On Your Mark, Seedlings!

(Photo: Jungs')

This past weekend, my Handsome College Son has come home for a visit.  Large and looming, was attempting to climb the stairs to my second floor.  Two weeks ago, when I finally came home after five months of recuperating with my brother and the Gardening Nephews, stairs loomed large and foreboding in my mental landscape.

Going up and down stairs seemed a Herculean challenge of sorts, like breaking a box squat record or the four-minute-mile.  It had become the definition of insanity in my family, and probably the ultimate definition of possible stupidity (behind my back).

But, you see, I am motivated.
My grow room and light racks are upstairs.  My bedroom, and clothes closets are upstairs.  While I will acknowledge it may be the ultimate in irresponsibility to attempt to go up and down stairs when tired or groggy upon first waking when there is a perfectly good bedroom downstairs, to be able to do so is enabling.

Two weeks ago the three steps up and down my back porch were a challenge indeed.  Today, other than the feeling of muscles slowly stretching to accomplish the step up, not so much of a challenge.  It is just another of those slow, small, incremental changes in my landscape of my physical capacity, that I am feeling excited about these days.

Yesterday, I spent the day out.  As in out shopping, running errands, getting a haircut, going to the movies, stopping at my bank, mailing some letters, driving my car... all out in the world.  Oh, my son was along as escort, doing the heavy lifting, and I won't say that I wasn't exhausted, that my muscles didn't want to give it up, that I didn't crawl into bed and have to stretch, and turn and stretch and turn to find comfortable positions for exhausted muscles.  But today, I got up, and walked up the 15 perfect, nice, wide, oak steps with handrail that lead to my second floor.  And, it was not that bad!  Almost easy!

And I stopped at Jungs' and bought seeds yesterday, too!  I bought a corm for the beautiful hanging pink begonia pictured above, I think to hang on my front porch by my silly pink chairs and climbing pink rose.  I'll probably mix it in with some dark-leaved coleus and some variegated spider plants.  It will be an interesting contrast to the pot of pink dragon wings begonias that wintered at my neighbor's.

This is what else I bought:

Ornamental Japanese Striped Maize; Statice, pastel shades; Misty Lilac Wave Petunia, Cinnamon basil, Martin's Roma tomato, and Midland Turks Cap Lily.

I fell in love with Turks cap lily last summer at the Hancock Agricultural Research Station where I took these photos.  As they are natives, and showy ones at that, they are not readily available as bulbs.  If I knew someone with a clump, I would be asking to dig some bulbils, but I am adept enough to grow them from seed.  While I probably won't have flowers this year, I might next year.  I am that patient.

This year, under the idea of doing more with less, I am incorporating more edibles into my long border.  I really enjoy the dark grass green of parsley, so why not use it in the long border?  The flowering heads of basil (if you can't keep up with output) are showy in their own right, so why not include something like cinnamon basil with its violet stems, flowers and veining in the border?  An over the top add is the Japanese striped maize.  I am not expecting to get a lot of anything edible from it, but with its strong, upright visual, maybe that is okay, too.  Moving these plants to the long border makes sense and frees up space in the potager for other things.  I just need to be careful sending Handsome Son out for basil when we do Italian...

So those are my choices, I will be planting a lot more pepper for transplant this year to the modified family garden, no potatoes there, although I will still plant some few here, for fresh eating.  There will be tomatoes, tomatillos, and gooseberries, and green beans for fresh eating.  My beautiful SIL has a to-die-for gluten-free green bean casserole recipe, which I am having her hunt down and which I will share in the future.