Agent P

Okay, the "P" could probably stand for "Procrastination" in my case... but it was inspired by a beloved (in the desert and the swamp!) cartoon character Perry the Platypus from Disney's Phineas & Ferb. We friggin' love that show. Thank you, Netflix.

I woke up this morning to a just because/ birthday gift from FMIL:

The picture's only that blurry because you can twist the notebook back and forth for his foot to kick. Too much fun! I started re-doing my notes of what I wanted my next blog post to include and realized, if I have the time to make a list and that much to say... why not just do it? Lol, sigh. My brain and I have not been on the best of terms for the past two to three days. It just hasn't showed up for work in the morning. I've done plenty of dumb things as a result. As usual, I digress. Where was I?

Oh, when I wrote about my Birthday Dinner Spread, we still didn't realize that we had forgotten to put out the fresh fruit we got! Sadness. We had even planned to dip strawberries in chocolate and everything as an alternative option to all of the meat, cheese, veggies, and dips. At least it has been a lot of delicious fun cleaning the fridge out of its leftovers this week. Mmm. :P

School started for most students today. Not ours but we the week was spent finishing getting the classroom ready, meeting with new and potential students, and visiting the classes and schools of former students to help them and their teachers transition into Kindergarten. That was a pretty intriguing experience to have.

One of the best errand-chores we've done ever was the SO and I grabbing bug spraying equipment. We saw amazing results that very day and there has been only a handful of crawling bugs inside the house since. What a relief! We just have to deal with all of the moths now, but the cats and dog feel that they are tasty treats, so it's not that bad for us.

Yesterday, the SO (I tagged along) took advantage of one of the coolest days we're going to have this weekend and climbed up on the roof to condition the evaporative cooler. Algae and calcium build up in the media filter was... unsavory. When we turned it on after letting it pump all of the way through, the house smelled like an old fish pond for a few hours. Gross, but worth dealing with now so the filters won't completely cake up with calcium and therefore last longer.

Over the past few days, there has been quite a bit of welcomed rain. On Thursday evening, FMIL and I were working late and we got a call from the SO letting us know that the winds had gotten so gusty, the power temporarily went out, and he was bring my pepper plants in before they snapped in half. I'm so grateful he's all aware and thoughtful like that. The entire household later went on a field trip to check out some of the local washes and see how our streets were doing. Here are some blurry snapshots from that very bumpy ride:

The last two were just before and while we went through a wash that intersected the road. Luckily for small washes like these, they run off quick into the bigger washes which normally look like large dry riverbeds. We had plenty of microbursts (high powered but limited coverage which means intense hits) and flash flood warnings on the news and radios. Because the rain hit so suddenly and hard, it doesn't the rain time to soak into the ground (that type of rain benefits an area suffering drought the most). I hope that makes sense, I feel like I'm adding background facts in weird spots. Anywho, it has made for some very interesting and pretty sunsets.

 

 

 

It all reminds me of one of the reasons I wanted to move out here so badly. : )

I'm sure I've talked about how much I friggin' love my boyfriend's cat, right? I just can't get over how cute, sweet, funny, or quirky he can be! Last night, during some "rough" housing and play time, two leaves were snapped off of an overgrown Easter Lily plant we have in the living room. With our kitty taking an extra liking to hiding in plants lately (like the oh-so-ferocious jungle cat that he is XD), his daddy helped him camouflage after I had seen the furball try to nudge his way underneath one of the fallen leaves.

 

 

Our kitty actually loved it. He tried to crawl forward very carefully to remain underneath and when they started to slide off, he tried to get back underneath. His cousin was not as easily amused. You can't see meee! I love that furry goof.

I guess I've been putting off writing about my plants because I'm still working on recovering my old information. I last wrote about losing nearly all of it. Haven't been able to recover it, but I'm now saving backups of my gardening page on top of backing up my main blog. I decided to take that opportunity and redo the format to hopefully streamline the updates. I'm still trucking along with backtracking and then updating but it's there! A few things that I have yet to write about have been growing another batch of cereal pet grass, re-potting the cherry tomatoes and adding support cages to them, starting up some Jalapeños, and finally naming my chili pepper plants!

Pet Grass II the evening of Day 2. Tiny sprouts!

 The morning of Day 3 after being kept in cabinet under bathroom sink.

 Can you believe how it's taking off?

 By the afternoon of Day 3.

 After this morning, I put them out by the door.

 The morning of Day 4. Oh, yes.

 Pretty much growing two inches a day.

 The evening of Day 4.

 I wish I could do a time-lapse recording of these guys!

 The morning of Day 5. A little worse for wear.

Kitty took notice of the new grass as I was taking pictures the night before, so we let him have at it. He's our fuzzy lawnmower. :D

(Not affiliated with any companies.)
Don't they look like Lady Gaga with their metal neck braces? :P

 I try to stagger for sunlight access plus to try to conserve room on the patio.

Carving the Jalapeño seeds from the fruit.

 You almost see the dimples in these pellets after they nearly instantly inflated.

Each pellet now has 3 seeds in it.
With the two that fell between the cracks, there were 110 seeds planted.

Now, we wait. Is it bad that I'm hoping for a low yield?
Lol, I can't handle that many Jalapeños!

  Meet tall, straight, and true Gryffindor!

  The twisted, a little broken, ambitious Slytherin!

Not far behind is the orderly and smart Ravenclaw!

  Last, but not least is steady little Hufflepuff!

My Hogwarts of peppers. :P It even helped me name the snails!

The SO actually discovered tonight that the clay colors I used glow beautifully under a black light.

 Red-Green Snail is Godric.

 Brown-Pink Snail is Salazar. XP

 Yellow-Teal Snail is Rowena.

Orange-Purple Snail is Helga.

I know the colors of the snails themselves don't correspond very well to their associated house, but the peppers' growth personalities seemed to fit the house stereotypes perfectly in my eyes. I know, I have weird revelations. Isn't that glowing cool? It doesn't translate very well with the digital camera, but it's something.

I got distracted halfway through writing this post by the latest Phineas & Ferb TV movie showing here. It was pretty darn good! 

: ) I'll see you soon. <3

Not At All

Okay, that's not even remotely funny, internet-blogger-universe. I went to update my Gardening page after publishing my latest post and when I asked it to "Save Now", the page refreshed to some archaic draft from a few months ago and I can't seem to recover the newest information.

One of the suckiest birthday presents ever. This better be some sort of sick temporary joke, you jerk.

Sigh.

Birthday Blog

At the very moment that I start to doze off while on my computer, I figure that I should probably write a birthday blog.

It's my birthday. :D

A few signs that I'm getting a decent bit older:

• It's 10:30pm on my birthday and I'm all: SLEEP!
• I was grateful to spend the day working. 
• I wanted to cook my own birthday dinner and entertain others.
• The soundtrack was conversation and non-cable comedic television show playing low in the background.
• I'm thanking the stars for dishwashers right now.
• I'm starting to know the meaning of "working vacation."
• There is a lot of flailing and unearthly noises involved with gross motor movements like standing up.

Probably the fact that I had a few more reasons in my head not too long ago but can't think of anything else at the moment. Sigh. I'm more tired than I thought. Every day that I'm up and at 'em, I am so grateful for my youth and good genes. I don't really have anything else going for me in terms of how on earth did I survive? I'm slowly but surely making lifestyle changes for the longevity aspect.

Sidenote: Why on earth do you insist on knowing personal information like my birthday, but don't send me free stuff on my friggin' birthday, you FB applications?! Go fly a kite, guys. That is the absolutely nicest way I can put that.

I did find it a little interesting that it seems that I got more well wishes this year than last year. I guess I was surprised because I assumed that people would feel as drained as I do on a Monday. LOL. It's much appreciated that I was on the minds of these people for a few seconds today.

My mother's birthday was actually yesterday and she didn't realize it until my brother wished her a happy one a few hours after she'd already started going about her day. I'm not sure how I made it out the door all dressed with the animals and plants fed early today so I guess I'm getting closer to that point. Ha ha, then all my birthdays will be full of surprises.

I've delved into the terribly addicting world of Tumblr with the same username and the title of my little spot is Sak Scraps II because I don't have any intention of abandoning this form of blogging anytime soon. I love to type-talk about myself way too much to limit myself to any one venue. :P That did mean that I went around making sure I followed users that I had already bookmarked by other means, instantly warping through and losing a few hours of my life, and then rolling up my virtual sleeves to finally tackle and learn about internet trends and memes to learn how to pretty much win at the internet. :D It's been waaay too much fun and I'm glad that the sudden influx of information has temporarily waned. Lol, I tend to use bigger and fancier words more often when I'm tired because I seem to want to make sure that my delirious point is made.

 Birthday Pie! I didn't make it. 

It's Hershey's Creme Pie and it was lovely in so many ways.

 The spread.

That's is a delicious and creamy four cheese pasta casserole from my new cookbook. It won a place in our favorites unanimously. Gruyere, Romano, Parmesan, and Gorgonzola. (I'm too tired to properly add in accents in this post. :D) Hor d'Oeurves of even more cheeses, pepperoni, hot dogs, raspberry chipotle cream/ cottage cheese, jalapenos, and various veggies. We're so classy, I love it. Oh yea, Triscuits! We hadn't had some in a while and got a few flavors.

I'm having such a hard time forming completely and coherent thoughts right now. Lol, it does sound like I'm blitzed on my birthday but no drinks in me. XD I'll see you soon. <3

The Epic Plant One

All of my plants flourished while I was gone thanks to the very patient and sensible care of my significant other. After bonding for a few weeks, I am claiming that he has become a surrogate parent. :P This means that from now on, he should have some vested interest in the progress and health of my garden. You know, even more than the tiny percentage he already had to be interested because we're together and they are important to me. LOL.

I wrote a few posts back when I was freaking out about possibly having killed my plants. Now that time has passed, it's been determined to have been the result of my paranoia.

In preparing for my trip, I tried to find the ideal but minimal watering schedule for my peppers. Well, instead of giving them good soaks when they became drier, I had started lightly watering them everyday. This led to them getting way too dry when the humidity let up. I noticed a little drooping, but one morning (July 16th) I woke up and they looked like this:

Red-Green Snail's plant.

Brown-Pink Snail's plant.

Yellow-Teal Snail's plant.

Orange-Purple Snail's plant.

That was the saddest that I have ever seen them! Little did I know back then... I thought because of my daily wetting that I was over-watering. So, I preceded to bring all of my plants outside for a brief field trip to dry out. What a friggin' terrible idea! And I'll show you why later. During this time, I replanted the parsley and tomato seedlings. 

This is the before:

The tomatoes on the right.

The parsley on the left.

And the after:

 Tomato #1

 Tomato #2 - 7 Parsley - Tomato #3

Hooray for reusing old containers and getting oh-so-fancy labels!

Yes, those are toothpicks I'm using to prop up the seedlings. They really love the sun and a single water droplet was enough to take 'em down. So ridiculous, lol. Man up, guys! I also refreshed the pieces of pet grass and gave them a little haircut.

They were still lasting longer than the big-box pet store grass was lasting. Speaking of pet grass, here was how tall ours that was grown from seeds:

Mr. Man is wondering what I'm doing to his beloved grass.

Well, that field trip for the peppers was a total disaster but I didn't realize this until much later. I was a bit more thorough with testing their dirt and decided to give them a solid deep soak and within the hour, they seemed to be rallying.

Red-Green Snail's plant.

Brown-Pink Snail's plant.

Yellow-Teal Snail's plant.

Orange-Purple Snail's plant.

Not bad. By this time, it was late afternoon-early evening and I thought this time outside in indirect sunlight and some breeze would them well. So, I left them outside for the remainder of the night while bring the rest of the plants back inside. Sigh. It's even a wonder how I've managed to survive all these years. My mother is a strong woman, lol. The next morning, kitty helped compelled me into waking up early and checking on my plants. What I saw freaked me out. This is what my poor peppers looked like after I rushed to bring them back in and gave them yet another massive soak:

Red-Green Snail's poor plant.

Brown-Pink Snail's poor plant.

Yellow-Teal Snail's poor plant.

Orange-Purple Snail's poor plant.

Sweet gravy on a stick! What I have I done?! Turns out that was one of the dumbest things I could have done. That was way too intense sun for them and their soil had dried out so much that the top inch was caked hard. Thank goodness that they were starting to perk up after an hour indoors. To top all of this off, I left for Florida two days afterwards. I took pictures the night before I left.

I would have said that RGreen was a good 13 inches tall.

BPink was pretty solid at 12 inches.

 YTeal was somewhere between 11- 11.5 before I left.

Wonky but resilient little OPurple was about 6.5 inches talls.

The other edibles:

 

And the well-loved/ eaten homegrown pet grass.

The SO did give me some verbal updates on how garden was doing while I was away for almost twenty days. He even sent me a poorly-lit picture messages from his cell phone because I didn't quite believe or rather I wasn't able to fathom how much they had grown once they fully recovered. Are you ready for these pictures from August 7th?

Here's RGreen at a whooping 30 inches tall!

This is BPink at about 28 inches.

YTeal at 24 and 25 inches.

And baby OPurple at 12 inches tall.

Just to recap:

Red-Green: +17 inches.

Brown-Pink: +16 inches.

 Yellow-Teal: +13 to 13.5 inches.

Orange-Purple: + 5.5 inches.

HOLY COW! Right?! I came back to a forest. Here are the rest of the plants upon my return (They are definitely not seedlings anymore!):

 Tomato #1 was just about 6 inches tall!

Tomato #2 comes in around 5 inches tall.

Tomato #3 (once you straighten it out) is about 7 inches.

The parsley are a hot mess at 4 to 4.5 inches. 

I think. How can you really tell? Lol.

What's left after our kitty mowed down the pet grass.

The next day, I started a new batch of cereal pet grass for obvious reasons and here has been their journey for the past few days.

Day 0: August 7th

Seed Soaking and planting into soil after 6-8 hours.

Day 1: August 8th

Hiding and keeping damp in the dark underneath the bathroom sink.

 Day 2: August 9th

By the evening, you can start to see some growth pushing aside the dirt.

Day 3: August 10th

It lives! This is what it looked like in the morning, so I let it come into the gardening forest corner to get some indirect sunlight.

By the afternoon, it's gaining quite a bit of color and more height.

Day 4: August 11th

I'm pretty sure they have doubled in size and really look like baby grass!

It looks like it's gained a good inch by the evening. 

And that brings us to today in terms of cereal grass progress. It is such a fun plant because it's easy to grow, grows like a weed, and the pets adore it. Now, I'm going to rewind a little bit and show you what I did to the other plants since returning from Florida. I had a big crazy day remodeling!

I attempted to make a trellis of sorts for the parsley because the toothpicks were obviously not cutting it anymore.

Take some big ole potting supplies,

Add in some pretty rocks from the backyard that I feel bad burying, 

Dump out some pepper plants upside down after a throughout soak and rough up their outer roots a little,

And add in some real stakes for stability...

To make new 12 inch pots your "forever" home!

This size pot is the biggest these guys should need and they can get up to four feet tall! I actually reversed the order to keep it the same as the order that I kept them in while they were growing up. I have kept a very close eye on the moisture of their soil and their leaves but they have stayed out an entire 24 hours. They are a bit traumatized and look a little sad but they look nothing like how they did after their first field trip. Thank the stars.

That's pretty much it until they perk up again. I had to use more than two bags of soil to fill these pots, they are being rotated a quarter of the way for now, and after getting some advice on the forums (and the logic of the SO), I've learned that that the big leaves and space between the leaves indicate the peppers' desire for more sunlight. They were not getting nearly as much as I thought they were inside. They also will bark up more with some more time and an outside breeze straining-strengthening them. These guys are also starting to bush up to resemble my mother's plants and the very helpful and great people on the forums reminded me to just be patient, it'll happen naturally.

Bam! That was like an epic month-long journey for my garden. I'm kind of itching to keep repotting things but don't want to get into any more shenanigans myself and have been poking at FMIL about helping her out with her plants. Lol. In the next week or two, I plan on doing a dramatic remodel on the tomatoes. I can't wait! This has been so rewarding so far.

See you soon! <3