Forecast: Almost warm enough. Maybe.

After a warm spot in the weather here (growing zone 7/Memphis, Tennessee, to be exact), it's gotten cold out again. Right as I was planning and replanning the best spots for everything -- the flowers, fruit, and herb garden to come. But I've gotten a little extension from the ever-changing weather around here. It's too cold to put out that tomato plant I brought back from Jackson. After searching around for good varieties for containers, I chose the Husky Cherry Red. Still, it sounds like a great wrestler name to me. So it deserves a chance to live by waiting to plant it in a few days, when it's finally warmer.

I've also chosen a few packets of seeds to plant around in containers -- I'll start with Heavenly Blue Morning Glory. Morning Glories always make me happy because the seeds enjoy a warm soak overnight, and then they like being thrown around like Jack's beans for the magic beanstalk. They don't tend to be choosy -- they'll come up in surprising places without much attention. So I'll soak those tonight and start by planting some around in the barrel of ivy left behind, and I'll even throw some off the balcony just to see if any make it around the ground floor apartments.

Guerrilla gardening is fun. So in that case, I'll throw some around the chain link fence around the back of the apartment, too.

Two other flowers I've chosen for The Yarden are a packet of Columbine (Harlequin Mix) seeds and Alysuum (Snow Crystals) seeds. After sitting out on the porch last week during the warm spell, I sketched and thought and re-sketched until I really just took all the fun out of where I can plant these, light-wise and spatially, with that blasted, two-ton, immovable half barrel full of ivy out there from the late 1980s. But I am just going to start somewhere, just like anything else, to see where it grows.

Another cool seed I found that looks cool is Lunaria (Honesty, Money Plant). I have no idea how to grow it, but it says it likes partial shade like I have here, so why not. It looks like a bouquet of white butterfly wings on the seed packet, so why not.

Maybe the most important growing experiment of the year will be seeing if I can grow a tiny, essential herb garden for my cooking addiction around here. I have had a huge success with growing basil in containers and in indirect light, so I picked up some Lemon Basil seeds. I've also got Italian Parsley and Chive seeds to try. It'll be interesting to see what grows (besides the immovable ivy) in this indirect light/partial shade environment.

That's all for now. Off to soak some Morning Glory seeds, and I'll be back soon to plant my wrestling tomato plant.

Time for the new Yarden.

If nothing else, let it be known that I am great at yardwork. If you need weeds pulled, bushes trimmed, grass mowed...well, okay, so I've only mowed a yard once. But if you need detail work done, I'm good, and I don't mind getting sweaty as long as you have something frozen and fruity for me to sip afterward in a bubblebath.

But when it comes to creating a Yarden from a whole lot of nothing, that's pretty new to me. Looking back on it all, I've always had a yard around to dig in. I'm fairly decent with a windowsill and a master at office-plants-turned-houseplants. But don't let me near an orchid, or it's curtains. Sure, I'm better at planting bulbs in a yard than watering plants on a porch. But as usual, I'm always up for a challenge.




I've done a quick research on this apartment complex I've moved into, and turns out it was built in the early 1920's. The architecture and carved details are still beautiful after all these years. It looks like it was bought and partially restored in about 1983. It also looks like someone planted four Bradford pear trees in the courtyard that are the biggest ones I've ever seen. Makes me wonder what makes this piece of land here so fertile or potent to grow trees like that to the size of these.

Somewhere along the 80's, someone dragged this half of an oak barrel up here and started a plant of standard English ivy in it. It's grown up the wall once, and through the railing, into the gutters. Fine with me. In fact, it helped me decide which apartment to choose of the two I looked at here. I stuck one of my iron plant cages in it, swirled in a strand of Christmas lights, and called it *whimsical garden art.*

It's a low-light condition up here on the second floor, but it's more light than the downstairs porch. So let's see what happens this year if I try a grape tomato plant in one of my big pots.

As far as tomatoes go, I cannot get anything special, exotic, or heirloom to grow in a container yet. I've brought home beautiful and delicate, little green hand-picked hopefuls and wilted them silly within a month. So, before the the American Society for Cruelty to Heirloom Tomato Plants heard about me, I decided to be kind and start smaller.

I usually start with a Bonnie's tomato plant because they are easy to find at a local Lowe's which works out great for my level of experience and patience hauling newly-purchased plants up two-flights of stairs; and in the past few years that I've grown tomatoes in containers, and used Bonnie plants, they've gone wild, producing tall. toppling plants that needed staking with big handfuls of grape tomatoes, without any extra effort from me. Maybe I'm just lucky and maybe tomato plants thrive best on the smell of fear.

Funny thing is, I'm not even crazy about tomatoes. But for some reason, I love trying to grow them. It's got to be the Southern woman in me. It's alright if you just don't tell anyone until I'm good at it. One day.

Another thing I like about choosing tomato plants is reading the variety names.


To me, they all sound like either wrestlers, exotic dancers, or superheros.



Tell me that's not fun.

So anyway, this weekend I'll be driving home for a doctor's appointment and to visit my mom. That woman could grow ferns in a snowstorm. She's one of the reasons I even started this blog last year, helping her clear out her own yard and start it all over again for another season. So as far as planning goes, I'll be looking to her for suggestions, and I'll haul them back to Memphis with me and get started.

I'm not sure she'd like the whimsical Christmas garden lights, but hey -- you've gotta start somewhere.

Can you believe it?

March, and it snows.



The new porch Yarden is covered in snow today.



But soon, I'll crank it all back up with potted plants.
This will be my first attempt in awhile at container gardening.
Just because you don't have a yard
doesn't mean you can't have a Yarden.
Container planting is another challenge in itself
which we'll get into this Spring and Summer.


And what's the best thing about porch Yardens?
No weeding.

I'm excited already.

Cheers to February 2008, and happy late Ground Hog's Day.

If I thought about it much, I'd realize that I'm a lot like a groundhog - fuzzy, warm, brunette, and mostly keeping to myself. But the best part of being a groundhog is that I don't think about being a groundhog until February.

Something about the month of February makes me stick my head out of my wintery, gray, groundhoggy hole and poke around outside for my shadow. Yeah, I see my shadow, but I come outside anyway. Something grinds around the inner-workings of February that feels a lot like new growth, sprouting from the deep,dark to meet the light. I'm not sure what it is. But every year, it makes me start over, and I force bulbs.

So I'm forcing paperwhites in the sunniest spot in the kitchen window; but this year, I'm using a little booze to keep them from growing too leggy. No, really. A little alcohol in the water stunts their growth and keeps them from growing lanky and top-heavy. So, no flopping over this year (for the bulbs, at least). A little vodka water for the paperwhites, a little vodka cosmopolitan for me.

How to Stunt Paperwhites with Alcohol

1. Pot your paperwhites in stones and water, as you normally would.
2. Once the roots begin growing and the green shoot on top reaches about 1-2", pour off the existing water.
3. Replace the water with a solution of 4 - 6% alcohol...
4. Continue to use the alcohol solution for future watering.

Source: gardening.about.com.