The battle continues....

Our friends Trish and Walter were over this afternoon, and while describing my recent run-in with the local squirrels, Jeff found yet another abused seedling that the squirrels had dug up.

ARGH. The chipotle pepper did seem to be working until there was a thunderstorm and the rain washed the pepper away.

The battle in the garden continues...






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Demon squirrels strike again!

So I've spent about a month eagerly getting seeds, planting them carefully in mini peat pots (the kind that start as pellets but grow when you add water), watching excitedly for the first sprouts to appear, carefully nurturing the seedlings, hardening them off on the back deck to get them used to being outside, then transplanting them to lovingly-prepared beds and planters.

Only to find the seedlings dug up the next day, or even hours later, tossed cruelly aside to bake in the hot sun. Sometimes the seedlings disappear altogether, with the occasional bit of peat pot or a few pitiful roots left behind as a taunting reminder of what I once had.

I suspected squirrels, but wasn't sure until I actually caught one of them climbing into one of my outdoor herb planters and starting to dig. Grrr. A couple of days ago, I found the same plants dug up THREE TIMES ON THE SAME DAY(a mint and a morning glory seedling). I replanted the seedling each time. The third time, the seedling disappeared for good.

I have sprinkled some chipotle pepper powder around those plants; I've heard that bloodmeal also works, but it also stinks. One of my friends helpfully suggested that if we lived in medieval times, it might have helped to chop off one of the squirrel's heads that I could stick on a pike as a message to others.

Hopefully the chipotle pepper will do the trick.

We'll see...

(insert sound of pike sticks being sharpened here)

Link O' The Day: Nerd Jewellry!

I don't wear make-up or have the usual obsession with clothing or shoes that many women share, but I do confess a weakness for earrings, especially nerdy ones like those above. The description on Etsy starts off "Make sure you don't walk around without a properly formatted Head."

:-D

Anyway, they're sadly sold out, probably because they were popular on Digg (which is how I found out about them). But what a GREAT idea for jewellry.






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Chocolate, friends and memories

Went for a run this morning to avoid the heat later in the day, and was struck again by how FAST spring seems to have jumped on us this year: trees seeming to bud overnight, flowers blooming in a heartbeat. Or maybe I'm just more aware of the seasons now that we live in a residential area. Looking out our condo window in downtown Toronto a couple years ago, it sometimes seemed as if the only way you could tell the season was by the arrival of the Unknown Guitarist.


Will Write For Chocolate has been updated, as you can see above. I've been having fun reading the answers to my Inkygirl Survey: did you ever use a manual typewriter? As I mentioned in that entry, my first typewriter was a manual Underwood, and I used horrible powdery correction paper to fix mistakes. Then I won an electric typewriter in a writing contest, and I thought THAT was pretty high tech.

But speaking of chocolate: as I mentioned in a Blathering a while back, I've had to cut down on my chocolate intake to lower my blood sugar level. My friend Sibylle in Germany kindly sent me some sugar-free chocolate to help me cope with my frustrated chocolaholicism (sp? :-):



Yummmm....

And today, a surprise package arrived for Jeff and me today from Erin and Rand: a travel size mango mandarin for me (I love Bath & Bodyworks, but it's only in the U.S.) and some chocolate for Jeff (Fast Break is his favourite chocolate bar):



Wow, I feel spoiled.

:-)

My delivery from Richter's Herbs arrived today, making it an extra bonus mail day. My herb collection now consists of: sweet basil (both store-bought and grown from seed), bush basil, regular sage, purple sage, English lavender, Anouk lavender, lemon basil, lemon thyme, regular thyme, chocolate mint, peppermint, rosemary, parsley grown from seed, French tarragon, Greek oregano, and chives. I have enough basil that I might actually attempt to make some pesto this summer. Last year I only had one basil plant, and that didn't last me very long.



Hey, and my Morning Glory is sprouting! Jeff does a good job at feigning excitement whenever I tell him garden news like this. To some, Morning Glory may seem like a weed. To me, it's always reminded me of my mom, who used to love growing it every year:



Plants can evoke such strong memories, can't they? I planted lavender because it reminds me of the wonderful bank of lavender at Fonte De' Medici, a place we stayed during our Italy trip:



I run my fingers through the green stalks, and the fragrance brings me back to that place.

My favorite plant in our garden is the purple lilac, solely because of the fragrance. It reminds me of when we lived out in the country because of the lilac trees on the property.

What are your memory plants?



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Will Write For Chocolate

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated. Thanks to all those who suggested names for Eliza's cat, especially Rachel Starr Thomson, who suggested "Theobroma." :-)

Thanks also for the responses to my "garden freak" post; I enjoyed reading them. Some of you welcomed me to the fold. Some (like Peter Alway) admitted that the most interesting thing he found in the post was the telescope in one of the photos. :-D



I especially loved Judith Hayman's comment, which really hit home for me:

"I think that the gardening thing has something to do with nurturing and as much to do with being creative. Every season is starting all over again, trying to do it better, or differently at least. We don't get many chances to do that our in adult lives, so it's pretty precious. OTOH, in our adult lives we also don't get to say 'Ick, that offspring (aka plant) didn't work at all. Throw it out!' That's also kinda cool. Gardening is such a learning experience. Like finding our those gorgeous Bachelor's Buttons grow to three feet tall and wide and smother everything in sight. Or that Chameleon Plant NEVER GIVES UP and will still be appearing three or four years after yanking it out. Or that TEN years after planting one lonely little Lily-of-the-Valley, the damn thing is sprouting. But isn't it good we aren't relying on our horticultural talents to actually feed our families?"

I made chicken broth in my slow cooker for the first time yesterday. I had picked up a bunch of chicken parts for a couple bucks in our local grocery store, threw them in the slow cooker with some chopped celery, onions and carrots with seasoning, some water. Let it simmer all day, then strained out the chicken broth and kept the chicken meat.

I tried making chicken broth in the past, but always found it such a pain to have to keep checking the stock pot to make sure there was enough liquid. With the slow cooker, and I can just forget about it. The recipe said the timing was very flexible; I could leave it on the low setting from 6-16 hours(!).

And today we're having homemade chicken soup for lunch, yum.





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So when did I become a gardenfreak?

Jeff and I spent most of Sunday doing gardeningstuff. I remember helping my parents with gardening chores as a child. It was interesting for, oh, maybe 30 seconds and then I'd rather go off and do my own thing. Unless it was MY plant, of course.



I clearly remember planting a corn seed and actually having it survive (I guess there weren't racoons in our neighbourhood yet) long enough for me to pick a ripened cob of corn. My mother cooked it for me and I slathered it in butter before taking a bite. It was the best thing I had ever tasted.



I can't help but contrast my attitude about gardening now to ten years ago. My eyes used to glaze over whenever people started talking about gardening. Now I'm one of those garden-freaks who gets all excited when someone mentions mulching or fertilizing, and who posts an endless stream of boring plant and garden photos to Flickr.

How on earth did that happen?



Even when we had a condo, I had no interest in gardening. Not that we could do much gardening, but I wasn't even interested in trying to grow some container herbs in our sunny window. Since we bought a house, however, it's as if some switch in my brain has been pulled. It didn't hurt that our house came with a beautiful garden of perennials.



I love the garden in the spring. Every day, there's something new: a flower that wasn't there before, a new sprout, more leaves. I've gotten into the habit of eating my lunch on the back deck if it's nice weather.



Jeff and I went to a gardening centre on the weekend and picked up some new plants including some clematis (Jackmanii and Madame Julia Correvon), hanging plants for the back deck (purple verbena), a small cedar tree, and herbs.

In addition to planting some in pots outdoors, I've also expanding my indoor herb garden in the sunroom:



Herbs so far include sweet basil (store-bought plants as well as lots grown from seed -- I loooove basil), regular sage, purple sage, English lavender, Oreuk(sp? must go check later) lavender, lemon basil, lemon thyme, regular thyme, CHOCOLATE mint (!), rosemary, parsley grown from seed, French tarragon, and Greek oregano.

Plus I have some more coming from Richters soon, woohoo!

Pics O' The Day

From Geeklogie.com...

Han Solo in carbonite chocolate bar

Magic tap illusion

Video O' The Day

Mesmerizing clouds from Wohba...





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