Garden June 2008

Here you have a picture of the potting I did today. I put down about 30 moonflower sprouts, and about 15 sunflower seeds. I'll be transplanting the sunflower to the sideyard as soon as they're big enough to survive out of their pots. The moonflowers will be both planted and gifted to neighbors as soon as they're big enough. I'm getting some climbing roses from one neighbor in exchange for some of the moonflowers, and I'll be giving another neighbor some since she gave me the canna lilies that are now on the side yard.

Moon flower seeds I got from your Aunt Sheba. I sprouted them using a ziploc bag and a damp paper towel after nipping the ends off the seeds and soaking them for 24 hours.

This is what the plants look like when they start growing - believe it or not, this is just 3 days after I put the seeds into dirt.

This is the mint bed and the thyme bed. It's kind of blurry, but the mint is on the left and the thyme on the right.

I'm so happy to see this little guy coming up - it's the first sign that the black elephant ear I planted last year will be coming back. Below you can more easily see the size difference between the normal elephant ear and the black elephant ear.

This is what the bed looked like back in March of this year. I really had my doubts at that point that anything was going to come back.

This picture is my lily bed. I have 3 varieties of lilies growing here; Stargazer, Oriental, and the one I call "trumpet" lilies since I can't remember the exact name of their species.

And of course, my newest installation, the trellises. I'll be putting the moonflowers down along the fence so they can grow onto the trellises, and as I said, trading a few moonflowers for some climbing roses, who will also be using the trellises.

As you might guess, Andrea, I do love my plants. It's a vice but it's one of my healthier ones.

Addendum

Okay - the promised addendum to the post about my father's death.

The year is 2004, and Sheba & De Wabbit are living in Tennessee - but De Wabbit's work is talking about moving him down to Atlanta again - and so Sheba's looking for living space, and I'm helping - she likes the 85/N Druid Hills/Clairmont/Buford Hwy area, and since 1) I'm currently living on Buford Hwy, 2) I grew up in this area and know the apartment complexes like the back of my hand, 3) happen to be doing the computer work for one of the main management companies on Buford Hwy, I am the resident expert.
For grins and giggles, I take her over to the apartment complex I grew up in - they'd recently undergone a multi-million dollar renovation, and I was honestly curious as to what they'd done and what they were charging, given that the apartments had some of the largest square footage available in the area.
So we go and talk to the resident manager - she was happy to show off the office as the 2br small model, and we also looked at what they called the 2 br large - I wanted to show Sheba the 3 br, since I thought it would more easily accomodate the Sheba and Wabbit Show.
It turned out that the only 3 available *happened* to be the apartment I grew up in.
I mentioned that to the agent, and she asked me if I knew anything about an old Jewish man who was haunting their apartment.
The layout of the buildings happened to put her apartment back to back with my old apartment, and then she went on to tell what was happening - her roommate would dream of an old Jewish man, and when they left Jewish items, such as a prayer book, or some other Jewish memorabilia out, he would be relatively quiet/inactive, and that he had a bad habit of turning the air conditioner on.
The last part told me beyond a shadow of a doubt, that was my father's spirit.

You see, my father was ... not to put too fine a point on it, sexually frustrated by my mother, and because he was a High School teacher, sought visual stimulation from the young girls in his classes - he was a notorious "pencil dropper" - for those of you unfamiliar with the term or concept, it goes something like this - you're at the podium giving your lecture to the class. You're gesturing with your pencil/pen, and you drop it, conveniently near a pretty girl in a short skirt. When you lean down to pick it up, you hope for a flash.

So, hearing about the a/c trick confirmed for me immediately that this was some remnant of my father's personality - I told the leasing agent that the best thing she could do when he got active would be to read the Mourner's Kaddish, in phonetic Hebrew if she couldn't read the real thing, but that would help him to move on.

And for those of you who wonder what the a/c has to do with pencil dropping, let me say that the manager's apartment was occupied by three young women in their early 20's and leave it at that.

Since that time, the complex was sold again, however this time it was razed to the ground, and townhouses have gone up in their place -