The restless are going native
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So, is this writer’s block, or plain laziness?
I don’t know, but I’ll try to ramble in a vaguely interesting way for a while.
*sips some Grüne Witwe*
*draws a blank*
Maybe it really is writer’s block then.
Anyway.
My Lilium Erotica has survived the relatively tough winter and shily put forth its first flower today.
The Lilium Perversum looks like it might soon follow. Well, all I can hope for then is that the flowers will distract from the otherwise really sad look of the poor thing.
A good week ago, when I went to water the lilies I discovered that the leaves of the red one were thoroughly riddled with holes.
There were a lot of bright red bugs sitting close to the stem, and they were kind of looking guilty, so I picked them out of the lily, threw them onto a stone and stepped on them. *squish* The few eggs that I found I rubbed between my fingers. *mash* 
And before you call me evil, firstly, they were responsible for the bedraggled look of my lily, and secondly, despite their nice, friendly colour and all, those bugs gave me the creeps. I had to seriously force myself to reach out and grab each one of them. The German wiki has the best photo; the English one might be more comprehensible to most of you though. 
What else….?
Have been working at work, and here at home weeding, weeding, weeding…. Why do weeds grow so much better and faster than pretty, pretty flowers and veggies, eh?!
Got a variety of tomato plants inside the greenhouse and out, also peppers sweet and hot, chilis, eggplants, freaky decorative eggplants, courgettes in light green, yellow and “white” (Thank you “Uncle Bob” Bobby Seeds!), and round ones.
Furthermore we ordered some stuff from a mailorder gardening shop: thornless brambles, a blueberry shrub, figs, interesting strawberries, and an ‘erb with annoying habits.
When the plants arrived in early spring, I planted them all out into the garden. The spring starflower, which they are selling here as Andean garlic, was already merrily in bloom. As the flowers are edible too, they made for nice deco on the odd salad. 
Then the first one seemed to dry off and die. Shortly afterwards, the second did the same. The third and last held on a little longer and appears to be lying in its death throes now.
But.
Little green shoots are suddenly growing out of two empty patches in my herb bed and out of the middle of the “dying” third plant.
From what I just read when I went picture-hunting, that’s absolutely normal behaviour for that plant…. ‘K.
And a last garden thing…
For my birthday I got a flowerpot from the neighbours. Guess it was on discount, as it looked rather Easterly, with a huge fake white egg and a bow made out of greenery stuck into the middle of it… 
Anyway, the main inhabitant of the pot was a hydrangea with white flowers. A, not to put too fine a point on it, shrub. Growing rather nicely out of the 20 by 20cm pot it came in.
Once the weather was stable enough for me to dare allow it out into the wilderness, I got a surprise. Most of the room inside the pot was taken up by plastic foil. The actual inner pot size was about 8cm.
The kind of pot I put my veggie seedlings in.
So.
What kind of plant hating gardener puts a shrub into such a small pot?
I don’t have to mention that it contained more roots than soil, do I?
Oh my, now this is almost a pure garden post.
You poor readers. 
Let me quickly add another topic:
Music.
These days I am listening to a lot of Malicorne, while occasionally cussing the fact that they don’t exist anymore.
If someone invents a time machine, please let me know, I’d really have liked to see those guys live.
*sighs*
Here’s some “videos”. Enjoy the songs (hopefully)!
A capella:
Le Prince d’Orange
Quand je menai mes chevaux boire
And for those with more than 10 minutes to spare:
La fille aux chansons (Marion s’y promène)
Now it’s almost 1am, I am feeling tired and headachy and almost sure that the title of this post is more amusing than the post itself.
Good night, everyone!
June 1st, 2009 at 11:49 am
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yay. she speaks!
These days I am listening to a lot of Malicorne,
What, still?
June 1st, 2009 at 1:36 pm
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Shush, you.
Wow.
‘S hot outside. My shoulders are burning and my brain is making distressing sizzling noises.
I think the chap who invented bird protection nets had a very strange sense of humour and should possibly be flogged.
June 1st, 2009 at 3:48 pm
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A post!
*picks up mouth off the floor*
Welcome back…er…I hope.
Ahh, gardens. We have most of ours in. However, my parents in their infinite wisdom decided to start some of the plants from seed this year in the house. Which is all well and good. However, I rather think they did not acclimate them properly before setting them out in the garden. The poor things are rather whiteish looking. *sigh* Don’t know if they will recover from the major sun scalding, or not.
Of course, considering that we have had barely a drop of rain for the last month, it remains to be seen if the garden as a whole will grow as it should. We water, but it is not as good as a good soaking rain. *sigh*
This year we have onions, spinach, lettuce, peas, cabbage, beans, various peppers, tomatoes and potatoes. Oh, and cantalope. Or at least we are trying to grow those things. The raspberries don’t look too good this year. Not enough rain at the right time.
You are doing blueberries? Mmmm, sounds good.
I’ll have to stop back to listen to the music, Mel.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:48 pm
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A new post, a new post!
*sobs*
I’m so touched!
Your perverse flowers: yuck.
Your bugs: double-yuck! (squish, hrhr…)
Your veggies: yummy!
Your shrub: shame on that gardener!
Toodle-oo
*waves and slouches off*
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:49 pm
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Nasty lily beetles! Read the link. Never heard of them before. Don’t blame you for squishing and mashing.
You have quite a passion for gardening Mel! Have you tried to sell any of your fresh vegetables?
I was in a used book store a few weeks ago and found something interesting in the used CD area. They had an album by Clawfinger. I was not tempted to buy it (not my sort of music), but I was quite surprised to find that they have fans this far afield.
June 6th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
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Yay! Mel is back
*jumping up and down*
Evil red lily bugs! I heard that before
Good that your lilies are safe now
Now it’s time for photos, real photos not wikipedia ones
“Why do weeds grow so much better and faster than pretty, pretty flowers and veggies, eh?!”
Dunno, but maybe they are supposed to be left alone and grow as much as they want? Back in Baghdad we had a small backyard garden and my room had the only door to that garden. At first it was very nice to keep the garden but to let the gardener and my dad to go in and out from my room was annoying. after the war I locked that door and some cute weeds with yellow flowers took over that garden and it looked more like a jungle! but it was green and beautiful
June 8th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
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Attawie, I like weeds too.
I am always amazed by the variety of living things. Many plants that people call weeds actually have very interesting colors, textures, shape of leaves, and flowers. Sometimes, I have imagined simply allowing a garden to grow completely wild just to see what might turn up there.
June 10th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
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@ Lynnette:
A post!
*picks up mouth off the floor*
Pfffffff.
However, I rather think they did not acclimate them properly before setting them out in the garden.
Hhhhm-hm, I tend to neglect that, too.
The courgettes sure got one or two singed leaves each.
Talking about courgettes….. oh, bummer, I can’t.
Must write those almanach posts tucked into the back of my mind….
Oh, yeah, onions. Have them, too. Red ones this year. And leek.
And the beans are creeping out of the ground and starting to wave their leaves. Sweet peas and radishes are showing as well, while the carrots of various colours and the parsnips I am trying this year are still slumbering inside the ground.
Oh, and I bought one sweet corn plant.
@ the Nasty Kitten:
Forgot your meds, hm?
Anyway, you know what’s really yuk? To miss a few eggs and find larvae of those bugs. Or rather to find blackish brown heaps under some leaves….. Those larvae hide inside their own crap…
@ David:
Sell the veggies?! I wanna eat them!!!
Dunno about passion. Maybe in a queer way.
Oh yeah, there’s Clawfinger fans in the US of A. Poor sods. No record company has felt like financing a tour there, so they have to go without. Which is a real shame, as Clawfinger is one hell of a good live band.
(There’s even a very strange Clawfinger fan in Newfoundland. “Boobies!”)
@ Attawie:
Yes, I’m back!
*jumps up and down*
Hm, I even have a few photos…. Later… Promise.
True, there are some weeds that look really nice, but there’s 3 reasons why some weeds simply can never be welcome:
1. Some weeds take over your garden, taking no prisoners along the way, like goutweed
2. If you wanna grow healthy veggies, you need to control even more harmless weeds, cos the veggies need space to grow.
3. Neighbours. If your garden doesn’t at least look weed-free some can be annoying. If you have a plague of goutweed they have every right to be as weeds like that don’t stop with destroying one garden…. although I am almost sure the goutweed originated in the garden of the ppl now being vocally happy about me finding the time to try and kill it.
@ David: Goutweed…..
June 12th, 2009 at 10:36 am
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*phew*
So Mel is still alive…
June 13th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
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I’ve found an interesting way of beating goutweed…
http://tofufortwo.net/2008/05/21/goutweed-soup/
Just EAT it, bwahahahaaaa!
*looks under the bed in the hope of finding her meds before it’s too late*
:-D
June 13th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
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@ Floh: I probably am. Not so sure.
@ Nasty Kitten: Tell me something new.
June 14th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
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Hmmm…just replanted the tomatoes this morning. They had started to come back a little, but the little containers that were supposed to disintegrate appeared not to be, disintegrating, that is. At least the tomatoes hadn’t gotten very much bigger. So we dug them up and took off the little non-disintegrating containers. We’ll see how they grow now.
We had spinach (salad) last night for dinner. That seems to be doing quite well.
Ahh, neighbors. They can be an annoyance at times. Usually they are for the most part nice and quiet. But when summer comes around you’d think we lived at a camp ground the way they have backyard fires. Now, normally, I have always liked a campfire, but that was at, well, a camp. *sigh* I’m not quite sure what kind of wood some of them are choosing to burn, but it is not the nice woodsy scent that you normally have with a campfire. In short, it stinks. And there is the little matter of the open burning ban that is in place now because of the drought. Well, at least I haven’t stooped to calling the fire department on them. But, it’s a thought.
June 18th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
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Hm?
June 19th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
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Did you hear about the shoe stealing German fox? Cute story!