As the Garden Grows

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Large Seed Pod

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Wordless Wednesday

Does this look familiar to anyone?

daturaseedpod4

What could this be? A very well disguised grenade? An ancient weapon of torture? Believe me touching one of these is torturous, those thorns are very prickly and sharp.

It’s a seed pod and it’s at least the size of a golf ball or a regular sized plum if not bigger. Actually, looking at the photo I’d say that it was about that size when I took the photo.

This seed pod forms immediately after the short lived flower drops off. It takes a week or more for the seed pod to reach this size. Seed pods form throughout the growing season. I’ve found that if I remove the seed pods – naturally with heavy gloves or by carefully positioning my pruners I get more flowers than I would if I left the pods on.

This flower is not hardy to my Canadian zone 6a, or USD zone 5B garden, but I seem to miss a seed pod or two each year, or so I think, and the plant regrows each summer.

I have two of these plants. One has large white flowers and the other has very pale mauve flowers. The blooms have a heavenly almost jasmine like scent, but it’s leaves smell when crushed between the fingers. I can’t describe the smell well – rank, musky, unpleasant.

Oh yes, this plant is said to have been used by native Indians for it’s hallucinatory properties – even though it is a very poisonous plant.

What type of plant does this seed pod come from?

Update: For those of you who were wondering – it’s a DATURA seed pod.






Looking for love in the UK

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Loopy Love. Isn’t that a great name for the first UK free online singles dating site. I think it is. I thought that perhaps some of my UK readers who might be trying to find love in the UK might want to check out Loopy love.

The site states that each week, two or three marriages occur between members who met on Loopy love, and that there are 100’s of satisfied members as well.

What’s different about this online dating company, when compared to others, is that there is no initial joining fee. That’s right the service is totally free since it’s funded by the advertising on the site. Now, how many free online or otherwise dating sites are you aware of? Probably very few. Most dating sites charge the male members at the very least.

You can begin your very first search from the front page. Simply choose who you are looking for, man or woman, select the age group that you are interested in, then list an area of the UK in which to find your new love, and hit the quick search button and see how many potential matches you’ve made.

Once you are registered, you are a full member. This only takes minutes BTW, and you’ll be able to do more in depth searches. It would probably be a good idea to complete your profile, and include a photo of yourself first before you start searching. Just in case you make a quick match. Then, once you’ve registered you can run full searches that include more detail than the quick search on the front page, such as searching for someone with a specific hair colour, eye colour, body type, height, ethnicity, religion, education, employment, industry, income, whether they drink or smoking and so on.

All of the members are from the UK, so where ever you are in the UK you should be able to find someone close by who wants to try dating. Maybe several some bodies if you are really lucky. You can receive match alerts by email, plus chat with other members online before meeting them too. I almost forgot, along with adding photos to your profile, there is a video profile option as well. What could be better than seeing a potential match via video.

Visit Loopy love if you are looking to date someone in your area.

Growing seedlings in the back porch

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We have an unheated enclosed porch at the back of our house and I use this area to start seeds in March and early April. Well, to be completely honest, some seeds get started indoors in late February or early March and then as the weather begins to warm by the end of March and early April I often end up with most of my seedlings in the back porch area where I have one of those small three shelved plastic covered green houses.

The room is on the South side of the house and it gets a lot of sunlight through the windows and uhm corrugated green plastic ceiling (how classy!) from early morning to mid-afternoon or so. In the summer we can’t go in this room unless the window is open as it just gets too hot. In the winter the back porch is reasonably comfortable in the day time even in January or February. So This is a good place to grow plants for the garden.

I am thinking of getting some blinds for the windows in the back porch because I think they might help deflect a little bit of the sunlight and consequently the heat that builds up in the room. of course, there’s that corrugated green plastic roof that covers the back porch. It lets a lot of light in as well. Oh and the cold of winter, and heat of summer.

The back porch has wood paneling- dark wood paneling and I’ve been thinking of white washing the wood so the room will be bright. I wouldn’t actually use white on the walls though but a very pale green/white wash. So I’m trying to decide if I should get natural wood or bamboo blinds or the regular metallic kind. I guess I have a few months to think about this because I’m certainly not going to be doing anything else out there this year.

Where do you grow your seedlings? Do you start them indoors under grow lights?

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