General Discussion & Chat: Coffee and...part 8 :-D, 0 by MaryE

MaryE wrote:
Break time. Got my tea, looking to see what's on the counter......

I did find those last few words quite easily after not looking at it for a while. Crosswords, ugh, I don't do too well with those because too many of the clues are stuff about movies (seldom watch any), movie stars, (blank on that one mostly), and popular music (which I don't care for and never listen to). Sometimes I do the Unscramble puzzle. I think it is definitely good to exercise our brains with this sort of thing. My daughter-in-law is into crosswords, so we got her a couple of crossword helper type books for Christmas.

A while ago I drove down to the neighbor's barn to see if they did have some lambs last night. Nope, but unfortunately there is a dead ewe in the field. She might have been having digestive problems last night instead of labor. Her ear tag indicates that she is 7 years old, which is getting pretty old for a sheep. I looked at her teeth, they were getting pretty flat and spread so she probably would have been sold next summer. It is a disappointing way to start lambing season. One or two are lost every year from one sort of natural cause or another. Coyote loss is another problem. Part of life on a farm is loosing a few, something that can't be entirely eliminated. Some that we think will live just die in spite of what we try to do for them, and some we think are sure to die surprise us and live anyhow.

The rain quit about noon and I have been out picking up things to add to the burn pile and digging out some bad weeds, the one I call the Weed from Hell is a mallow, deep rooted, spreading, makes seeds, comes up from broken roots. That one does not go in the compost, it goes on the burn pile.

I got some white lily seeds in the mail, they will get at least 3 ft high. Don't know the name and I don't think the person I got them from knows either. So, I am soaking some peat moss to use for starter medium, will just put them in a ziplock on top of the referigerator like I did some that I saved from my own plants. Lily seeds look so flat it makes me wonder if there is anything there but a shell.

Last fall I took seeds from 2 of my lilys when I cut the plants down, one batch sprouted, the other didn't. I am just about to put the little plants in the referigreator for a couple of months to give them a "winter" and hope they will bloom this summer. I understand that even though they came off a red plant they could turn out any color. This is fun! Some Siberian Iris seed I got off ebay are now outside in a plastic bottle with soilless mix, hopefully well on their way to waking up. That batch got soaked 24 hours in hydrogen peroxide, then 10 more days in 1/2 water. Since the germ rate is expected to be about 50% maybe this treatment will give me a couple more plants from the 10 seeds.

For whoever was planting the tiny seeds using tweezers...... I have used a wet toothpick and scraped the seeds off that one with a dry one. You can make a tiny pennant to put on the toothpick for a nametag while the babies sprout, everything in miniature!

Got to get back outside while there is daylight. Oh, here is a pic of those Iris Reticulata. Bright aren't they!!