Natural things

... recently seen...


Dew drops on daylily leaves one early morning.



When you realize that all the photos you took during your recent trip to the sandy ocean beach about 2 hours away from home are horribly pixelated because you set the ISO wrong, what do you do? You play around with Photoshop. Here is the photo used with the filter called "Ocean Ripple" - appropriate, don't you think?


Germination report from the Sourlands:

Germinated inside: grandma Ebba's Mårbacka geranium, Gaura and Cerinthe, all cucumbers (Chicago, Persian mini), all tomatoes (must be a record, every single one), Asclepias currasavica, scallions and yellow onions, and very, very few of the pepper seeds I sowed. But we bought about 20 pepper plants today to make up for that.

Germinated after stratification (2 months on the deck outside): Penstemon (several kinds), and a gentian species!!!! This is amazing, they are really hard to grow. The seedlngs are a few mm big, so there is still ample opportunity for these seedlings to succumb to a myriad of possible death sentences... but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Germinated in the raised beds in the kitchen garden: chard (Rainbow), 4 kinds of beets (Detroit red, Chioggia, Golden, and one more kind), carrots, dill, cilantro, morning glories, and lots of weeds.