Seed-Starting, Day Ten

My little garden is coming along nicely. All but one or two of my tomatoes are up now; the last to germinate were the Super Bush container tomatoes at the far left, which started coming up right after my last update. The zinnias are now a couple of inches tall and developing their first true leaves. Only the peppers have yet to appear, and they are always slow unless it is really warm. In my house, even under the grow-lights, they are probably only at 65 degrees or less much of the time, as the house heat is turned down at night and when I am at work.

This array of seedlings doesn't look like much, but it is 30+ plants. Given the other things I plan to plant -- lettuce, chard, radishes, cucumbers, chard, squash, pumpkins and sunflowers -- in my small garden (containers on my patio and one long garden bed I have use of at my ex-husband's house), I'm not even sure I'll have room for all of these when it comes time to dig and plant.

Treasures from the Book Raid

The Great Northfield Book Raid is the big annual fund raiser for the Northfield Hospital Auxiliary, and a Northfield tradition. Dave and I went on Friday evening after work. He was eager to see what might turn up at a used book sale in such a bookish town, and we were both happy with what we found. He found some history and Russian literature he was very pleased with; I spent most of my time at the Nature table and came away with half a box of nice paperbacks, mostly, for about $13 (it was half-price night). Here are some of the ones I'm particularly pleased to add to my shelves:

• The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, Lewis Thomas -- I read several of Thomas's books when I was in college (my boyfriend at the time, who is now a physician, professor and medical researcher at U.Penn., introduced me to him), and I'm delighted to own (or own again? I feel I must have had it at one time) this familiar, slim volume of humane essays about science.
  
  
• Botany -- A little (about 4"x6") Golden Press field guide to botany that could come in handy as I think and blog about plants. It's not a guide to identification as much as a guide to the different classes of plants and their anatomy, habits and environments.
  
  
• Dancing on the Shore: A Celebration of Life at Annapolis Basin, Harold Horwood -- a chronicle of life at a haven for wildlife in Novia Scotia. I've not heard of the author before, but the blurb on the inside cover says that this book puts him squarely in the ranks of Farley Mowat and Barry Lopez as "one of North America's most eloquent writers about the natural world." I've read some Lopez, and have at least seen the film about Mowat's study of wolves (Never Cry Wolf). For what that's worth.
  
  
• Speak to the Earth: Pages from a farmwife's journal, Rachel Peden -- A nicely designed little hardcover "book of rural virtues and a naturalist's philosophy" by an Indiana farmwife and newspaper columnist, with a nice sepia drawing of a possum, a blue jay (I think -- it's a little hard to tell in sepia) and a farm field on the cover.
  
  
• Blooming: A Small-town Girlhood, Susan Allen Toth -- Mary Schier introduced me to Toth a number of years back and I've read several of her books about traveling in England. This chronicle of growing up in Ames, Iowa, in the 1950s sounds like something I'll enjoy.

I was also happy to pick up a new copy of Bridget Jones's Diary to replace the one that my elder daughter seems to have adopted for her own, as well as some slightly battered mysteries by Dick Francis, Amanda Cross and Sue Grafton (I discovered I'd never read O is for Outlaw! That will never do...), and some nice clean copies of respectable novels by Annie Proulx, Anne Tyler and Kaye Gibbons. If we get another snowstorm, I'm set. No need to leave the house for weeks!

Seed-Starting, Day Seven

The little zinnias that emerged so quickly earlier this week (above) have spent the past several days straightening up and fully opening their oval first leaves, or cotyledons. They are vigorous little things.

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Lemon basil (Mrs. Burns' Lemon Basil, Ocimum basilicum citriodora), in the left-hand cells above, was next up, with the first tiny points of green appearing on day four or five. A large-leaf container basil (Italian Cameo, Ocimum basilicum), in the right-hand cells above, appeared a day or so later -- you can see how very tiny these basils are when they first appear by looking at the one in the lower right cell.

The first tomatoes to appear were the tricolor cherry tomatoes (Garden Candy: A mixture of Sweet Gold F-1, Supersweet 100 F-1, and Sungold F-1), in the two lower rows above, with their slender, elongated first leaves. A few Big Beef seedlings, in the top two rows of cells above, came next, but they are already showing their greater size potential.

No sign yet of the remaining two varieties I started -- a container tomato and a green pepper.

I've been leaving the grow-lights on around the clock to add a little warmth and aid germination, but once everything's up that is going to come up I'll probably turn them off at night. Soon I'll start some lettuce, chard and radishes directly in the garden. It's been so wet that I'm waiting for some drier days before working the soil.

Bright Red House Finch on a Cold, Gray Day

April 25-26 may not have brought us a full-fledged winter storm, as it did to areas in central and northern Minnesota, but relentless winds and fine blowing snow made the mid-70s of just a few days ago feel like something we just imagined. On this cold, gray day the brilliant hues of a male house finch at my feeder provided a welcome bright spot. According to the Cornell Ornithology Lab, female house finches prefer to mate with the reddest male they can find. Apparently, plumage redness in the male house finch is a good indicator of his nutritional condition, over-winter survival, and nest attentiveness. Would that there were such straightforward indicators in the human species! (Click on the photo for better detail.)

Worm Post Gets Attention

My Worms As Big As Your Foot post was featured today in MNspeak.com's Local Blogging section, leading to twice as many visits, so far, as on a typical day. A nice way to end the week!