Friday, December 19, 2008

Nevermind ~ seeds

AF is here. I really need a hobby. Maybe yoga. For tonight it will be wine.

Gardening is my primary hobby of course. But, you can't do much about it in the winter besides stare at garden prOn (otherwise known as seed catalogs). I love gardening, To a T asked what I do with all of my seeds. My answer is, plant them. Or, imagine that I will plant them anyway.

My "garden" consists of the following:

Edibles:
A 3x5ft raised bed in which I grow salad veggies.
A 6ft row along the fence that I have used for tomatoes.
A 8ft row along another fence that I have used for peas and cucumbers).
A 6x6ft patch near the back fence that is too overrun with earwigs to do much with. Three attempts at corn have failed....
I also have patches/hills for raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries. But, they don't require seeding.

Flowers:
I have two flower beds out front beyond the fence, flower beds along the front fence, two flower beds beneath the aspen trees, one flower bed along the side of the house, and a big flower bed out back.

Each year I have a few successes and several failures. Despite all of the garden/flower beds listed, I have a SMALL yard! I also don't tend to it as much as I should. So, I've been trying to fill each flower bed with low maintenance plants to cut back on weeding duty.

So, with flower seed I love collecting and spreading that which does best all on its own. I can spread a handful of calendula seed or snapdragon seed and it just takes off next spring, crowding out anything I don't want there. There is something magical about cracking open a snapdragon pod and collecting all of the "snapdragon eggs" as DH once called them. :)

With veggie seed, its more of an organic gardening / preservation / survival / romantic streak. I have romantic notions of the failure of modern infrastructure causing us to take all of my seeds out into the country somewhere and carving out a living. Of course, I don't really know much about living off of the land. We'd likely starve to death over the first winter, but it sounds cool somehow.

Overall, I guess you could say I like buying, collecting, saving, (and sometimes planting) large varieties of seeds like some women collect shoes. Only, its much easier on the budget. :)

2 comments:

Mrs. Spit said...

I'm with you. In every seed package, there are a million promises of sunshine and fragrance.

To A T said...

That's so cool! I have a totally brown thumb and would probably even kill an air fern. LOL!