HOWL project 1 DURING

Here are some pictures of the beds that have been cleaned out! Next step is new soil, an irrigation plan, and planting -which will be in September :) HERE ARE THE BEFORE

And here is the Prairie Garden

It needs some TLC SOOOOO BAD!!!! That is our "greenhouse" buried in that mess! lol! Do you see the Cardinal on the table? That was a lucky shot! :)

HOWL project 1 BEFORE

Here are some pictures of the "before", it will take awhile to do this project cause "bureaucrats" are involved..... ya know how that is....

new camera try out

I got my new camera.... unless I wanted to spend a $1000; best I could afford. So far, I'm pretty happy with it. Not TOO complicated but still a lot to learn about.

These are my coneflowers, I cannot believe that they actually are growing in my yard.

pretty little "weed" flower. :)

and I have a pepper! lol!

my poor dying raised bed.

some nice fat rose hips! Gonna try rose hip tea for the first time this year OR I may just save them for seed and try growing roses from seed.

some of my sweet mint, gonna be good on chilly winter evenings!

HOWL'S THAT!

So the "HOWLandscaping committee" is official! lol! love it! It stands for "Habitat of Wellness Landscaping Committee". HOWL's that??? lol! They will begin removal sometime this month so we can plant this september!! a medicinal garden for ASU!!! I'm gonna leave a mark, even if it's gonna be brown (and green)! LOL!!!

Basically what has happened is this person (me) had a fit when the grounds people at school ripped out some mighty fine specimens behind my building that I have been using for teaching purposes for years. WELL, this person (me) had a fit and called and emailed and basically bitched and cried about it to (gasp) the RIGHT person! So we arranged a meeting and talked about how we use the various trees and plants in teaching and the grounds manager agreed we NEED to be able to do this so "let's form a committee and do some things to help you out!"

yay! And that is how the HOWLandscaping committee was formed, from bitching and tears! Well, we are getting the "ok" for using unused areas of "forest" and they will be cleaning them up and making trails YAY! and we have been approved to take over some planting beds on the "other side" of my building for a medicinal garden! Since it is too hot to plant right now, that gives us plenty of time to remove the plants there (cultivated "non-medicinal") and putting in new soil and planting the new plants in about September.

I am SO EXCITED!!! This is something that I will be able to "pass on" to my students, even after I'm gone! (hence the "mark", lol)

I've GOT to get a new camera and get some before and after pictures!

I am still so surprised at how much "they" actually listen to ME! (and "they" have professors in "them")

BTW, I'm the one that came up with the name too! Ok, one of the professors, Dr. Marsico did help with "wellness", we kinda thought of it at the same time but he was about a half of a second ahead of me. lol! Plus the name fits with our school mascot: the Red Wolves.

So tomorrow, if it's NOT too hot, a stop at Best Buy for a look at the camera's and maybe I'll be able to get pictures on Thursday! :)

have a great day!

A pretty good article on our soil

I've found a pretty good article that explains about how our soil can be losing micro-nutrients. I like how he points out that comparing GMO's to Hybrids is pretty useless.


HERE IS THE LINK: THE DANGERS OF MINERAL DEPLETION

I think I may check out the book he talks about too.

Have a great day!

Plant identification

If you are looking for a quick little Plant ID booklet of edible plants, I found one for you.

IT IS HERE AT PREPPERS

And they have a decent poisonous plant ID booklet you can download also and print out and take with you.

HERE IS THE POISONOUS PLANT ID

Both are quick to download. :) have fun!

some of the plants I've seen around campus

the above flower is actually from the pot in the way way back there. Here is a close up of the flower, it's called "Mother of a Thousand". It usually reproduces asexually and this is the first time I ever saw any actually flower.

Morning walk about

I decided to finally take some pictures of what is "waking up" in my yard.

The hyacinth is blooming pretty :)

this pretty is growing in my backyard just in the middle of the grass. I'll have to look up the name.

This tiny daffodil is also growing in the middle of the backyard. I'm hoping to transplant these this year.

yes my straw is growing! I had bought one of those tiny bales that wally world had last fall for "fall decorations" thinking "wow, nice dry and dead straw! perfect size!" and what does it do? but GROW in the pots my strawberries are in. I got to protect the strawberries!!!! Now I'm almost afraid to begin to pull it out because this stuff has roots! sigh! lol!

now for the brats that seem determined to adopt me and my yard. Let's follow them, well maybe just the one since the others were harder to follow:

What???

Seriously, quit following me! I WILL dig up all your plants!