Skip to main content

Out of this World

Sometimes plants amaze me. Aside from radishes, which seem to love our climate year-round, the cosmic carrots grown from seed that Maria kindly sent to me are hardly little guys. All of the plants that grew survived three nights of hard freezes last month, as well as resisted all the little bugs and slugs that damaged some of our other veggies. We are definitely growing them again.

Our new lemon tree is flowering for the fourth time since we planted it. It now has three generations of lemons growing on it in different stages of development. We lost some little lemons during the freezes, but it promptly budded and flowered again in the days that followed. I've never seen a tree more determined to thrive.

Another stubborn survivor in the decorative garden is this croton plant, which we assumed had died once before during a previous winter freeze. To our surprise it grew back the next spring. This time around my guy covered it during the long stretch of freezes, and it seems fine.

Labels:

Comments

Maria Zannini said…
I went to see if I still had more of the cosmic carrot seeds but I'm out and I already finished ordering for the year. But Baker Creek Seeds has them. https://www.rareseeds.com/carrot-cosmic-purple

Love the butterfly on your tree, though she's likely laying eggs to pupate. They do some damage when they emerge but usually it's tolerable.
February 5, 2023 at 8:54 AM
nightsmusic said…
That's a Monarch. She's just going for the nectar in those flowers. She only lays eggs on milkweed. Nothing else. That's all the larva eat. I am a Monarch waystation :) I've taken hundreds now from hatchlings to butterfly since they're endangered. I have a few areas that are just milkweed beds for them and then tons of flowers that the butterflies nectar on.

Everything here is brown. Everything. We had three mornings this week of zero degree overnight temps that never got over ten degrees during the day. I don't raise anything that I have to cover because of that. :/
February 6, 2023 at 3:52 AM
Maria Zannini said…
You're right, nightmusic. I was thinking of the orangedog caterpillar that turns into the giant swallowtail. Startled the bejeebers out of me the first time I saw it. It has the head of a snake with the body broken off.
February 6, 2023 at 5:37 AM
nightsmusic said…
I haven't seen one of those up close because we have very few citrus trees here, but we do get the butterflies. They're gorgeous! I get a lot of cecropia moth caterpillars because I have two river birch and a paper birch and that's their favorite munchie! Those are the size of my thumb or bigger, but they're so pretty and colorful. And I get a lot of black swallowtail. I've overwintered the cocoons in the garage and they hatch in the spring. It's always such a miracle to me considering the temps we get.
February 6, 2023 at 5:47 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.
Post a Comment
Read more

Goodwill Gamble #2 Arrives

My second Goodwill gamble arrived; this is one I paid ten bucks for last month. Just inside the lid was a big roll of plastic mesh that I think is for latchhook work. In the auction listing it looked like fabric to me, so that was unexpected. Someone at the seller's end was nice enough to put a note on this pinned fabric. I'll put on my gloves before I take it out to inspect it. The embroidered green fabric turned out to be 1-1/2 yards of sequinned and three-dimensional designer fabric. I'll guess this cost somewhere between $20.00 to $30.00 a yard, and it's in pristine condition. But here's a shot of everything in the lot, which is mostly crafty odds and ends with a small amount of cotton fabrics, a large amount of synethetic fabrics, and some other surprises. The original owner of these was probably a Catholic school teacher; these beads, crosses and medallions are the kind of rosary kits for kids to make at Sunday school or Bible camp (and s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...
Post a Comment
Read more