Mail order mulch

I know very few (read: no) other 30-year olds, married or single, who still get care packages from their parents. However, because I am lucky and my parents are totally awesome, I still do on a regular basis. This time it was full of random items (clothes and the ever-present box of tissues) that my mother had accumulated and meant to give to me during their cancelled trip to Boston. What really excited me, though, was the enclosed message that noted the packing peanuts my mother had used are corn based, and she suggested watering them into my garden. My parents are always so supportive of my endeavors!

A poor man's mulch. I think I'll top-dress some tomatoes.

There's not enough to cover all of my plants, so I'll put them in two of my tomato pots. And then I'll have a legitimate excuse to water - gotta dissolve them! I will try to water lightly, though - we're supposed to get a pretty heavy rainstorm in Boston on Sunday, and I am still paranoid about killing my plants with love/water-smothering.

One of the two seed trays. The barren rows (second and fourth) are one pea variety and one hybrid mix of sweet peppers. If they don't sprout, I'll probably return to Home Depot (any excuse!) and get another pepper plant.

In other news, I have sprouts! Several! I'm most excited about the sugar snap pea sprouts, but they've now grown so large that the germination sheet doesn't stay put, so I hope the rest of the seeds will be ok without it. I'm disappointed that I've gotten no sprouts for the other peas or the bell pepper mix (although I did buy one pepper plant that's already been repotted, so I will have at least some peppers this summer), but it's only day 6 after setting up the trays, so I'm still holding out hope. On the other hand, there is at least one seedling coming up for each of the herbs I planted, which I'm disproportionately psyched about.

According to my awesome diagram, I have at least one sprout of each herb I planted! I'll have to thin them later. I should also mention that I plucked out some early ones coz I was paranoid they were bug larvae. True story.

I returned to Home Depot earlier in the week, which led to enough planters to repot all of the plants I purchased (done on Tuesday evening while watching Jeopardy - my nerdy version of time perfectly-spent), as well as a moment of weakness that led to two more strawberry plants, one Sequoia and one Ozark Beauty. My balcony is filling up quite nicely. I am not sure where I will put all of the seedlings once they are ready for replanting - maybe my neighbors won't mind some greenery on their half of the balcony?

This berry shortcake has nothing to do with gardening. But I made it (baking powder biscuits from scratch, whipped the cream by hand with a whisk) and it was SO GOOD. That is all.