carrot sprouts!

I have carrots!!!

And here is the bread I baked yesterday!  Yum!  :)

bonus video!

Here is a video I shot on the one day it snowed in Asheville this year of the kitties going berserk over another bird.  Elly chitters in the first part of this one - and at the end, the bird flies right up to the camera!

sprouts!

Things are growing!  The weather got a little colder this weekend, but I've been keeping an eye on it and so far we haven't gone below 45 at night.  And during the day it's been in the 70's, though today was colder.  Anyway, I have stuff growing!  No sign of the carrots yet, but my beets and lettuce mix are sprouting!

Tiny lettuce leaves -

I also have beet sprouts -

I am still waiting on carrots; I think I may have planted them too deep but I'll give them another week or so to see.  I am planning on going to Lowe's again in April and picking up another container for my cucumbers and a big one for tomatoes and then going to buy a tomato plant or two.

Tonight I baked bread for the first time - I used a recipe I found here that I dug up via Pinterest.  I took before photos with the full intention of blogging about it, but when it came out of the oven I was so excited that I dug in immediately and didn't take any "after" shots!   I also made a variation on a lentil soup recipe I also found via Pinterest (here) which is a "mushroom and lentil" soup but mine was really more a potato and lentil soup.  I didn't have any mushrooms nor any red wine (sob!) so basically I just put in potatoes instead and also omitted the tomatoes, swiss chard, and onion and used a veggie stock as a base vs. just water.  Yeah, so maybe I just used the recipe as a starting point.  :P  It came out really good, I'm not sure if it was the veggie stock, the dill, or the bay leaves?  I will probably make this again this summer in another attempt to like swiss chard.  I got a lot of it in my CSA box last year, and I dunno what I was doing wrong but it never came out well.  It always tasted bitter and gross.  So maybe if I throw it in some soup with some mushrooms it will redeem itself.  Mushrooms redeem anything, in my opinion.

I have been hoping to blog more than once a week, but I am still in rehearsal for As You Like It and often that and work is about all I can get done Monday-Friday.  I have more down time between work and rehearsal for this show (rehearsal doesn't start until 7, most of my previous shows have been at 6:30) but I use the down time to cook dinner/eat dinner/feed cats/knit and then I don't get home until after 10 pm.  I am about three-fourths done with my second sock ever, so soon I will have a matching pair!  But after As You Like It opens, I have no shows lined up until Richard II starts rehearsal sometime in July, so maybe there will be more-than-weekly blog entries in May and June!  :)

here we go!

So I know it's been a while since my last post.  There wasn't much going on in the garden yet, and I have been very busy doing a couple different shows.  Currently I'm working on As You Like It, which opens in April, but it's only four nights a week so it's less stressful than Chicago was.  :)

Anyway - I bought stuff for the garden today!  I went over to Lowe's and picked up two self-watering containers for my beets and my carrots, and then one long skinny one for my lettuce.  I also got some bags of potting soil mix.  They had very few vegetables and herbs, and the #1 herb I require is catnip, so off I went over to Jesse Israel and Sons over at the Farmer's Market.  There I picked up two small-ish catnip plants and a good looking rosemary.  I also really want some basil, but they didn't have any yet.  I know I'm early for this stuff, but it's been so warm and I have friends in WNC who are already planting outside and have more experience than I do, so I figured what the heck.

I came home and first I planted my catnip and rosemary.  I reused pots I had previously for these two, both because it was cheaper and because herbs do better in non-self watering pots.  The plan is to have a huge thing of catnip for the kitties.  Usually I buy catnip every year and Lando especially gets used to getting fresh catnip whenever I go out onto the porch.  Maybe since I've actually potted it this year, it will grow and I'll get to keep it over the winter.

Here is my catnip and rosemary -

Then I put potting soil in my three new containers and planted my seeds for the beets, carrots, and lettuce.  I also have cucumber seeds but everything I've read said to wait on those, so I'm holding back for now.  I hope I can get the cucumber vines to trellis up the railing, which I think would be cool.  I also want to buy a tomato plant and a big self-watering pot for the tomato plant, but I'm waiting on that one too.  I *also* really want to get like a big barrel or something and try some potatoes.  :)  But maybe next year.  I dunno.

Here's my seeds, all planted and ready to grow!

So  yeah!  I will keep an eye on things and let everyone know how it is going!  And then maybe in April I'll plant my cucumbers and pick up a tomato plant.  I'll start getting my weekly CSA in May, I got an email the other day from the farm that said they had started planting too, so here we go!

the tufted titmouse visitor

So I just have one regular customer at my birdfeeder - a tufted titmouse.  He came by over the weekend and I managed to snap a great photo.

Isn't he so cute?  I also filmed a short video of the cats staring raptly at the birdie.  No commentary on this one because I didn't want to disturb the cats in case they started chittering (sadly, they didn't).  Murphy is chilling on the cat bed, but the other three are glued to the window.  You can see the bird in the branches but unfortunately he never flies over to the birdfeeder.

I've seen  a few chickadees but mostly it's just the tufted titmouse.  He likes to come and grab sunflower seeds and fly back to the branch and eat them.  Not one to hang around much.  Still, so cute!

for the birds

It's been quiet around here, I know.  I've been really busy, still working full time and I'm currently in rehearsal for Chicago (which opens in February).  Plus I can't garden yet, so not much to talk about there.

But - I did order a clear plastic birdfeeder from Amazon for less than $10.  Here it is, installed on my porch window -

I don't have much in the way of visitors yet, but I did notice after the first week that the birds are consistently stealing the sunflower seeds.  So at the grocery store yesterday I picked up a whole bag of sunflower seeds for birds.  We shall see if the higher sunflower content brings more birdies.  :)

I also ordered a little thing off Etsy - it's a suet feeder stuffed with alpaca fiber.  So the birds can grab little bits of alpaca fluff and line their nests with it.  It's also a great way for me to use yarn and fiber scraps without just throwing them away.  It's hanging on the wall next to the door.

I wanted to attract birds for two reasons - one, the cats go nuts over them.  :)  I hope to someday get a video of Elly or Murphy doing their chittering thing they do when they see a bird.  Sometimes I feel guilty for keeping 4 cats in a 600 square foot condo, so I like to give them lots of toys and distractions.

I also wanted birds on my balcony because it's sort of a dead area in my house as far as feng shui goes.  I think the garden will help with this too.  If you looked at a floorplan of my condo, the bedroom wall actually sticks out further than the living room wall, making the porch still part of the floorplan.  But because I never use it, it's kind of a dead area.  And unfortunately, it's in the relationship area of my house.  So, in theory if I get some plants growing and some birdies visiting it'll get the energy going.  Or something.  :)

buying seeds!

So I got a tip that Home Depot carries seeds sooner than Lowe's.  This weekend I went over there and picked up some seeds!

First of all, my gardening book arrived.

I picked this up from Barnes & Noble online since I had a gift certificate from Christmas.  I picked this one because a) it was focused on vegetables (vs. flowers) and b) it was about growing them in containers (vs. in the ground).

So, after reading the book I made my list of what I want to try growing.  The main thing is I can either grow from seed, or I can buy already started plants and transplant them to the porch.  But starting inside and then transplanting is not an option.  I have four overly curious cats who will devour anything green they find, and nowhere in my small condo to keep baby plants that they would be both safe from kitties and also get sunlight.

Here's my haul from Home Depot -

The beets were a given.  The carrots I got are shorter and fatter so hopefully will be good for a container.  The mesculin is a lettuce mix (I looked at a few before choosing this one - it has some kale mixed in there too, which I liked).  The cucumbers were sort of an impulse thing.  Apparently cucumbers do better if they have a trellis to grow on.  Well, I don't have a trellis but the walls of my condo balcony are this great metal grate stuff that I think would be easy to climb.

So we'll do these, and then I am also planning on buying some tomato plants and also some herbs.  I have tried growing basil before but was lazy about it and never actually repotted it, so it usually died pretty quickly.  Now I will have one herb pot with basil, dill, and maybe something else that I'll buy, and another one with catnip.  Because obviously catnip is required in my garden.  :)

Now the shift goes to containers.  The book I bought is really big on self-watering containers, but looking through inventory at Lowe's and Home Depot didn't reveal any of these.  I may just go with regular pots and be religious about watering them.  The second part of that is figuring out how many containers I need and how deep they need to be.  I figure I'll do two long skinny ones, one for the cucumbers and one for the lettuce.  Everything else will be in regular pots.

I also need to figure out frost dates and when I need to start planting.  Knowing my busy schedule, I will have to set aside time for it so I want to know way ahead of time so I can fit it in.