Happy Earth Day!

I thought this would be the perfect time to share some of the little veggies I have coming up in my garden.

Lettuce

This first photo is a bit of a cheat because this lettuce managed to stay alive through the winter! It started really growing during the past few weeks. I planted some from seed this spring and here's what the little baby version looks like:

The seeds came in a mixed pack. They turn into a gourmet mix of lettuce and it's fun to see the different forms it comes in. This one is a little bit more red:

Mesculin (also Mesclun)

Mesculin is another type of fancy mixed lettuce. It will be fun to see what this lacy little one grows into.

Dwarf Kale

Isn't the dwarf kale cute? It looks like a little bow for now. These are called blue dwarf kale, so we'll see how blue they get. They're supposed to stay relatively small and not spread out too much. I was reading in a magazine recently that miniature kale is the hot new thing because it's ultra nutritious. It's like all the nutrients got compressed into a tiny little package. Funny enough, I read that in a fashion magazine on the "IN" page. So my garden will have the cool new accessory for spring.

Arugula

I love arugula so much! I bought these seeds last spring on ebay and I swear they have a germination rate of near 100%. It's nuts! Arugula everywhere!

This is one that has grown a little faster than the others.

Spinach

It looks like it's going to fly away! But look how different the mustard spinach is.

Mustard Spinach

I'm excited to be growing spinach this year and to have it coming along so well! I can't remember ever growing it in the past. I've read that the mustard spinach is pretty spicy!

Cilantro

You can never have enough of this, which is good because there are countless little sprouts out there. I think some decided to grow itself along with what I planted.

Dill

The dill was difficult to photograph because it's so tiny! No, that isn't an egg behind the little dill. It's one of the many rocks I put in my pots to discourage the chipmunks from digging around.

Sugar Snap Peas

It looks like a little bunny rabbit. This is a view showing more:

I think I have nine or ten coming up.

It's amazing how well all these little plants are doing during a Wisconsin "spring". It's snowing lightly right now. But they're hardy plants that can take it. We still have a long time until tomatoes and basil can be grown outside. I have started some basil seeds, though.

If any of you would like to get started with growing vegetables or herbs from seed, let me know. I can help you if you aren't used to gardening. It doesn't take much to get going. I bought most of my seeds at Dollar Tree for only 25 cents a package! A few packs were 20 cents at Big Lots. The dill is even in this Dollar Tree container I cut holes in the bottom of.

So growing seeds isn't that difficult, it doesn't have to be expensive, and it is really rewarding. Besides saving a ton of money, you'll find that the vegetables and herbs you grow taste a whole lot better than what you buy from the store. That and you'll feel more connected to nature and learn about many of the little critters in it as you take care of your plants.

If you are already into gardening, I'm open to a seed exchange!

Also on the topic of nature, I picked up a book at the library yesterday that I've been meaning to read for a while. Wicked Bugs! Look at this beautiful cover:

The awesome, intricate back cover:

To give you an idea of the illustrations:

I picked a bad customer for this example, but I guess the nice bugs probably didn't make it into the book. I think I remember reading about this book on some of your blogs a while back. I've only read the intro so far, but I can't wait to read the stories of bugs behaving badly!

Finding Inspiration Under the Surface

One of my goals in writing this blog is to present the dark and mysterious that hides in everyday life. Pretty much any topic or event contains a spooky element, if you've made up your mind to look for it. My hope is that I can then find some beauty in the darkness I've managed to uncover.

Some of this hidden darkness was discovered yesterday, when I attended a concert being held by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. The Orchestra performed several pieces, each very different from the next. One of these works Ex Nihilo (meaning "out of nothing") was so spooky that I was reminded of you home haunters. This experimental sounding piece of classical music would be perfect in the background of your haunted house or in a scary movie.

I really wanted to share this music with you, but I cannot find it online. This is probably because the composer is sort of sketching out ideas with this piece. He was just sharing what he had created so far with the audience. If I ever find the finished piece online, I'll be sure to share it. You'll just have to take my word that it was spooky!

Throughout Ex Nihilo, there were large pauses between little plucks on the bass or harp. Slight noises out of nowhere can be unsettling! Ex Nihilo reminded me of a two part Criminal Minds episode (No Way Out) that is played non stop around here. In fact it's on TV so much, that you've all no doubt seen part of it while switching channels. I have this episode more or less memorized by now, because I keep watching the reruns for some reason. By this point, I know just the places in the episode where I would splice in Ex Nihilo!

To put it briefly, the episode involves a woman who has a secret admirer. The admirer happens to be a serial killer. He leaves her wind chimes made from the bones of his victims when he travels through her town. Ex Nihilo reminded me of the scene where we hear the "chimes" in the wind:

The No Way Out Wind Chimes Scene

Unfortunately, I was not permitted to embed that scene on my blog. So, just click that link to get a good laugh. Well, at least I did. If you'd like to see the woman who these little gifts were intended for...

Meet Jane:


"A psycho with a whistle, that's not too weird."

I'm sure that the composer of Ex Nihilo was not inspired by anything along the lines of crazy Jane and her bone chimes.

Isn't it funny where my mind wandered while listening to that music? I'm not sure if any of you are this way, but I've always visualized scenes to go along with the music I'm listening to. It's sort of like I'm making up my own music videos. Visualizing music scenes used to entertain me as a kid while listening to my Walkman in the car.

During the concert's intermission, I wrote down a lot of notes for this blog post. People probably wondered what I was writing down so furiously. After making a list of all the blog points, I happened to look up and notice something I'd never seen before. I'm sure it had been suspended there for years, but I just never bothered to see it:

I saw this speaker and thought to myself "that looks like a head." Then I noticed the ear! I learned that what I saw is the Neumann Dummy Head Microphone.

The head is a microphone and inside each ear is a "condenser element", which is supposed to replicate human hearing.

It's amazing what we can notice when we take the time to look around!
 
In other music news, I was lucky enough to snag some free tickets to a preview showing of Rock of Ages this past Thursday! I got the free tickets from a site called gofobo.com and you can get free tickets too! That is if you live in the U.S. and there's a participating theater in your area. How it works is that you are emailed the weekly movie and you must reserve your tickets right away. It's first click, first served with this site. What an amazing deal! I wanted to be sure to share this resource with you guys, and that's the only reason I mentioned the movie. There's not a lot of spookiness going on in this one. Well, not aside from some of Tom Cruise's facial expressions.

I really enjoyed Rock of Ages! It's full of 80's music and a lot of funny moments. Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand are priceless! That's all I'm going to say. Actually, the trailer says it all:


Sometimes it's fun to just sit back, laugh, and enjoy some good old music!

Back to the topic of finding inspiration in everything... A source of spooky visual inspiration recently came from my garden. Some of the veggies I planted from seed have already been harvested and eaten! These radishes, whose roots supply the creepy inspiration, were great. Here's a silhouetted photo of one straight out of the earth. It still has dirt clinging to its roots.

I forgot how hot and spicy homegrown radishes can be. The other pics are of the lettuce and arugula that I also grew from seed. All of these plants were really low maintenance. I just covered the seeds with dirt and watered them occasionally.

The herbs in this photo are parsley and dill.

So, if you'd like to start growing vegetables, and be successful very soon, try radishes and lettuce. If you're a visual artist, you might be inspired by these roots!

Don't the roots look like crawling, tendril-like legs or spindly arms reaching out toward you?

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! Hopefully...

Spring struck Wisconsin early this year and I've been taking advantage of the nice weather. That's part of why you guys haven't seen me in a while! I've been spending a lot of time gardening, mostly from seed. This has been somewhat tedious, but so far worthwhile. The tediousness came in with checking my seeds that were sandwiched between damp paper towels every day for weeks. The worthwhile part came in when the seeds actually grew!

I have a new book to help me with the vegetables I'm growing. As luck would have it, I found an old Barnes & Noble gift card from 2003. It fell out of this book when I opened it:

I've read through this book multiple times since 2003, but never noticed the old gift card. This may have been because the gift card was in an envelope. I was happy to find out that this ancient gift card was still good! I used it to pay for Growing Vegetables by Kim Rowney.

The gift card also paid for The Body Snatcher and Other Classic Ghost Stories.

I went into Barnes & Noble hoping to find another book of ghost stories! This book seemed an appropriate choice, given where I found the gift card. I haven't read any of these stories yet, but how could I resist that cover?

The veggie book is so detailed and I really recommend it to anyone with a garden of their own. This book would be helpful, whether you're working with one pot of plants, or a whole box garden.

I'm about to show you some of the vegetables I've been growing from seed. It turns out that I've been growing plants that belong to The Deadly Nightshade family! Sounds spooky, right? Get ready...

These little guys are the starts of my Yellow Pear Tomatoes. Yeah, that's right. Tomatoes belong to The Deadly Nightshade Family of plants! Who knew they were so Goth?

Here's the fuzzy stem of my Jung's Improved Wayahead Tomato.

This is the start of my red pepper plant, which is also in The Deadly Nightshade Family. I've grown many of these, as well as orange peppers, from the seeds of an actual pepper from the grocery store. It's amazing how many vegetables can be grown from the seeds of what we buy at the store!

If you're wondering why my little veggies are in newspaper pots, it's because I was testing how strong the seedlings were, after removing them from the damp paper towels. If you're interested in learning how to make these temporary pots, here's a really helpful tutorial:



It takes a little practice to get into the groove of newspaper pot making, but you'll find this super easy once you're used to it. By the way, you don't have to mold the newspaper around a jar. I used a juice glass and it worked fine.

One more source I want to share is: growingyourgreens.com

The guy who makes these videos is so enthusiastic about plants and offers lots of great advice to gardeners!

Maybe if I pay extra close attention to his videos and really read my new book, I can grow veggies as big as these:



Not to mention the cartoon version!

Yeah, that song will be in my head for a while...