April Fool's Seeds Garden

 Back in April, well exactly April 1st, I opened an email from Adaptive Seed Company. They were offering a one day only deal. Floor Sweepings Seeds were available for $4.01 and not only would the purchasers get a seed packet of "floor sweeping" one would also receive a coupon for $4.01 off the next purchase. Well...I was all over that. Was it real, was this April Fools Fun, real seeds swept up fro the floor after a busy day packing seeds, or was it truly a joke and one would only get the coupon. I guessed there would be real seeds involved and I was right. I love a good mystery and experimental gardening so I ordered my floor sweepings right away. The seeds, and coupon, soon arrived and there was a wonderful mix of seeds. Some I could easily identify and others not so much, especially all the teeny, tiny seeds!

I planted a large selection of the seeds in seed starting pots and put them under our grow lights where we had already started many seeds such as tomatoes, peppers, flowers, etc.. Soon all Sorts of little seedlings emerged. 

 Mostly the seedlings were kept in the house but on warm enough days I moved them all to the little greenhouse to acclimate to the outdoors.

In late May I planted them all in the ground in specific places so I could monitor the plants and see just what we got from the floor sweepings mix.

In early June we were already eating from the April Fool's seeds, all sots of lettuce, spinach, chard and amaranth greens. By late June we see full grown Marigolds, Sunflowers about to bloom- giant and smaller, zinnias coming along and probably more flowers. As for veggies we have the already mentioned greens plus celery, a tomato plant, peppers, corn, a couple beets, runner beans (one plant!), possible Brussels sprout plant (I think), fennel, onion or bunching onion, a cucumber or squash plant, so many kinds of greens and a few things I still haven't identified. There's a lot of amaranth and I'm using some greens now but will also use the grain seeds when they are ready.

All this and there is still round two to come. I still had LOTS of the assorted, tiny seeds that didn't get started indoors. I started them in a couple more places a week or two ago. I'll separate and transplant as needed as they grow.  

I really hope the seed company offers something like this again next year!

A Year of Dog Walks! April 17, 2023-April 17, 2024

 Last year, about this time, I challenged myself to walk a dog every single day for a whole year. With 3 dogs I take a lot of dog walks but not every, single day! I really don't like winter so I knew that would be HARD. 

I did it.

April 17, 2023-April 17, 2024. 

My count started before April 17 but I didn't chronicle it until then and wasn't 100% sure I didn't skip a day so I had to go with April 17th as the start date. I was pretty upset about early April when I could have been done but wasn't because we had two big winter storms. 

And it's leap year so that added a day. 

 And I'm kinda sick, so many germs going through the school.

And I'm tired but next week is April break  so a week off from school (work).

I gave up on blogging it every day but took at least one picture every day. More than 50% of the dog walks were 2 miles or over. A few were less than a mile but not by much. Sometimes all three dogs went, more than half of the walks were just 1 dog and I rotated by day. Sometimes I did three consecutive walks of 1 dog each on the same day. Sometimes family members joined. I don't think anyone joined me for most of winter! 

No big, fantastic year in a post just today and it happened to be Dartha's turn.

Mission Accomplished.

Goal met.

I can do hard things.

Done :).