Spring Flowers

We're still in a transitional period where we have warm and cold, cold and warm temps. But the warm is winning out over the cold more often than not these days. (I say as we're under a Freeze Watch early next week.)

My earliest Spring flowers don't seem too concerned with the chillier temps, though. They are growing thick and hearty this year. More than usual. I'm hoping that's a good sign for a good, fertile gardening year.

Daffodils

Jonquils, aka "Jonny-Jump-Ups". They "jump up" at the first hint of Spring.

But they sti-i-i-nk, lawd have merc-eee.  We were outside the other day and J kept saying, "what is that smell?" Finally we figured out it was these flowers. He said they smell like horse manure. Which I guess is better than smelling like someone died, like Kev said.

Violets? 

These little purple flowers grow wild and random all over the yard. I think they are Violets, but not sure.

I checked my seed-baggies again, and found I had a good lot of germinated Datil Pepper seeds. (Datil, as in, 'Datil do it (that will do it.)

All those seeds came out of one single pepper that we grew last year.
Last Fall I picked a bucket of these peppers, and for some reason or another, never did anything did with them, as far as freezing or pickling or anything. I actually just ended up leaving them in the bucket, where they shriveled and became no good for eating or using.

I eventually had intentions of drying them and harvesting the seeds, but harvesting pepper seeds is a really not fun and painful experience, so it's not a chore I'm right on top of.

When I wanted to try to raise some more pepper plants this year, I just grabbed one of the old peppers from last year from the bucket and scraped the seeds out of it onto this coffee filter. Didn't know there was going to be so many.

Of these, 19 germinated. (I put the others back to see if they will germinate later, they might still.)

I started out planting these in peat pods, 2 per pod, except the one last odd numbered one.

Cute sushi tray J saved for me to use as a greenhouse.

Grow little peppers! 

Speaking of grow... Tomatoes! (Or as we say 'round here...Maters!)

Since I took this picture yesterday, the last one in the middle finally popped up - just that lickety-quick - and I officially have 8 out of 8 tomato plants sprouted/growing.

These are the Black Russian variety. Still no luck with the others yet. Maybe they'll just take a little longer, because they are older seeds. Both these, and the Datil peppers, were new seeds from veggies grown in our garden last year.

If in a few more weeks they don't ever do anything, I guess I'll just buy some tomato plants.

We already have a couple of Cherokee Purple tomato plants (that I hope to be able to keep alive until I get them planted in the garden in a few weeks).  I was curious about the Cherokee Purple, and saw that our Walmart had some of them, so a couple of days later J comes in carrying 2 plants.

Randoms

When I left you last, I was soaking some seed to see if I could germinate them using the coffee filter/baggie method. (Some use paper towel, but I read the shoots don't get tangled into the coffee filters as easy.)

Last Sunday (3/9) I put my soaked seeds onto a coffee filter, into a baggie, and laid them on top of the fridge to...do whatever they do.

Today, 6 days later, I checked on them, and found that the Black Russian tomatoes had germinated/sprouted.

(J's partner at the station first gave us Black Russian tomatoes/seeds a few years back. I don't know where he got them, or who, what, when, how.  Recently, when I was looking up Native American gardening, I saw an heirloom tomato called the Purple Cherokee, and they look the same to me. So I wonder if they are actually the same plant, maybe different name in different areas, or...how to tell which one we actually have.)

I planted the little sprouts into gardening soil and covered the tray with saran wrap and set them on my window sill to get the morning sun.

Please, grow.

Earlier in the week, the weather was so warm and nice, up to 78* one day. But then again, we had a freeze warning and dropped down into the 20's at night for a couple of nights.

I picked some Jonquils  and brought in and put in a mason jar to enjoy fresh flowers.

1. The ones left outside didn't freeze and/or disappear like I thought they would,
2. The "fragrance" of these was too stout - Kev said it smelled like someone died. I hope he meant it smelled like funeral home, not a dead body - I ended up sitting them back outside. We couldn't stand the smell anymore.

This morning I walked out on the back porch to (do something, I forget what) and this rather large bird was sitting there with it's back to me, doing...something.

I need glasses, but won't get any, so anyway I thought the bird was a turkey, laying an egg in the yard.

Turkeys are plentiful around here, you can see them while just driving up the 4-lane highway, and really a lot on back roads.  I was excited to think there was a turkey taking up residence in our yard.

I called Ryan out to come look, and he was like, Mom, that's a Hawk, eating a blackbird.

Oh.

It stayed out there for a long time, and Ryan was able to take lots of pictures and video. (Much better pics with his fancy/expensive camera than the ones my cheap-o camera takes, but he had to leave and didn't share his with me yet.)

Pretty awesome nature show event right in our backyard. Hawks are awesomely awesome.