Winter in Photoscape

Here are some winter pictures I took at the beginning of December that I played around with in photoscape. Filters include noise, water brush, water color pencil, pencil, impressionistic, antique, and vignette. I included the original pictures for comparison.

Winter Sowing

I finally started this year's winter sowing on March 6th. We won't discuss last year's crop, except to say that it got away from me. I planted most of the vegetables, which germinated pretty well, but then I mulched the patch with dried grass clippings, a HUGE mistake. I blinked twice and the whole patch (in front of the red shed) had weeds about 3 feet tall!!! I never did finish planting the flowers and today I dumped what was left of last year's efforts onto the red shed patch, which I managed to get mostly cleared before the snow came. This year, other than the strawberries and rhubarb, I think I'm going to stick with annuals in that patch.

In an effort to remind myself why I bother, I looked at some pictures from 2008, when I had some success. That's also when a lot of what I winter sowed and planted in 2007 filled in and looked wonderful.

Also a few years ago, I made planting areas on both sides of the paddock fence using the lasagna method. They got completely out of control also last summer, so this year, hopefully, I'm going to abandon the south patch, transplant anything worth saving (not much - some tired lavender and a sedum) and focus my efforts on the north patch. That side is where Little Lady, The Baby, Cammie, and Little Man are buried, marked by bowling balls, so I hope to tidy the whole thing up and make it look good this year.

Hooray for Spring and second (and third) chances!!!

More Winter Sowing

Here's the list of seeds sown in 2009 so far:

Swiss Chard
Radishes
Brussel Sprouts
Fennel
Kohl Rabi
Cockscomb
Four O'clocks
Shasta Daisy
Zinnias (2 varieties)
Calendulas (3 varieties)
Verbena
Gaillardia
Tomatoes
Snapdragons
Morning Glories
Scabiosa
Celosia
Mimulus

I also moved everything to the north end of the deck and made a little corral out of landscape timbers. I got some flats out of the shed and have grouped the containers into flats. That should make life a lot easier in the spring. In the past I've just put them on the table in a jumbled mess and spent a lot of time pawing through things trying to find all of one kind of plant. The only thing I'll have to think about is providing some shade later in the spring, unless I actually get my act together and get them planted before Memorial Day. (I can dream - can't I???)

Winter Sowing

Here's the crop so far. Yesterday the seeds I ordered from Value Seeds showed up, so I have lots more sowing to do in the next few weeks.

Experiments

A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday, when it was ninety degrees and 100% humidity, I spent a delightful half hour or so wandering around the yard playing with the macro button on my digital camera. The results were better than my wildest expectations! Plus, many of the flowers I photographed were the result of last year's winter sowing experiments. If I get ambitious I will write about winter sowing, but meanwhile, if you are curious, check out www.wintersown.org. The method appeals to my lazy and cheap nature, and the results were well worth the time I invested. Also, the beds along each side of the paddock fence were created using the lasagne method. What a time (and back!) saver. I sure wish I'd heard of it years ago. Anyhow, put very briefly, it is a method of creating a garden by laying down a barrier (in this case, 10 sheets of newspaper) right on top of existing lawn, coverin that with layers of soil and mulch, then planting. Voila!!! I now have sixty feet of garden, about 3 or 4 feet wide, running down both the north and south sides of our paddock fence. I did the north side 3 years ago and the south side last summer. It sure beats digging and beating soil out of sod clumps. Ideally there would be several layers each of soil, compost, and mulch, but even my scaled down version worked just fine.