Here is a closer look at the light stand my wonderful husband made for me: The shop lights are suspended from a dowel road with nails in the end. The nail heads fit into links of the chain that runs up and down the side, so the lights can be moved up or down easily as conditions warrant.

I had a complaint today: that I have not updated my blog for a while.... It is not because I have given up farming/gardening, by any means! I have been busy starting seeds in my garage under lights. The weather here has been very nice the last few days so I put the trays outside for the weekend, it is chilling down again tonight, so back under the lights they go.

This light stand was made by my husband for me as a birthday gift before we got married. He hates carpentry but I am thrilled with it. The plans were from a Reader's Digest garden book. If we were to do it again, or build another, I would make the size of the trays different. It is wider than one standard tray, but to short to turn the trays sideways as I have done here, because I don't have enough space for all my trays.

I have many Mortgage Lifter and Brandy Boy tomatoes, and a few salad tomatoes that I saved from last year. Several different varieties of lettuce, mesclun, and roquette, some marigolds, some dill, some combo packs of culinary herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme... and purple ruffles basil, and some regular basil. I have an entire flat of coriander (cilantro) started - that's 72 plants, from seeds saved by a co-worker. I planted some saved green pepper seeds, they've been in the flats for 2 weeks so far, and not a single plant yet. This weekend I planted some asparagus seeds that I saved from a wild plant at the farm. It will be interesting if it sprouts, I will need to find a protected area to plant it here.

So far I have only planted saved seeds and seeds from prior years. Big departure from prior practice - previously I bought seed every year. I had to re-plant the roquette, evidently the first package I tried was too old, but the second is coming up great.

I had planned to till the garden again tonight but we got a thunderstorm this afternoon that drenched it again. The ground is still quite wet.

I called this morning about the Propex 4554 fabric recommended by Mary Jane Butters for weed barrier. The construction company I talked to said they don't have a lot of remnants for that fabric, they sell it mainly in whole roll quantities to road construction companies. They did have some lighter-weight remnants that would probably be equivalent to the fabric sold in a garden store. hmmm.