My FarmVille: Week 11

Lots of growth in the last week. A couple of the tiny marigold plants have miniature blossoms on them:

The squash and cucumber pre-sprouts I put in the ground earlier in the week are coming up. Hello, butternut squash!

Today, I cleared out the bed beside the garage, formed a hill and furrow and put in the sweet potato roots.

Warmer weather is on the way and with it should come some explosive growth. See you next week!

Glorious Spring Weekend

We got some great weather this weekend, so we got to spend a lot of time enjoying the backyard and taking our weekend visitors around to some of our favorite places in Pittsburgh.

Jen (pictured below) flew in for the weekend, and Amy dropped by Saturday afternoon, so we enjoyed a lovely afternoon of sun basking in our rapidly growing garden, and a walk down Murray Ave for lunch and chocolates. Later that evening we enjoyed a sushi feast at Sakura on Forbes.

Sunday we took Jen around our standard Pittsburgh tour for first-time visitors. Above, Jen is enjoying the view of downtown from Mt. Washington. We stopped at Market Square (which is unfortunately in construction disarray), and toured Phipps Conservatory after lunch at the cafe.

The gargoyle exhibit made it that much more amusing.

More pics here.

Foot sore and feeling peckish, we decided to try a new-to-us ice cream shop in Shadyside called Oh Yeah! which features mix-ins and vegan soy creams. details are on the menu:

Our glorious weekend ended with dinner at the Silk Elephant and the best sleep I've had in awhile.

My FarmVille: Week 10

Wow! Time sure does fly when you're busy, and I have been very very busy in the yard the last 2 weeks.

I bought a whole bunch of plants from the May Market at Phipps last Friday, and they've all gone into the ground today, hence the row cover shields protecting them from the scalding sun (although there's not a lot of that today). Also, my impatiens and basil plants arrived from Burpee on Monday, so those went into the ground as well.

Here's the rundown on what's going in and popping up...

Transplants:
Little Fingers dark purple Asian eggplant (Garden Dreams)
Snowy white Asian eggplant (Garden Dreams)
San Marzano red paste tomato (Garden Dreams)
Supersweet 100 red cherry tomato (Garden Dreams)
Gourmet Orange sweet bell pepper (Garden Dreams)
California Wonder sweet red bell pepper (Garden Dreams)
Italia red ethnic sweet pepper (Garden Dreams) (got this one last year and it was the most productive pepper I planted)
Rosemary (upright habit) (Blackberry Meadows)
Munsted lavender (Blackberry Meadows)
Lemon basil (2) (Blackberry Meadows)
Thai basil (2) (Blackberry Meadows)
Pesto perpetuo basil (3) (Burpee)
Hot Mix impatiens (12) (Burpee)

Seeds coming up:
I've seen 2/6 corn (planted 2 weeks ago) and 3/8 marigolds sprout out of several seeds (including pickling cucumbers, zucchini, and pole beans) I sewed over the last 2 weeks. Kinda disappointing, but the ground may still be too cold for them to germinate, so I'm starting some more seeds indoors (the cucs sprouted inside in ONE day, so I know those seeds are good).

On the other hand, last Friday I planted a large number of sunflower seeds (Burpee sunflower forest mix) on the south side of the garage and in the crappy sloped area by the fence, and those are coming up really fast.

I also planted some more spinach and lettuce in the shady corner by the garage (where you can see the wire cages protecting the seeds from birds). I figured I better get those going before it gets warm again or germination might be a problem (spinach does not like heat).

The garden is almost fully planted now. There are two more spaces each for summer squash and butternut squash, a straw covered sweet potato patch (still waiting for my bare-roots from Burpee--grrrrr), and a pumpkin patch that are not yet planted. As soon as the yellow squash, pumpkin, and butternut squash seeds sprout in their little plastic bags in the net day or two, they'll go into the ground. I also have one more space for a climbing plant on the trellis, maybe another tomato (can one have too many)?