Greenhouse Gardening

Previously, on Cat Patches:

Can you tell I've been watching too much TV? Nowadays the kitties are only allowed out when we're out with them. That means it's generally around 10:00 a.m. before they're set free. Prior to that is snuggle time. Sadie likes being cocooned in the flannel quilt on my lap.

Smitty prefers his kitty pole where he considers his options for what he can kill once he's on the loose.

While he was pondering the most promising prey (awesome alliteration), I was hand-stitching the binding on the final pay-it-forward piece. It's all finished, and in the mail. I should be able to show it to you soon. For now...

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion.

By then, the guys were out cleaning the greenhouse, and they set free the cats. Sadie's first mission is to check around the RV for the squirrels who live under the rocks there.

Smitty was in hot pursuit. They pretty much stick together when they're outside.

I should have taken a picture of the clean greenhouse. Here's one from previous years. Welcome to my parlor.

Mike did all that fancy paver work. The decorative stepping stones are from our local Backyard Bird Shop. The larger concrete stones were created by our daughter-in-law, Mae. We had them in the larger outdoor garden, but they were perfect for the entry to the greenhouse. They are ambigrams, so that they read the same both upside down and downside up.

Inside, it looks like this, although I was only getting started on my collection of garden pots when this picture was taken. The slats for the shelving are removable, depending on our needs. For now, I only placed them in the back half. We'll take those out once we're ready to put tomato starts in. The black lines you see hanging down are part of the automatic drip irrigation system...Mike's contribution.

Our growing season is too short to have much success growing tomatoes outdoors, and so we grow them in here. These are from a previous year.

Over time, they grow up and fill the entire space. Here's yet another image from a previous year:

Okay, so before I started my greenhouse duties yesterday, I took a little walk around. I was surprised and delighted to see a bud on the purple poppy. I wasn't expecting it to do anything this year. Sorry for the blur in this image, but hey...look how in-focus those pine needles in the background are!

Auto-focus...a blessing and a curse.

I was planning to start some more of the purple poppy seeds. The poppies are biannuals, and so I need "crops" from two years running to have blossoms every year. These are seeds Mae put aside for me. You can see the pods that are left after the flowers have bloomed out. The seeds are inside.

Digging down to the bottom of the sandwich bag with my little shovel...hello there, my pretties!

You might recall the sunflowers I planted last year were a complete bust. I was terribly disappointed. It was partly my fault and partly the fault of the squirrels. It's a long sad story, and I won't go into it. It's too painful to remember. But hey...it's a new year, and we're going to give it another go.

When I went in search of last year's seed packets, I couldn't find them in any of their usual places. So when I ordered seeds this year, I picked out some of the old standbys. But, if you're paying attention, then you know seeds are suddenly among the items that are scarce in these days of quarantine. So I wasn't able to get some of my favorites and ordered some newbys. Then, when the seeds arrived, I promptly found all the seeds I'd been looking for a few weeks earlier. Now, how does that happen? It's just one more imponderable of life. So anyway...I had some duplicates, but these are all the ones from previous years. The seeds from that bottom right one had all gone poopy (that's a technical garden term, so try to keep up), and so they didn't get used for this year. Some of these were newbys in last year's failed crop, and so I haven't actually seen a few of them.

These are the new ones for this year. The bottom one, "American Giant," can grow to 16 feet. Cool!

These are my standard lettuce choices.

And now, finally, it's time to plant the Cat Grass...a gift from my friend Gail. Thank you, Gail. Gail sent this grass to the kitties when they were confined to the indoors last year. I haven't planted it before now because I knew it wouldn't survive the winter. Now...spring is here, and its time has come. The seeds were surprisingly large for a grass seed...as large as the sunflower seeds.

Okay, and then I set to work planting. I use these window box planters for the lettuce. Each one will hold five heads. When we start harvesting them, I have more of these pots to plant another round before the old one is used up. We can grow lettuce outdoors, but I like this greenhouse system. The lettuce is nice a clean without bugs or slugs. Ew.

The Cat Grass was planted in another of the window box pots. I'll be able to move this to the catio once it's well-established. Moving it there now, I know kitties will just be digging around in it. A cat never resists the Call of Doody.

And then I got to work planting sunflowers...lots and lots and lots of sunflowers. Also, included in this grouping are two little pots of zucchini. The farthest pink pot has purple poppies. All the rest are sunflowers. There are three pots of each sunflowers, with two seeds in each pot. Surely with all of these, I'll get at least a few, right?

There is still more planting to do, but that will all go into the outdoor garden. We're still about three weeks away from being ready to plant there. Like I said, our growing season is short.

So there was no sewing yesterday. I'll get back to it this afternoon. I've been sewing feverishly on the poppies for a solid week, which means there's been virtually no housework. I'll need to do some of that today. Also, I need to make up a grocery list for tomorrow's grocery shopping slog.

Finally...I couldn't stand my hair for a single second more yesterday. It looked as if rats had chewed off the ends, and it was driving me crazy. Keep in mind that I last visited my hairdresser in November. My hairstyle was designed to last during the approximate three months before I would see her again. We left Oregon in late December, and returned mid-March to find the salons closed soon thereafter. In a moment of sheer perturbation, I asked Mike to give me a haircut. I learned never to cut my own hair during an unfortunate episode at age 12. (I think we all have one of those in our lives.) At least if I had him cut it, I could lay the blame at his feet. But, hey...he did a pretty good job.

It's not what my hairdresser might have done, but at least I can maintain my sanity for a few more weeks...or not...maybe it's too late already. Mike has heard me talking to myself more. Yesterday, I noticed I lost an argument with myself. And then...I did post this picture. Please be nice.

Okay, so kitties are chomping at the bit, and my seeds need watering. Birds are starving. It's time to start the day.