Springtime frenzy

The Master Gardener classes have begun! I'll be very busy over the next few months as I have signed up for 50 hours of training plus 50 hours of volunteer work with the Crawford County Master Gardeners. Saturday's class was on soils, and this week we are meeting at the OSU farm in Bucyrus on Tuesday and were told to bring our pruners.

I've been busy filling my greenhouse with shelves and trays of seeds. Of course I mixed up my seed-starting mixture on Friday from a bag of commercial organic potting soil, a bag of perlite, a bag of composted manure, and a bag of play sand, then on Saturday we learned that sand isn't the best addition to a seed-starting mix. Oh, well, we'll see how it works.

The greenhouse came on Thursday last week, I put it up the same evening, then we took off for the farm on Friday with oldest grandson, so I didn't even get to do anything with it until Monday night. I put some shelving up on Monday night, but put it too close to the back wall. Murphy's law struck, the disaster happened. The tomato and eggplant seeds I had so carefully started a week ago under lights in the garage were on the shelf when the gust of wind hit the wall and knocked the shelf over, so all my little inch-high seedlings fell into the grass. Just like a piece of buttered toast, the "good" side fell on the floor first. I spent the next several hours searching for seedlings and carefully putting them back into the seed tray. I probably was able to save half of them..... Oh, well, it could have been worse. I had only started two trays (of 72 plugs each....waaaaaahhhhh!).

I got home from work tonight and found the latest Mary Jane's farm magazine in my mailbox! I had my grandson with me, we had planned to go to the library but too late, I found that Story Hour is over for the season. So I brought him home with me to see the greenhouse. I reluctantly put the magazine aside, and we went outdoors. We planted some zinnia seeds in a pot, and I let him water several of the trays. Being four years old, he is impatient for things to grow, and loses interest quickly when they don't come up right away when he waters them. I spent the next half hour chasing him through the backyards in the neighborhood; then got smart and took him to the park across the street. He was less impressed than I was with the bald eagle flying over the water - he was far more impressed with the 8-inch long crappies that the fishermen were pulling out of the water, and the minnows swimming around in the bait cans. I spent another hour chasing him around the park, then took him home. He didn't want to go, but I promised him a fishing rod of his own for the next trip.

Then I opened up MJF magazine. Once again, beautiful, beautiful pictures, and the articles just remind me so much of the traditional things that a "farmgirl at heart" holds dear. Each magazine is better than the one before, I can't imagine how much love and heart is poured into each issue. I was REALLY SURPRISED when I got to page 32 and found that one of my posts from the Farmgirl connection forum made it to hard copy of the magazine! See my original post at http://www.maryjanesfarm.org/snitz/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4681 - or better yet, RUN to Barnes and Noble and pick up your own copy of the magazine (or order it directly from Mary Jane!) Here's a photo of a new generation of Maybelline lovers - my grandson said "This is way fun" when we rode around the farm picking up brush with Maybelline - and when we left the farm, he said "I love Maybelline!" although he found her a little rusty. I reminded him she and Tow-Mater from his favorite movie Cars look a lot alike...