Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Planting Basil, Replenishing the Milkweed, and Sneaking In An Extra Dog Walk


 I'm still picking up the house from the interior remodel we had done over the fall.  

It's not the highest of priorities, we had the holidays and some other more pressing projects in between.  

I came back from an appointment today and rapidly got bored.  You can only watch so much news until it warps your brain.

There is a box that is camping out on my table.  Well, really, mom's table but that brown furniture has a habit of getting passed along.  Solid Maple drop leaf table in the dining room with a box on top.  It has strange items in it and the box exists because I ordered some things once and realized it was a great way to corral some home improvement items together.

White glue,
Sandpaper,
Shipping Tape,
Tiny Paint Brushes...

That sort of thing.  A Party in the Home Improvement Store's Aisle kind of stuff.

It also had an old worn plastic bag in it.  That bag has gold in it in the form of my collected seeds.


Flower seeds from a good friend's celebration of life.
Some Basil seeds, and trust me, you want fresh basil on your pizza.
Bell Pepper seeds from a particularly tasty orange bell pepper years back.
And my stash of Mexican Milkweed seeds.

I got a Bright Idea.  I get those.  Particularly in the arm pit of an afternoon when the weather is nice and I'm sitting around looking to do creative things.

I grabbed the Basil and the Milkweed and had a walk around the property.  The property has drip feed irrigation all around.  I use that because it can be depended upon to be legal to water plants with this even in a drought in the dry season.  Typically where I have a pot under irrigation, I have a second one lower so that it can catch the overflow.  The pots are a playground for me to dump cuttings and seeds.  The ones on the ground tend to be propagation and the higher ones are where the Orchids grow.


It makes for a nice display when the plants are in bloom, and an ecological display for when they are not.

I started walking around looking into pots and dropping seeds.  Since the Monarchs can't eat Basil, I was able to mix the Milkweed in with them.  Like the Corn-Beans-Squash three sisters, there are certain things that just work.

I get my beans and corn from the market anyway.

So among my weeds are some seeds.  I'll have Basil to go with the pizza and the Monarchs which are currently in chrysalis will have food for the future little wrigglies.


Since I was not able to use all my Milkweed, I'll pass some on to the nature preserve at M. E. DePalma park on the next dog walk.  There are a few little milkweed plants there and you never have milkweed for long!

And who knows.  The last time I found an "Air Plant", Tillandsia, it had a seed pod that was ripe.   That kept me entertained on a long walk around town and through the park setting rare species seeds back into an appropriate habitat.  I know that they survived because strangely there are some more air plants around here than there were before.

Bottom line is if you like air, plant a tree.
If you want to fight climate change, plant a tree.
Just plant a damn tree regardless!

No comments:

Post a Comment