New homes!

I've taken the huge plunge and potted my plants! Well...not all of them. My sunflowers are still growing and then I have my two small tomatoes. But I've planted the four tomato plants I bought, as well as my squash and zucchini. Sadly, I'm not really sure if my yellow squash will make it and I'm wondering now if I should start another seed in the same bucket or if I should try growing something else, or what. But when I tried to transplant the yellow squash its roots were rather nonexistant, plus it has always had very yellow leaves. To make matters worse, I covered it last night to protect it but was unable to take off the covering after sunrise, so the plant might have gotten too hot this morning. In result, a few of it's leaves have withered.

Barely alive!

Everyone else seems happy!

Anyway, it's okay because I'm a garden newbie and I'm expecting casualties. My lettuces haven't come up yet and I may have accidently displaced the seeds when I last watered them. Usually I use the mister setting on the hose nozzle to spray them gently without much disturbance, however our backyard hose has burst (it was too old to take the water pressure while using a hose nozzle) and I have to wait for our landlady to buy a new one. So I watered them with a bucket and that just threw dirt all around in the containers. But I can always plant more seeds and try again in a few days.

My working schedule has been a little wild and crazy these past few days so I haven't been able to give the garden my full undivided attention.

Still kickin'

Yet another...garden update!

Once again, being now somewhat addicted to growing things, I decided to take on Lettuce. Right now is a great time to plant it, as the danger of frost is over and the night time temperatures are in the high 40's and 50's. I'm a little nervouse to try lettuce because it seems harder to grow than the other plants I have, but I'm willing to try it. So I went to the dollar store and bought two long pots. I hope that these pots are okay to grow in, because I could tell they've been sprayed with some kind of coloring. Well, they are obviously made in china, so I hope that no chemicals leech off the paint and into the soil and then into my plant of course. But I guess I'll just take my chances.

I went to Lowes and bought 3 large bags of planting mix. While I was there I also bought 3 packets of Lettuce seeds (I didn't really realize how many seeds came in each packet!- There are a lot!). Then I also decided to buy some more tomato plants, since the ones at Lowes were farther along than mine. I started my two tomato plants 2 months too late apparently. I'll have to compare all of my plants and see how they do when it gets hotter. But anyway, I was really surprised at just how cheap plants are! I got 4 tomato plants for 2 dollars, and their other vegetables were super cheap too. I had to refrain from purchasing anything else.



Lettuce!

 My gardening book told me that I should put the lettuce seeds in the fridge for a few days to prepare them for growing, but I was way too excited to wait for that. I immediately planted and watered them! I put in like 4 seeds per planter, so hopefully that won't be too crowded.



DEAL!!!



Later I had an urge to go to the D.I. (a favorite thrift store of mine) and take a look around. Of course I happened upon a terrific deal- this purple glazed pot for only 12 dollars! These things usually cost about 50. It's large enough to plant a tomotao in I think, which is terrific because now that I have 6 tomatoes, I'll need to find more places to put them.



So now here below is a picture of all my plants. I feel like my squash is really yellow, and I don't know if it's the chemicals in the soil or what. Maybe I planted my squashes in the wrong kind of mix. But hopefully when I transplant it then it will become more healthier looking. One of my pots of sunflower seeds never really made it. And so I quickly planted 3 more seeds and started again. Now all three have popped up and things are looking good so far! I'm going to wait just a few days before transplanting my tomatoes that I bought at Lowes.



Planties.



Speaking of one of my earlier things I noticed about Arizona....This is my neighbors tree behind our house...I'm pretty sure those are the same fruits on it from like a year ago. Why don't people pick the fruit offf their trees? It's incredibly annoying. Maybe it's because I heard that scorpions live in Citrus trees here, so maybe picking them is a dangerous operation? Who knows.

Pick your fruit already!!!



Sunflowers- so easy to grow!



The rains started coming and drenched my flowers a little too much, but I really enjoyed having the rain and I hope it rains again soon!

This is a picture of my bike, it was made in the late 70's I think. I LOVE my bike! lovelovelove. I added back double baskets to it to fit my laptop and all the other tons of junk that I haul to school when I need to. Brown wasn't my desired color, but the bike was in such excellent condition that I really had to go for it. So far it has served me well, and looks so much better than the typical cookie cutter beach cruiser that every 18 year old has on campus.

I made cookies for a baptism...just sharpening my culinary skills for my future family! And trying to be an exemplary member of the church by being a domestic goddess. (lol) Ghirardelli chocolate chips were on sale too! So they ended up being cheaper than Tollhouse for once.

While I was making cookies, a very cute neighbor guy came to my door to tell me that someone's car lights were on. I thanked him and he kind of chuckled at me. Later on I realized just how terrible I looked while making these. OOPS! I forgot to wear makeup and a cute dress while I baked these! Soooo I guess I'm not quite the perfect homemaker that I thought I was. Hopefully I will bump into the cute guy again. I thought about leaving my left over cookies at his doorstep and then realized that might be a little too creepy. *sigh!* oh well.

YUM



And last but not least I just want to complain how what you see when you blog on here is not what you get. My image formatting is way out of line!! Frustrating.

Things I like about Arizona

I guess before anyone decides to serve me up some haterade for my last post, I will now post on the positive things about living Arizona.

1. Warm weather. Duh! Of course it's really hot, but it's like the warm version of Minnesota, and instead of them having snow for 9 months, Arizona has crazy hot weather for 9 months. While I could do without the extreme heat, the spring months are to die for.

2. Beautiful wildflowers. I'd like to do some more hiking and camping here in arizona and the plants I've seen up in the mountains/hills are beautiful and fascinating.

3. Pretty sunsets (of course).

4. Stores are in close proximity to my house. I love that there are stores and businesses on every block. Right now I only have to walk a few brisk yards to get to a grocery store.

5. The best place ever to ride a bike. And I love that I can also ride it on the sidewalks and I don't get in trouble for it.

6. Lack of humidity. This is good and bad. While the humidity throws my hair in a tizzy, it also makes it easier to breathe and makes my skin look terrific. But I'm glad my hair looks good here.

7. Lots of people of my same religious denomination. Good, yet bad. While there's a lot of people of my religion, there aren't that many my age to flirt with.  Lame.  But there's more to have fun with.

8. Mountains and scenery. The mountains here are beautiful! I want to visit all of the state parks sooo bad.

9. Straight roads and easy-to-see streetsigns that light up at night.

10. Low price of milk. Milk here is like 1-2 bucks a gallon! Compare that to $4-5 a gallon in NYC. DEAL!

 11. Lots of thrift stores here! And they are REAL thrift stores, not like greenwich village "shabby chic" thrift stores where they sell you an old shirt for 50 dollars.

12. Decent public transportation. Although the cost to ride the bus here is almost as expensive as NYC, it's a good way for students like myself to get to school cheaply. Where I live I have the option of taiking two different busses to school which is terrific because that means a bus comes every 15 minutes. There is also the light rail and the Orbit, which is free.

Things I wasn't expecting when I moved here.

I may get flamed for this post, but whatevs. Basically this is my list of stuff I never knew existed here in Arizona (phoenix area) or just things I still don't quite understand.

1. Misters, you know the kind you see around restaurants? I have never seen such things in my life and I was very confused and intrigued when I first saw them. Now I know that if for any reason I ever must own a house here, I will have my entire backyard decked out with misters. It makes the air so cool!

2. Homeless youth and the drug culture. I no longer go to certain parts of where I live if I can help it, because I'm constantly besieged by young panhandlers who look like teenage runaways. Also I knew that certain drugs are very popular here, but raves people? REALLY? What is this, europe in 1992?

So yeah, it makes me really sad to see these poor kids who have drug problems. There is one store in the area in particular that caters to the drug crowd and that doesn't make things better.

3. Citrus. Okay so I thought you guys had oranges and lemons and all that. But I STILL have yet to discover exactly what citrus is and why nobody picks it off of their trees. Is citrus used to collectively refer to all fruit trees? Or is Citrus it's own unique fruit? Is it edible? What do people use it for? And why in the world don't you harvest it?

4. Red light/Freeway cameras. I was NOT expecting this. Talk about big brother watching!

5. Boring monsoons. People keep telling me how crazy monsoons are, but I have yet to see anything incredibly frightening. So far it is just a little rain and lots of wind. Granted I don't live in a flood area....but when you come from hurricane country then it's hard to frighten you with what Arizonans think to be copious amounts of wind, rain and lightning.

6. People here don't care about sunsets. FOLKS YOU HAVE THE PRETTIEST SUNSETS EVAAAAR! I could shout this and still nobody cares. If people see you taking a picture of one of the sunsets here then they think you are strange. They totally take them for granted!

7. RUDE drivers. 'nuf said.

8. Static Electricity. For the love of all that is good in the world, if ANYONE knows how to stop myself from getting shocked by everything, let me know. And I don't mean just a little shock, I mean a "I can still feel it an hour later" shock. And brushing my hair sometimes is no easy feet when it wants to stand on end.

9. Dust. The dust here is CRAZY. I've given up on dusting my room because it all comes back a few minutes later. I've also given up on keeping our back patio clean from dust and dirt. It's impossible, it all comes back the next day.

10. Umbrellas. People here either 1) Don't own umbrellas or 2)Refuse to use them. Even if it's raining before they go out of the house, they just go for it, no rain boots or umbrella. I've even gotten strange looks from people when using an umbrella on a wet day.

11. People are scared of water. In the south they are afraid of snow, here they are afraid of water. Granted I know that the roads can get an oil slick on them, but people really freak out when it's raining and they will start driving about 5-10 miles under the speed limit. Kind of funny.

12. People don't know how to properly act in a bus. What I mean is, people here aren't used to public transportation. They will get on, and then they either will stand in the middle of the bus while others have to go around them, or they have to keep at least a 2 foot gap between them when they stand and another person. They are really afraid to get close to each other. When the bus driver tells people to move to the back of the bus so they can fit more on, people start acting confused and say things like "there's no more room!" Obviously they have never experienced NYC mass transit, where they pack 'em in like sardines and you are lucky if you have anything to hang on to, even if you have to keep a hand on the ceiling- or even another person- to stop yourself from falling over.

13. Grand displays of water. For being out in the desert, people here actually really like to 'show off' their water. There are fountains everywhere here as well as man made dams, ponds, lakes, etc. Sometimes when people water their yards, then they will fill it to the point of it being completely flooded, like a swamp. I never expected to see people watering their lawns this way here, but a friend of mine told me it's supposedly better for the environment somehow. I don't know. And of course many people here have their own private pool, which kind of leads me to #14.

14. The majority of people here don't like to swim. Okay, this one might confuse most people. But at quite a few religious functions I have been to that offered swimming, nobody got in the pool. People stood around the edges and talked in their bathing suits, while about 10% swam. I think it might be because most of the people who live here are from here, and so they've had access to swimming pools all their life and no longer care about them. Anyway, I'm doing more research on this one, so it is to be continued.

15. Tons of coffee shops. Apparently people here LOVE coffee.

16. "No right on red" traffic signs. I have no idea why they have these here but I will be honest and say half the time I never even look for them because I'm not used to seeing them and forget to look...so I'm sure I've broken the law quite a few times.

Garden Update

If there is anything that I've been learning about growing a garden, it's that plants take a LONG time to grow! Maybe it's because I never really paid attention to my mom's garden when I lived with my family, because I remember one day she would be planting seeds and then it seemed like a few weeks later she was already harvesting the fruits of her labors!

My seeds have sprouted quickly, but it seems that they have hit a point where they have started to grow more slowly. I suppose I'm just too impatient. Below are my three sunflowers. So far one is already above the ground, and it still even has the seed still stuck to the top of it! The other will probably take a little bit longer to sprout. I'm very excited for the sunflowers. I got the seeds at a dollar store and they were only 12 cents!

Here are my squash, zucchini and tomato plants. I feel like the squash and zucchini are growing much slower now. The tomato plants are super small and really cute! But I realize now that I should have started all of my seeds back in December. The books I've read tell me that I should start everything in February, but I think that it means the plants should be a certain number of weeks old. SO....I think I might buy a tomato plant that's farther along- but only when I know that it won't be freezing again.

Here are my flowers! Doing great as usual. I've been protecting them from the freezing night time temperatures by covering them up. They are still alive, so I guess it must be working!

The funny thing about gardening is that it's really addictive. Now that I've grown a few seeds, I want to grow more and more! Of all different kinds of plants and flowers. I see the seeds at the stores and all I can think is how fun they are to grow and how cheap they are...and the result provides you with beauty and food. I do become really impatient- I want my tomatoes to have fruit now!! But, I'm sure that this will teach me some patience.