Planting Time

I planted my peas the two Saturdays ago, and this past Saturday night we were socked not with one inch, but 7 inches of snow! My poor peas. I imagine I won't be hearing from them, and will have to replant them again soon.

On a cheerier note, today is the day that I will be starting the first of my indoor seeds. First off will be a large tray of purple basil. Personally I don't think a person can ever have too much basil, but most of these basil seedlings are not for me - they will be sold at a rummage sale I will be hosting on behalf of my church to raise funds for Operation Christmas Child. I have sold purple basil for the past few years (except the year we had that freak hail storm) and have developed a small following of customers who come back yearly looking for my purple basil.

Other plants that I always seem to have an abundance of in my gardens that sell well at our rummage sale include ostrich ferns (shoots are always coming up where I don't want them), tarragon and oregano divisions, mint, sedums (so easy to root in soil) and cilantro seedlings that seems to come up everywhere in my garden.

Terra Garden has also recommended selling Christmas Cactus cuttings which is a great idea I hadn't thought of. I usually trim my Christmas Cactus right about now, so I'm hoping that the cuttings will have rooted by the time of our rummage sale in mid May.

A quick note:
For those of you who have been patiently waiting, the Microfleur Max microwave flower presses that have been on back order have finally been shipped from Australia. Because of the flooding they experienced earlier this year, they had to order all new boxes for the presses, but thankfully they are finally on their way.

Yellow Crocus Spring Greeting

12" X 12"
"Yellow Crocus Spring Greeting"
Pressed flowers, handmade paper
$95.00

Over the weekend spring was briefly here in southern Wisconsin, and in a happy frenzy I planted my super sugar snap peas as well as my snow peas. My neighbors said it was way to early, but Martha Stewart always says to get them in around St. Patrick's Day. She should know. And, while I was at it, I also planted a few kohlrabi, some beets, chard, and lettuce. It was probably too early for all of the latter, but it was so much fun for my soul.

Today we are back to that long "in between" time - not quite spring, not quite winter. It's a perfect day to post my yellow crocus creation, and try to think thoughts of spring coming, and staying.

Faith via iGoogle

A few weeks ago I blogged about "Faith via ipod", and today it's iGoogle's turn. As you probably know, igoogle is a customizable personal web "home page." With iGoogle, users can select amazing themes for their Google homepages, as well as tons of different "gadgets" ranging from news items, calendars, "to-do" lists, daily comics, and on and on. The list almost seems endless.

My favorite igoogle toy at the moment is the "Verse-a-Week-Memorization" gadget. My kids are encouraged to memorize Bible verses each week in Sunday school, and when they asked me what verses I'd been memorizing I felt a bit hypocritical, since I had yet to really work that into my schedule.

But now with this gadget it's become a breeze. I can choose which verse to memorize, and each day a portion of the verse disappears. Every time I'm at my home page, which on most days is many, many times throughout the day, I can quickly glance at my verse. By the end of each week, the entire verse is hidden, and I have memorized it. My screen shot is a bit blurry, but you can see my verse box in the upper left hand corner, with a number of words already hidden.

Of course, the key to retaining what we memorize is to review what we've committed to memory of a regular basis. What I need now is for some brilliant web geek to come up with a gadget to help me keep track of and review all the verses I've memorized!

Aerogarden update 2

My 8 year old actually took this picture several weeks ago, so my current Aerogarden crop is even more lush than this. The small basil on the right has now caught up to the others.

As you can see, the basil in the center definitely needs a trim! In fact, every other day I need to perform a good trim. Even though I have 4 basil plants (along with mint, dill, and thyme) I usually only have enough basil leaves for a small batch of pesto, so I usually use my basil trimmings to make fresh bruschetta, which is heavenly on my homemade 10 grain sour dough bread. Never made it before? This bruschetta recipe is a good starting point, but I also add some finely chopped onion if I have it on hand.