DAYDREAMING ABOUT PLANT THINGS

 Recently, I've started subscribing to seed and plant catalogs and having them sent to the farm address.  That way, we can start getting regular mail out there and it'll be nice to get something fun out of the mailbox on a regular basis instead of tax bills, insurance and offers to buy our house/land, ha.

 I enjoy a glass of wine or in this case, some wonderful hot tea, and a quiet night or two of perusing through the pages of a catalog.  They are so fun and give us hope for the future.  In the end, isn't that what all planting is about?  Hope for the future?  We stick the seeds/plants in the soil and we hope we get to enjoy the end result of our hard work?

Six catalogs came.  I would have subscribed to just as many more but those companies are website only, no paper catalogs.  It's amazing how many no longer offer print catalogs.  I'm still old school and enjoy a physical copy in my hands, one that I can dog ear or highlight or circle the heck out of on the inside.

Anyone have any good gardening catalog ideas?  Tools, plants, seeds, general gardening, it's all good.  We don't mind on getting on some mailing lists like that, ha.

Because isn't daydreaming half the fun?

99 RANCH BONUS FOR 1ST MAN

I forgot to include this the LAST POST.

On our recent trip to 99 Ranch Market, while all the cooking ingredients and fun stuff were for 2nd Man (though I reap the rewards of eating said wonderful ingredients), I saw these!

The gardening side of me was happy!

I didn't buy any because I wasn't sure what I'd want to try (all of them? ha).  I need to venture back and pick some up when we have our garden or maybe go ahead and snag a few and store them away?  They seem a little pricey, though I haven't bought seeds in a while so maybe this is normal, ha.

How long can packets of seeds like this last?

FREE SEEDS

A friend of ours has a wife who is a teacher. Her school ordered seeds for a class project and then, sadly, cancelled the project.  

All the seeds were given to the students that wanted to take them home.   

These are what were left over, from the Seeds of Change company.  They had them stored in a closet for a couple of years and then decided to move.  She asked if we wanted them for the farm.

Free seeds?  Sure!

There are seeds of all types of veggies, melons, herbs, even a few flowers.  The packets are a kind of vinyl that is heat sealed so we're guessing they are sealed up well.  However, they are about 2 years old now, maybe going on 3.  What do y'all think?  Do you think they are still viable?  Not sure what lifespan seeds like this have.  It probably wouldn't make sense to open every single packet to test each variety.  Maybe we should just leave them sealed in their packages until planting season for whatever variety it is and test them then?  

NATURE MOVES ALONG

When we were cutting up our pie pumpkins recently, I put a bunch of seeds in a bowl for possible roasting and put it in the fridge.  Apparently, two seeds were on the outside edge of the bowl and dropped off on the backside.  They stayed there for a few days behind a milk carton. We moved it and found this:

Pumpkin seeds sprouting

The right temperature and the right amount of moisture and they sprouted!  Amazing how resilient and persistent this natural process is. We wanted to keep them and put them in the ground but realistically, it is Winter and they aren't going to survive a freeze (possibly next week according to the weather).  

Still, it was fun to see nature doing what it does best.