Pre-Playing With Plants

That cardboard box inside
the greenhouse is
full of crepe myrtle branches
which will be used for mulch.
 

It's playing with plants season. Or, it would be if the weather would cooperate. 

Yesterday, I started thinning the crepe myrtles--these fabulous trees that are abundant in my yard. Unfortunately, some of my crepe myrtles have Crepe Myrtle Scale on them, which also needs to be addressed as soon as I can de-winterize the faucets. Oh yes, winterizing faucets is a thing around here. 

I also worked on the exterior of my green house. Marty got me a green house for Christmas. However, there are a few hiccups and it's been too cold to plant out there. Though I do have ideas on how to heat it, they aren't terribly efficient and it's best to start my seedlings in a warmer climate--like the garage. Also, though the greenhouse interior is done, the exterior isn't. I want to put a garden around the outside, to keep critters from burrowing under the floor. It goes without saying--but I'll say it anyway--a liberal amount of SnakeAway will be sprinkled around the exterior as soon as the weather permits.

Today, being Super Bowl Sunday I began trimming the roses until I ran out of room in my trash can. I'll finish this task tomorrow after the trash truck comes by. Did you know every thorn on a rose bush is the beginning of a new branch? Did you also know that rose thorns carry a toxin in them? Now that I've gotten 297,872 thorn prick THROUGH my garden gloves, my hands look like they are suffering from a terrible outbreak of measles. Oh, why is Super Bowl Sunday important? Because my father always told me to trim rose bushes back on Super Bowl weekend. Of course, back in the day, that was in January. 

Oops paint* bought at Lowe's (huge discount!)
 that I mixed with leftover blue paint I already had.
The boards are more of a light periwinkle.
There's a space heater on in the garage so they can dry
sometime in the next week. 

I plan on having a garden around the exterior of the greenhouse.

*Marty was astounded to find out "oops paint" is a thing.
How have we been married 26+ years? 

Because the weather was wamby today ("wamby" is a word a friend in Kent England told me to describe a cold wet winter day), I stuck with painting the boards for the greenhouse exterior after I finished freezing and poisoning my hands with the rose bushes. Sigh, it looks like the weather will continue to be wamby for the rest of the week, with scattered thunderstorms added into the mix. Oh. Yay. 

One more pre-plant playing tid-bit. I bought a shed today so that all my garden stuff, which monopolizes one side of the garage and half of the current shed we have, can live there. What I really need is a workshop, but one project at a time. Perhaps that's what I'll get for Christmas next year.