The Flowering

Some people think that gardeners are born with a "green thumb", a natural ability to make plants grow. I'll let you in on a secret: gardening is 10% research, 60% physical labor, and 30% crossing your fingers and hoping things work out. Getting to see the actual flowers is the reward for many months of mud and hope. And the flowers have arrived!

Last fall I planted 456 tulip bulbs and 90 daffodils. For the purposes of cut flowers, a tulip is only good once; you pull up the whole bulb when harvesting, and that's it. It seems a little harsh to the poor plant, but once you cut off the flower and the leaves, there's nothing to feed the bulb for the next season and it may never flower again. Daffodils do multiply over time though, so I should have more and more every year with no effort at all! What you see below is a double daffodil, which are much more rare to find in grocery store floral departments, so I'll definitely be doubling up (see what I did there) on those next year.

I didn't have my flower stand ready in time to sell most of the daffodils this year, but the tulips are coming in fast and furious and I'm opening up tomorrow! I intentionally am not linking to my business here because the website contains my address and full name, and I don't want any weird people lurking around here. BUT if you are interested and I know you're a legit person, let me know below and I'll contact you through your blog or your email if you want to leave it.

This desk is actually my virtual meeting background, so I put these flowers here to strategically distract from a tense presentation I gave to 100+ people this week. I think they worked because no one asked me any hard questions. My art desk in general is sadly neglected these days. I keep an art journal open in case I have a few minutes to stop over and work, but things tend to stay unfinished for a long time. 

In other farming news I had a huge pile of leaf compost delivered last week. The backyard is fenced, so I need to shovel and haul it one load at a time onto the beds. The new garden is now ready to go. I'm excited to get my blowtorch out again and burn holes in more landscape fabric. I will not be doing this on a windy day like I did the first time, which resulted in me having to relight the torch after almost every. single. one. of the 155 holes.

This may have been one of my longest knitting-free periods... ever? Because I've been crocheting instead! All of the yarn I'm using, besides the black, is leftover from other projects. I finally decided not to keep saving it for some future unknown project and just use it up. I did absolutely no planning for this, so I'm just randomly choosing colors and I guess I'll just keep going around and around until I decide I'm done. I think this would make an excellent children's book: a woman keeps crocheting the same blanket until it gets bigger and bigger, swallowing her house, her neighbors... etc. You can have my idea if you want to write it!

I've now finished 21 books this year. I have been a lot better about quitting books I'm not into, so even though I probably won't match my total from last year, I see that as an improvement. I really enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club, which is about a group of amateur investigators in a retirement home who end up involved a real murder. The writing was quite funny and I loved the backstories and personalities of the main characters. (Trigger warning for multiple suicides, though.)

I also finished Maggie O'Farrell's I Am, I Am, I Am on audio. It blew me away! I usually like every memoir I read, but the writing was top-notch. The book focuses on "17 brushes with death" which was a unique take on the standard memoir. It made me immediately go and check out another book of hers. 

I hope you're getting at least a hint of spring where you are!