5" snow to green in 1 week + mystery kill = same ol' same ol'

Our greenhouse, post-snow, on April Fool's Day, appropriately enough. 

Shimmery: watching snow fall in the morning as things warm up. 

Meanwhile, under cover of snowness, still growing in the greenhouse:

Basil babies are SO symmetrical, I just love them. CUTE cotyledons. 

Close up of spinach babies, some still sporting their seed case. EXTRA cute.

I didn't crop out the yellow on the right so I'd remember to tell you that I FINALLY figured out
how to foil the mice et al. that would eat my baby plants.
Put 5 gallon buckets (yellow or otherwise) upside down on a table,
put plants on top of that. DONE!

I am SO not a designer, but I love how the lavender & oregano look together.

Happy accident.

I'm taking overview photos of the garden, now and then,

so MAYBE, later this year, I'll have some cool time lapse thing. Maybe.

Depends upon whether my garden ever stops looking like

an "AFTER TORNADO" photo. *sigh*

Was just wondering if we'd see any baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii)

post-snowfall, then spied this:

Just the one, but I'll take it.

Such a lovely flower, such a brief show.

I heart them.

And I found a partial spine & pelvis in the back of our property, near the violets,

so I'll probably be looking this pup up today to try & ID it.

This is near where I've seen most of the carnivores cruising through;

coyotes, foxes, bobcats, lion.

Makes you wonder what goes on in the night.

xoxobb

new mystery moth! This one is TINY and brightly colored...

  
Upon my return from a weekend in the bay area, I: 1st) check on the chickens, bringing them some aging broccoli, 2) water the garden, 3) while watering a tomato plant see something orange and SMALL and blurry fuzzing around the basil.

Believe it or not, this teensy thing, probably around a centimeter across (roughly) actually landed, eventually, in a place where I could take a photo.

So, hoping someone knowledgeable about such things might care to hazard a guess and share it with us? Did NOT get the head, but pretty good view of the wings and much of one of the antennae.

So, we know it's small, colorful, beautiful, has a long, thin antenna (hmm, that's not a SUPER tiny butterfly, is it?), and really really loves basil blossoms. =) And is out and about this time of year (as in tonight).

Oh, and the bottom fringe of scales is a tan color, but it's reflecting in a fancy, shimmery way here so harder to discern the color than in other frames.


I swear I've never seen this before. Too cool!


biobabbler

P.S. A few shots from San Francisco's Ferry Building Farmer's Market tomorrow, if I can get my my watermark web site to work (say that 5 times fast). TOTAL color pig-out.

rising and resurrection...

So, an update on the no knead bread dough...

Before:

After:

Definitely rose a bunch--yay! Despite some OLD yeast.

Now it's resting in the fridge--plunked it there last night. They say chilled dough is MUCH easier to handle than room temp, and this is extra wet dough per the techniques, so we'll see what happens today in the forming-loaf-and-baking department.

Bought little sacs of seeds at the healthfood store yesterday afternoon for decorating the crust-to-be. (forage, forage, forage) Ready!



So, speaking of rising (in this case from the nearly dead), a miraculous and unexpected twist of fate:

This was brought home last week. Basil that had been bought to use but forgotten or otherwise left wrapped up and not in water and shriveled predictably.

In a fit of "Oh, what the heck" last week I plunked it into a glass of water, trimming the roots first.

Since then, honestly, I'd forgotten about it and had basically not gotten around to chucking it.

Now?

It's back!

New blooms!

The cause? That oh-so-enviable ability to sprout NEW roots. Brown roots are the old ones, brilliant white ones are TOTALLY new. Hence, resurrection.

If I were a plant, that is DEFINITELY one of the traits I'd be hoping for every Christmas.

Ooh, now that I think of it, it's plays to the little phrase I have at the top of this blog on the right. Luctor et emergo. Struggle and emerge!

Nice work, basil. You may now get to be PLANTED in my GARDEN and live who KNOWS how much longer?

Take home message?  Just Hang In There. You never know when things might turn around.

xo

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