Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary...

How does your garden grow? Did you have better luck with your seedings than I had with mine?

Only two of the original tomato seedlings are still doing OK. They're small, but they're hanging in there. Same with 4 of my pepper plants - one habanero and 3 sweet peppers. The others didn't make it, so they've all been replaced with store-bought plants. (I found a place that had a little container of 4 identical vegetable plants for 99 cents. Bought two varieties of tomatoes, two varities of peppers.) There are two Big Boy plants and one Roma out in the rose bed, the other two Big Boys and three Romas went into the garden, as did a larger, single heirloom tomato called a Purple Cherokee ($1.19) . The store-bought habaneros and jalapenos went into the garden too.

Hopefully I'll have better luck starting seeds next year. The biggest problem this year was that I had no heat during the germination period and the indoor temp was too low. It was very hot the weekend in April when I planted all my seed trays and I turned the furnace off so I could turn the fan on to circulate the air indoors. Two days later, when the temp dropped back to normal April temps, I switched the furnace back on and the burner wouldn't ignite. I didn't bother to get it fixed then; since I'm used to cooler temps and the little electric heater kept most of the living space in the mid-60's, I figured I'd wait until later in the summer to get the furnace repaired. (If the problem is what I think it is, it's a quick fix that'll run under $100, but it isn't something I can do myself.) But the cooler temps weren't conducive to strong seedling growth, and cats reaching in through the crate bars to bat at the seedlings that did grow combined with too little light where they were sitting didn't do anything to help. Next year I'm going to start some things earlier (impatiens, tomatoes, peppers) and others later (beans, melons), line the sides of the crate with cat-proof but transparent/translucent material (I'm thinking clear kitchen cutting mats, the kind you can get 2/$1 at the dollar store, might be just the right size), use heating pads under the crate to encourage germination, and hang a grow-light above the seed trays inside the crate which can be raised as the seedlings grow.

On the other hand, the watermelon plant is doing well - it about doubles in size every day. And some of the seeds I planted are starting to come up - cucumber plants, a couple of moonflowers just peeking out of the dirt, and little lettuces all in a row. In the herb bed there are tiny green things coming up all over but I still can't tell which are herbs and which are weeds, so I've been weeding very carefully. (I didn't plant rows there so much as I planted areas, to be thinned out as necessary as seedlings develop.) If I hadn't seen just-sprouted dill at a friend's house yesterday, I probably would have weeded out my dill sprouts today - they look just like little grass sprouts. It should get easier to tell the difference over the next couple of weeks, and if I planted right, the herbs themselves will shade the soil and prevent at least some of the weeds from growing. Four of the bush-type morning glories I planted in the tub out front are still growing, and the three little hibiscus plants I planted along the south side of the pole barn have survived 48 hours inside the yard without dog damage, and have doubled in size in just 2 days. Dare I hope they're going to make it? One of them bit the dust before it ever got into the ground; I had the 4 paper cups holding the little plants sitting next to me while I dug the hole for the first one, and didn't pay any attention when The Goofball came up beside me. But when I looked over to get the first plant to put in the hole I'd just dug, the only thing left in one paper cup was the stub of a stem and The Goofball was happily chewing away. I forgot that one of his favorite activities as a pup was grazing around the yard biting the heads off dandelions. Sometimes I think I live with a herd of big white cows.

The color cartridge for my printer arrived Saturday, so I printed up some flyers advertising classes to start in July. One during the day, one in the evening. I got some of them posted around today, and will get the rest out over the next few days as I go in different directions to run errands. I've gone public, no going back now. I've got a month to get the training center and the office ready for business. Summer's not usually the best time to hold obedience classes; vacations too often conflict with the 6-week run of class. But out here, where there is a large summer population, I'm hoping that between local folks and summer people there will be enough students to have two good classes, and that'll give me a jump start for fall.

I've got another "project" lawnmower. This time, a gas-powered, self-propelled model with a nice wide deck. It's an extra Chris's landlady had, she gave it to me on Sunday when I was there. I haven't had a chance to work on it yet, one front wheel isn't turning and it hasn't been used in a couple of years so it's probably going to take some fiddling to get it started. But I know that the only reason it was an extra is that they needed a smaller mower to make it easier to mow the agility yard (with its tight angles and small spaces), and that the mechanically-capable landlady takes excellent care of her tools so I'm sure that once I get it started it'll run well. It's just a matter of finding the time to work on it.

I've been really busy the last week. I'm tired, but it's a good tired. Tomorrow I'm going up to my mom's, to help her out with some cleaning she just can't do by herself any more. I'll stick around and cook dinner for her, and I know she wants me to stick around to go with her to the community band concert in the evening. I dread the thought - she'll parade me around and introduce me to everyone she knows - but I'll probably go anyway, unless I'm just too beat or too grubby. At least it's the community band, which is a lot easier for me to listen to than the community chorus my mom sings in. (Gad, don't ever tell her I said that! But I can handle instrumental mistakes a lot better than I can off-key singing.) Friday's a busy day, too, there's a big UKC dog show a couple of hours away and some of the folks I know from the rare breed community will be showing their dogs. The owner of The Youngster's maternal grandmother will be there. I need to go down there anyway to meet a cyberfriend who's bringing me a pair of little whiskered packages, a certain torxie and her creamsicle brother. *smile* If I can get everything I'd planned to do on Friday morning finished by tomorrow night, I'm thinking about getting up before breakfast so The Youngster and I can be out of here by 7 am to make the 9:15 am ring time so we can catch up with the breed folks. Good socialization opportunity for The Youngster, great opportunity for us to educate breeders and advocate for placing deaf pups in responsible homes rather than killing them.

Amalie nearly gave me a heart attack this afternoon, she managed to get up onto the roof from the patio. She went from the top of the wellhouse to the roof, and it's a long jump up. I didn't think she could jump that high. She came down pretty quickly when I called her, despite the panic in my voice (or maybe because of it), going from the house roof to the patio roof and jumping down from there. (Scaring the heck out of the kingbird mama, too, when she walked on the patio roof over the nest.) I'm going to have to attach a piece of fencing from the eave of the roof to canopy over the entire top of the wellhouse so nobody can get up there that way again. I don't recover from adrenaline rushes as fast as I used to.