back at the blog... return to amazing hanging baskets.

billions of seedlings, two craft shows in two weeks, science classes to keep moving forward, a very cool jazz concert, and a couple evenings with friends before they moved to NC, and a virus that found home in my respiratory tract (first cold of the 2008-09 season).... OK, enough excuses for not blogging...

A few weeks back My wife and I headed to Longwood Gardens to see the orchid show. Orchids were everywhere including hanging in amazing baskets. I have not had much luck with orchids or creating baskets (well, if one does not put much time and energy into it... what results should one really expect)

But this year, I've got a few things started that I hope will make for a good basket. Thunbergia alata (Black-eyed Susan Vine), Lobelelia erinus (color cascade mix), and Nemesia (Mello Red and White). The seedlings are doing well. Hope flourishes that this summer my own hanging baskets will be featured here.

imperfections in my classroom

lets do four...

• dead seedlings--- that's what a lack of water will do to a young (or old plant). The good news is that only a few were done in by this neglect. That's the problem with cooking on Mondays, I didn't take a close enough look at all our seedlings.
• confused peppers--- I took the suggestion of one of my students and we planted a pepper which thrived in pots. I thought, why not do something nice for folk with patio gardens. Then we planted two types of peppers in the same seed pack. That's right, it included the one just mentioned. As the Mighty Assistant said to me as I was chastising myself... "You were having too much fun joking around with the students."
  
• sell them fresh--- to annoy the Human Suggestion Box, we made Lavender Blueberry Muffins, and while they were OK a day or two old (hungry students still ate them) they were nothing like the ones fresh from the oven. Fortunately most sold the day we baked. Yes, that would be the day the seedlings died.
• poor sentence structure--- I am a descendent of a long line of Pennsylvanian Germans. We say things like, "throw the cow over the fence some hay." I am sure I said clearly what I wanted my students to do. I am also sure they did what I told them to do. So instead of three seedlings in every section of a seed pack, we ended up with nine in some cases...

What we do next is divide them one to a section burying part of the stem to keep the plants stocky and full of roots ...

The good news is that even a place as lovely as Longwood Gardens...

But even Longwood has its imperfections...