Roses Being Scared By The Snow

More snow in Chicago last night.

Reading garden blogs has taught me about micro climates and the picture below is the most obvious one in my yard.

This snow will likely remain on these roses until next spring. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but it won't melt nearly as fast as other areas. The fence provides too much shade.

Temporary compost bins are covered in snow.

The rabbit has been spotted! I repeat - the rabbit has been spotted! It's big and probably pregnant. Somebody get the lawn mower! I'M KIDDING! I'M KIDDING! Jeez - relax people!

Planting Lettuce: Day Zero

I planted the lettuce seeds today! I started by drilling drain holes in the new planter boxes I made last weekend and covering the holes with screen. I added bagged top soil and bagged compost to the boxes then sprinkled seeds over the top and then sprinkled a very thin layer of potting soil over the top and watered it.

The bottom box has European Mesclun Salad on the left and Henderson's Black-Seeded Simpson on the right. The top box has Rocky Top Lettuce Salad in most of the box but I also added a little more of the Black-Seeded Simpson at the very front. I have no idea what I'm doing here! The rest of the seeds go to GB.

Ummmm - what happened to the broccoli??? I'm guessing this is why it isn't suppose to be planted in the summer? What do I do now? Throw it out? Will this keep growing since it should be cooling off soon or is it a goner? This is one of the baby rabbits that didn't get chopped up in the unfortunate lawn mower killing. If you look closely you can see another one in the hole right beside it. I saw another one over by my roses earlier. They are so tiny.

No TGIF For Rabbit

Me: "Hey, what are you up to."
Him: "Nothing, just sitting here."
Me: "I'm just now leaving work, sorry I'm later than I thought I'd be."
Him: "That's okay"...."i just killed a rabbit"
Me: "WHAT???????"
Him: "I just killed a rabbit"
Me: "WHAT HAPPENED????"
Him: "I ran over it with the lawn mower"
Me: "ARE YOU SURE???? HOW DO YOU KNOW?????"
Him: "I saw fur flying"....it was by that spot in the grass where we were looking."
Me: "YOU SAW FUR??? OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!"
Him: "Yes, and guts and body parts....it really freaked me out and I don't think I can go back out there."

It was almost dark when I got home but I could see fur in the 4 x 4 foot square of uncut grass. I have no idea what we are gonna do about this. Both of us are horrible with this kind of thing. He said the other babies ran back in the hole after the one was chopped up. I wish they would just go away.

Gardening tomorrow is not gonna be nearly as fun as I had originally thought...

Cute things I saw in my garden today

This thing nearly made me pee my pants, in a bad way. I know it's very very cute and all but that whole Cicada incident has really got me on edge. Every time I hear any kind of rustling going on I jump and spin around expecting to see a big swarm of Cicadas ready to eat my eyeballs out. I was bent over looking at the Lavender that I planted near these dead Iris and I heard something. I spun around scared to death and this is what I saw. Do you know how stupid I felt???? My little sister thought it was hilarious that I was so startled by a baby rabbit and I thought she might be a little more sympathetic once I explained how I was almost killed by a ban of Cicadas but she was unimpressed. Then again, the people down the road from her have Emus. If you are not familiar with these, just imagine big dirty Ostrich. I have no clue what they do from the farm animal standpoint, but they are very ugly and way scarier than this little guy.Just when I started to get worried that my Cantaloupe wasn't going to bloom, BAM!

I wanted to document this bloom on one of my 2 strawberry plants. The other plant had a bloom that lasted about 2 hours before it was eaten by something. I do not expect this one to survive, they must be very tasty, even in floral form.

This is a tomato on one of my 2 Big Boys. Is it just me or does this look two-toned?

This is a baby tomato on my one Roma plant. I think these are so cute because they are oblong and I never get to use that word "oblong" so I thought I'd better seize this opportunity. Plus, I LOVE ROMAS and I LOVE MARINARA and you know what that means!

That's it for the pictures. In other news, I'm going on my first Garden Walk on Saturday with garden buddy and I have been planting seeds like crazy. In addition to the last seeds I told you about, I have now planted Double Hollyhock, Zinnias and Scabiosa. I also have Moon Flower (or is it Vine) seeds soaking per the instructions and they will be planted bright and early tomorrow morning. I really excited about the moon ones!