Busy Bee

So much has happened in such a short time but I still feel like I have nothing to blog about. I have developed a serious Craigslist addiction. Now that I have an app on my iTouch that makes it easy to view ads and their photos I am on the hunt for everything and anything. As a result of said addiction I have aquired picket fencing for the front yard (super duper YAY!), two swivel chairs, a ceiling fan and a new coffee table. It may sound like a lot, but I can tell you that if every item I had called on/looked at would have made it home with me I would have a few more. Oh yeah, did I mention that this has all happened in like the last 2 1/2 weeks...
I told you I had a severe addiction. I only check for new listings like a dozen times a day, it could be worse. :)
So lets start with the chairs since I don't have pictures of the fan or the fencing.

For such a small space I sure had a lot of furniture. We got rid of the gigantic sectional which has given the room so much space. Whatever, boring...moving on.

So other than that I got a really cool carnivorous plant.

Not a great picture but I love my little sundew. Best thing about it is that it just sits in a little tray of distilled water and that's about all I have to do since it feeds itself. :)

I also planted my window box again today. That's right again. Not sure if I posted pictures the last few times I did but it is a pretty frequent occurence.

It will be interesting to see how it looks in a month. I am hoping it will be robust and out of control and falling all over the place. We will see if the sun bakes this one.

Oh yeah, and I found this little guy outside too.

I will never forget the uh-huh moment I had in class one day when we talked about beneficial and predatory insects. This little guy is an adolescent lady bug. As with a lot of little buggies that I find while gardening I used to squish these kinds of bugs all the time always wondering what they were. It's true that I always seem to have a lot of lady bugs around and I love them. I feel a little sad every time I think about how many I must have killed. :(

But, I don't do that anymore so hopefully they forgive me.

I have a million projects going on, not started yet and half done so there will be a lot to come. I have like a million plants that still need to be transplanted and I think the vast numbers of plants that I started this year is really starting to sink in. Anyway, this was a strange post and I should probably erase it but it's better than nothing so here it goes.

The Journey of Plant ID

Even for a plant lover it can be hard to cram 15 new plant scientific/common names into your head each week. That doesn't even include the bonus plants. By the end of the semester I will have memorized approximately 270 plants...you heard me right: 270 plants!!! It's nice to walk around outside and play with plants all day at school, who knew school could be fun. Too bad they make you take other not so fun things like math and English and such.

Well anyway: since part of my job is to take pictures, most of which are for me to study off of and not very impressive, there are some good ones once in awhile. Also I have learned that I have a serious issue with taking like 90% of my pictures vertically. Not actually sure if this is a problem but it does seem a little unbalanced. It's totally not my fault though because plants like to be photographed vertically.

Mentha x piperita 'Chocolate Mint'

Chocolate Mint

This is what happens as I walk around in the world: I look at plants and name them in my head....no seriously, not joking.

Ginkgo biloba 'Autumn Gold'

Maidenhair Tree

Kind of funny that the first two pictures I chose are horizontal after I made such a big deal out of it; whatever.

Thymus pseudolanuginosus

Woolly Thyme

I just like to show off my big words so there will be some not so cool pictures with some really cool names. READ THE NAMES!

Acer palmatum 'Dissectum'

Laceleaf Japanese Maple

I love these trees...mmm

Betula pendula

European White Birch

Too bad you can see human shadown on the ground. :(

Callistemon citrinus

Lemon Bottlebrush

Cercis occidentalis

Western Redbud

Go natives!!!

Come on, even you know this one!

Hydrangea macrophylla

Garden Hydrangea

Metasequoia glyptostroboides

Dawn Redwood

Not much of a picture but it's one of the best names. It has quite a ring to it don't you think?

Parthenocissus tricuspidata

Boston Ivy

Iconic fall plant for sure.

Picea pungens glauca

Colorado Blue Spruce

That's right, I have to ID like a million different kinds of pines and junipers and a bunch of things that look the same. Ok not the same but only because my trained eyes know what to look for. : |

Fraxinus angustifolia oxycarpa 'Raywood'

Raywood Ash

Oh yeah and until about two weeks ago we also had to be able to differentiate about 20 different kinds of sticks. That's right: sticks without leaves or anything else to speak of. Glad spring is in full swing, no more sticks. :)

OMG, this is one of my favorite pictures and names mainly because the name is so long for something so simple.

Wait for it...

wait for it...

Solenostemon scutellarioides

Coleus

Fun huh.

Wisteria sinensis

Chinese Wisteria

Ok, the leaves belong to something else, but the flowers are Wisteria for sure.

Hosta

...

Yeah, that's it. I haven't learned this one yet so it's just Hosta. A freshly rained on Hosta too.

mmm...rain

And while not listening to the instructor blab forever (that's another story) I looked around and appreciated the freshly washed outdoor surroundings. Thank goodness the rain took a long enough break this afternoon for us to do our plant walk out to the creek.

That's me...off in lala land.

Well congratulations, you made it to the end. Twenty pictures later I bid you adeiu.

Plant Babies!

It's that time of year again. Seedlings, constant misting, moving trays, checking trays, turning on lights, turning off lights, running the dryer on particularly cold nights...and the list goes on and on. It is a labor of love that's for sure. However, it's totally worth it once all the little seeds start turning into little seedlings and then into little plants and eventually they are all grown and ready to go outside or off to their new homes.

This was weeks ago, things are much bigger now. Before you know it transplanting will begin. If this all seems a little familiar it is because this all happened last year too.

Oh look, here are the same seedling as above, just a little more recently.

And here are some of the Zinnias...do you really even need to encourage these things to grow?

And the coolest so far, the Moon Vines. I will have to take some more recent pictures since they have grown so much in the last week.

Don't you think the one below looks like one of those plants that always kills you just as you are jumping over a pipe in Mario Bros?

Well until I have another photo session in the terribly fluorescent lit garage, this is all I have.

Why hello there!

So lets just forget about New Year's resolutions, I'm just going to do what I do best: whatever I feel like doing. Apparently after leaving town for almost three weeks I lost steam on my goals. You know what they say: life is what happens while your busy planning. So no more planning. Just life. You know that thing that happens to you when you're trying to get stuff done. Anyway, on to the story telling!

New York was amazing as usual. Cold, wintry and a place unlike any other. I was in a bit of a snow storm which was cool when I was in my hotel room, but not so cool once I had to brave the aftermath the next morning. Of course it was the day that I had planned on taking a day trip to the National Museum of Natural History. Oh yeah, and the day that I had to move from the hotel I was staying at to another hotel a couple of blocks away where I would be staying for the remainder of my stay.

Ha ha! Business people trudging through the snow storm remains. Nice view from my hotel window: I know. It was the best I could do. Don't worry though, I myself had some snowy adventures not too long after I was pitying these poor souls.

What none of my pictures can convey to you is the amount of slush that you had to wade through to get from one sidewalk to the other. The sidewalk appears street level, but that is because the melty slushy snow is up to the top of the curb...a fact I learned the hard way when I didn't realize how deep it was as I crossed my first street of the morning.

Snow, snow and more snow. There's just nowhere for it all to go when it is trapped in the city. It is pushed into human size piles along the sides of the road where it sat the whole time I was in the city. I wish I could really show you what it was like, but it is just something you have to walk through yourself to understand it.

Making a long story short...(well not really) taking a taxi to my new hotel to check in and then to the museum. The streets were so bad that I could get a ride for $100. Yeah right. So I walked. I checked in sans suitcase (I'll explain this later :) and got instructions from the concierge on how to take the subway to the museum and then how to get back at the end of the day.

I had my map, I had my directions and I had gumption! I was on a mission!

Did I mention that by this time I had realized that Converse were NOT even close to proper snow attire: well I realized this very quickly. Before I had even made it to the new hotel my feet were soaked and freezing cold. But, there was no way I was going to change my plans. I was going to the museum if it was the last thing I did.

In a moment of desperation on my way to Columbus Circle subway station I passed what must have been the most expensive shoe store on the street. I walked in, held my foot in the air and said to the salesman greeting me "This is NOT working. I hope you sell socks too."

At this point I am sure he was laughing at me in his head making some comment about the blonde girl who is obviously not from here.

Yay! New boots. Let's just say they served their purpose. They are a bit reminiscent of good old Saint Nick's boots: black and shiny complete with buckle. They were the cheapest in store, which isn't saying much because they were still $40, but lets move on.

Just in case you didn't know, Columbus Circle station is on the corner of Central Park. Talk about major photo opportunity! Central Park, fresh snow, new boots...I could have spent all day there.

Basically it was really amazing. I wish I could say that these pictures capture the feeling but they don't.

Anyway, I made it to the appropriate subway station.

And after some asking around about how to get a subway ticket and asking numerous times what train I was supposed to get on I finally made it to the right place.



It was pretty unmistakable that I had indeed made it to the stop for the museum.

So the dinosaurs led the way out to the street and I spent the next four or so hours roaming the 4 stories at will. Everything was amazing and I took about a million pictures. I got to go in the butterfly conservatory with all the butterflies fluttering around which was pretty cool.

There were lots of butterfly specimens too which is a little gruesome since they are all dead and impaled with little needles, but still beautiful to look at. :)

Well I am getting tired of the whole NY story and there is too much to tell and too many pictures. I left the museum, made it back to my stop on the subway train, went to the hotel to pick up my bags and transport them to the new hotel and happily drug said suitcase through foot deep snow slush as fast as I could to prevent the water from soaking all of my clothes. I was on such a mission to get to my hotel that in fact I went a block too far and then had to go back, but I got there in one piece and although the suitcase was wet I am glad to say that nothing inside was.

Okay, I think that's it for now. I may have forgotten something since I wrote this over an entire week but if you hung on this long congratulations: you get a brownie button.