Walkies

Grumble. I wanted lunch, and my workplace has no food (just junk snacks.) There are several restaurants within a couple blocks of here, but all are at least one block away.

Since my roomie drove me today, I have no car. So, I walked to the nearby Japanese place. It took 12 minutes to get there, 13 minutes to get back. Good exercise (*spit*) but a waste of time. But lunch was good.

Mignonette Alpine Strawberries

On January 26, I planted some stawberry seeds in those nifty little starter clumps (in plastic trays - "Jiffy-7") that you can buy. I then set them on a shelf in my cubicle to sprout. The package said to be patient, they take 3 - 4 weeks to germinate. You can imagine my surprise when I checked on them yesterday, and they had little bitty seedling sprouts. They don't look much like strawberry plants yet, but at least 10 of the 12 peat clumps have sprouts.

When they're bigger, I'm going to transfer them to 6" pots, then give some of them to my coworkers. This will probably be after the "big move" to swankier digs that have better "curb appeal" for our customers.

On the other front (yard, that is), my blueberry bushes seem to be well set in, and producing new leaves. I should have blueberries late this year or summer of next year.

In back, the rasberries and blackberries haven't fared as well (no new leaves). I think it's because Fuzzy didn't "water them in" (plant the bareroots plants with their peat, cover roots with dirt, then flood the plants in the initial watering), but he thinks it's because the soil is still too acid after having been a pepper tree's shedding ground for 20+ years (the pepper tree died and over 6 years ago.) Then again, they may take longer.

Come the first of March, I'm going to order several varieties of strawberries from Gurney's, and plant a massive strawberry patch to compete with the ivy. Less than $50 will get me a hundred plants (figure 50% mortality between shipping and transplant shock), so my patch will have four varieties.