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03/22/2023 nighttime-only cat! babies!!! And dinner!

Briar helpfully alerted me to a potential friend carefully crossing the back fence today! What a magnificent neighbor.
Turns out a few peach flowers survived.
The ones with dropped petals are quite striking with pale tips over maroon backgrounds!
I believe this is the annual (?) Cardamine sp from nearby seeded into the prickly pear planter.
Abby has kindly identified this as a human-introduced species Armeria serpyllifolia, thyme-leaved sandwort. It isn’t from North American originally but doesn’t seem to dramatically disturb the landscape.
This one may be an introduced chickweed. But a fuzzy one, not Stellaria media.
More baby inland sea oat seedlings in a second pot!my
Multiple baby native Rosa sp from Fannin Co TX. Thanks Mom!
This seems big enough to be the persimmon I actually planted??
Seedlings in false gaura pot, but not sure they look right.
Oklahoma penstemon given to me by a kind fellow Norman citizen!
Maybe smartweed amongst the Chenopodium. We shall see.
A Datura maybe?? The label fell out of this pot. Anybody recognize this seed?
I am informed the mustard leaf garnish is from garden and that the soup contains poblanos from last year from the freezer.
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03/04/2023 more soil on tomatoes and peppers

The experiment of minimal seedling disturbance is going well. Only the tomatillos (both varieties) are really too too leggy but I think we didn’t get them to the good strong light soon enough. We added soil up to the base of leaves on everyone.
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01/24/2023 unauthorized entry

I was putting some books on my desk shelf this evening when in my peripheral vision I noticed more purple plant growing light visible than should be. I keep a towel over it to protect our eyes.
I examined the gap in the cover more closely and realized Shackleton was curled up contentedly on the heating pad, which is set to a cozy 85 degrees F. There’s even a bit of dust (spilled potting soil).
Shackleton napping peacefully with the last unsprouted pepper pot, bathed in a purple glow.
Busted, buddy. The nice thing about this tray is that I can slide it out to check on seedlings AND clever cats.
He did a big back arching stretch of casual innocence.
Shackleton emerges from his vacation tray, complete with unnecessary UV exposure. 🙄
Paula moved Shacks back to his actual cat heating pad on the couch. I put a bunch of empty pots in the tray with the one seedling pot and put more up in front of the towel-curtain, as well as a series of inconvenient containers. Hopefully this will persuade Shacks to stick to his heated bed or at least clogging up our amplifier with his hair.
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01/17/2023 first peppers up!

Shackleton and Tuqu are eager to assist in examination of seedlings.
Tuqu the tortie cat sticks her whole head in a recycled yogurt container used as a pot, while Shackleton the gray and white very puffy but still short haired cat looks on.
Three varieties of peppers have sprouted! This kind of help is why they (the plants, not the cats) are going immediately to the cat free guest room.
The Chimayó seedling has extremely fuzzy roots! Maybe because there was humidity trapped by the yogurt container lids? I have removed the lids now so they can get air flow to prevent damping off.
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01/08/2023 pepper seeds

Experimenting with deep pots and shallow soil. These are yogurt containers. Since peppers and ground cherries can grow roots from the stem, as the plants grow I plant to add more soil. This hopefully reducing the number of repotting events that need to occur.
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10/11/2022 and other recent foods

Tonight contains garden onions.
The Brussels sprouts in the left side are topped with sweet Corbaci peppers from the garden.
Paula made a bean and potato chunky soup. The giant beans are Royal Corona beans, a type of runner bean, which came in our first Bean Club shipment.