As Promised

I snapped some quick shots on my way into the house yesterday as I promised! Here they are (again, sorry for the poor quality of my poor little iPhone!):

Morning Glories shooting up in less than a week:

Arugula - same time frame!

Zinnias:

Last year was my first attempt at growing any type of potatoes. I tried sweet potatoes (I try to cook with those more often for health reasons...), and it worked BEAUTIFULLY!!! I just soaked some pieces that has started to sprout "eyes"/roots on them in cups of water in the windowsill, then when the roots had grown significantly, I just dug a hole in the ground and tossed them in! The plants got HUGE! Unfortunately, I don't think I ever snapped a picture of those plants... ALSO unfortunate: The winter frost murdered them before we got any potatoes from it :( THIS year I'm starting WAY earlier with hopes of Homegrown Spuds! I haven't planted any Sweets yet, but these are the Small Red Potatoes that I tossed in a couple of weeks ago - they are growing at an incredible rate! They are already so much more developed this morning from this picture (taken yesterday afternoon)!

In this second Potato shot, you can see the Butternut Squash seedlings that I mentioned a few posts ago - still UBER excited about those showing up this year!!!! :)

I feel like I almost lived at IKEA Frisco this past weekend (NOT complaining... i LOVE that place...) - I went on Saturday with Kelley after we attended a "Make Your Own Rain Barrel" class there in Frisco (we were so close! how could we NOT have stopped by?! haha). I'll definitely have to post about the class sometime in the near future. We took a picture next to our barrell after we finished making it, and I want to get one more when she and Jer get it all set up at their place - sort of a before and after thing! So be on the lookout for that post! :)

Anyhow... All that just to tell you that I got several houseplants for our new home while I was there on Saturday, and I got some great ceramic pots for them to live in while I was there with Jen again on Sunday (she needed to go, and what kind of a friend would I be to allow here to go all the way to IKEA alone?!) :) I'll post pictures of the plants IN the pots (you can sort of see them stacked up together at the bottom of the shot) whenever I get a chance to go pick up some more potting soil... Somehow I've managed to go through a HUGE bag in less than a week and a half... haha. I can't wait to be in the new house and figure out exactly where these little babies will park themselves (have i mentioned before how anxious I am for the new house to be ready for us??). :)

Also in the picture above, you may notice a little sprout shooting up from the hunter green pot in the top right corner of the shot. THAT little bugger (we think it's a squash?? there's another one in there, too...) was some sort of accidental sprout that developed in Kel and Jer's garden just from recycled soil from last year's garden! HAHA They are finding TONS of those in all of the starter pots in which she's reusing soil... lots of tomatoes, squashes, etc. Next year she may not have to even BUY seeds if it happens again... :)

After we visited IKEA on Saturday, we spend a good 30 minutes or so attempting to dig out some blackberry and raspberry vines that grow wild in their front yard. We wanted to see if we could transplant them into some pots... I'm pretty sure we did a great job of FAILING... They all died in a matter of 1 day... DANG! I should Google "how to transplant blackberries" before our second attempt...