal stamps, but I couldn't pass them up.
How many things on the "list" do you do?
I try to do all of them, but I do have a really leaky bathroom sink, and some of them I have to do because I don't own a car. It's not really a conscious choice (Have you seen how much parking and car insurance are in Boston?! I almost passed out!) as much as a necessity, but I figure I'm helping to offset the carbon footprint I'll one day create when I do own a car.

Signs of Food

Let's play a guessing game.

Between the greenhouse and pulling the plants indoors every night to stay warm, I seem to have tricked them, and they're blooming already.

(Ok, one should be blooming now, there's a hint.)

Can you guess what kind of plants put off each of these flowers?

Blooms

The weather here is disgusting. Words like "chilly", "November", and "horrible" were thrown about willy nilly at work today. And it's my fault. I'd like to apologize to anyone in the Greater Boston area for the 10 day forecast - which includes rain, showers, overcast, scattered thunderstorms, and more rain along with temperatures ranging from 50 degree nighttime lows to 55 degree daytime highs. I took the plastic insulation off the windows and put my gloves and scarves away this past weekend, obviously forcing the weather to revert to late fall crappiness. So please accept my apologizes.Anyway, since the weather is so gross, I thought I'd add some color to our lives with some photos of the azalea outside my front door. These photos were taken last weekend when there was this thing called sun in the sky.

Repotting

This tomato was starting to bust out of the mini-pot I put it in so it was time to re-pot.

We're supposed to get rain and 60 degrees for the next week, so we'll see how the garden goes. More updates coming soon this week.

Plot of Land

Thanks for all the enthusiasm about the "plot of land" my landlord offered. I wish I was as enthusiastic as you. I may have oversold it in my last post.

It's about a 1' by 6'' piece of land shoved between two multi-story houses and a garage. I've been watching it the past few days at different times of day and the best sun situation is around noon when it gets the reflection off the neighboring house, which is technically just a reflection off the window of our house.

It's also interesting because further toward the street on this strip of land there's lots of hostas that seem to do pretty well, but they have quite a bit more sunshine.

Here's a photo. I didn't have time to take one, so this is from Google Earth. It must be from before we moved in, but there's plants on the deck, so the tenants before us must have gardened too! Do you see that tiny, very faint red circle I drew on the photo? Kind of in the dead center of the photo? Yeah, that's the "plot of land" he was so kind to offer.

And this gives you a better idea of how big our deck is. Ok, so deck might be stretching it. It's a glorified balcony. But we plan on filling it to the brim. :)

I'm hoping to take some more photos soon. It's been rather cool and rainy here. Not great for gardening and not great for working on my final exam - the rain just makes me sleepy.

Hope the weather is better for you all!