bad, bad thoughts about LED and seeds

Thanks to someone from ravelry who's also in my local fiber guild, I have been shown this gardening post...and I am now thinking bad, bad thoughts about using LED lights and so forth to start my seeds this year. Plus it has the added bonus of keeping the little green babies safe from the curious paws (and occasional outright clueless flumping) of George, aka attitude-boy. If I succeed (i.e., if I manage to summon up the necessary ambition to create this crazy item...) I'll be sure to post photographic evidence of it up here. I promise.

Tis the season for soup

onion soup, originally uploaded by Margo and George.

Foiled in my attempts to grow a winter crop of radishes, carrots and other root vegetables, I am at least still taking comfort in soup with root vegetables (note how this onion soup became rather carrot-heavy).

In other news, I have learned that our community gardens will open a little earlier this year, on April 4th (Yay!!!!) so I now feel I have some planning to do. Also, the Duchess of 78A may yet return to the plot (the logistics were, for her, an understandable challenge, given her lengthy commute from the office...) so I may still have a gardening-buddy over in the wilds of the garden plots. If not, it'll be me and the woodchucks, the pheasants and the bluebirds. And hopefully Theo the toad (I hope!).

Until spring arrives, though, I have to contend with the constant of snow, or 'poor man's fertilizer' as well as the basic urge to curl up under the covers and go into hibernation like any other sensible small animal (and even large animals) at this time of year. No dice on that though; what would my employers say?! So instead I knit furiously, attend a reading from time to time, and read gardening books. My fundamental re-read is of course Dame Damrosch's Garden Primer; but I have some nifty books on weeds, such as All About Weeds and Common Weeds of the U.S.; as last season demonstrated that there are a number of native 'weeds' growing in my plot that are edible. Nom nom!

Also I've acquired a couple of fun reads, that I guess are simply inspiring rather than practical, but then again I am an urban gardener, so...maybe more practical than I'm giving credit... On Guerrilla Gardening, (not to be mistaken for the similarly titled Guerrilla Gardening: a Manualfesto), and Fresh Food from Small Spaces, as well as Kurlansky's The Last Fish Tale (I'm a big fan of Salt as well).

If I had more room in my little apt., yes, I would indeed have set up a grow-light arrangement. Sadly, no can do. *sigh*

...back to planning the garden. Only 3 more months...