Every once in a while, when I have a spare moment and am scrolling a feed, I find myself getting a chuckle or two out of memes or posts that talk about how there will be signs someone won the lottery and such. I'm sure you know what type of post I am talking about. Or maybe not, but as I walked by the dishwasher this morning and saw the small pile of eggs I had brought in from the hens, my face lit up with a little bemused grin, I'm so fancy and elitist now, you know, since I have eggs laying around.
There will be signs indeed...
Anyway, bit of silly mirth aside, this morning is my one day off, and since I am finally feeling a bit less like decomposing pond scum, I decided to tend to a bit of homesteading garden chores. Inside ones that it. I currently have peppers, onions, and a couple different types of flower starts growing in my improvised greenhouse cart. The rest of my plants won't be started until I get home from Western Regionals in Las Vegas. (I still can't believe that we leave for that skeet, trap, and sporting clays extravaganza in ten days, but I think I lost a couple weeks in a vat of snot).
Most of the plants I am tending to I have grown before, except one new and notable edition, the snapdragons. Now, if I wanted a few snapdragons over the past few years, I would just buy some plants. Yes, that probably sounds lazy and indulgent, but once you have looked at snapdragon seed, you might understand why I did such a thing.
Talk about dust!
The snapdragon seeds are the size of a needle tip, they are little dust mites of smallness. They also require specific germination conditions, super specific. Well, this past fall on Black Friday, I scored a smoking deal on some seed starting heat mats, so I really had no excuse to not try starting more challenging cultivars like snaps.
So, I went to the $1 store, got a 9X13 with a plastic lid, put some starting mix in it, broadcast my little snaps, watered thoroughly, and placed the tray on the heat mat.
And yes, now I am the proud garden parent of a bunch of baby snapdragon seedlings. They are just too tiny! I can't believe how small they are!
Can you tell I am excited about them? Just a little bit!
I removed the heating mats from my snaps and the strawflowers this morning. I am more than pleased with that purchase and I think I will be throwing them under my tomato seeds when I sprout them. What I really need to do though, is get the rest of the way healed up because my greenhouse desperately needs its remodeling job done. My little plant friends are going to outgrow their cobbled together starting greenhouse cart quick-fast and in a hurry.
I swear, there's always something to do around here.
But I am not complaining, I love homesteading, and just as the rhubarb is peeking out of the ground, looking equally parts alluring and slightly otherworldly, so am I coming back around to the land of the living and task completing.
It's been one heck of a winter for sure.
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's most likely rather bemused by it all, much like the author, iPhone
