Flowers and Pests

So I decided that we needed more flowers in the garden and I happened to be browsing the flowers outside the grocery store, so inevitably I brought some more flowers. The first thing that caught my eye was a Coleus (Solenostemon scutellarioides "Black Dragon".) How could I resist a plant whose foliage looks like dark purple velvet? So I grabbed the last one they had and looked for something to go with it. I saw some stocks (Matthiola incana) and thought they would be great for scent and they would tolerate the shade that the Coleus likes, so into the cart they went. I then spotted some "brain" Celosia (Celosia argentea var. cristata) which is one of my favorites, when I was a kid my parents always got some for me to plant in the garden. At first I wanted them to go with the Coleus because I thought that would look really cool but Celosia like full sun so I stuck with the Stocks and looked for something to go with the Celosia.

Now I had always planned to get some Marigolds (Tagetes patula) for the garden as they repel pests like white fly on the tomatoes (and because of their associations with Dias de los Muertos) so when I saw them I knew they were what I was going to put with the Celosia. I love the color combination of magenta, orange and yellow, it's unusual but it works and really flowers never clash anyway. So we will see how my foray into garden design goes as the plants mature, see if the combinations are still pleasing and see if the plants are compatible with each other. The last plant I bought was a sage, all I need now is a Thyme or two and we will have all the herbs we need for cooking! 

Speaking of flowers, all the buds on the roses have bloomed and it seems to be doing okay, except I noticed some strange oil like substance on the leaves. I didn't put it on there, it didn't seem to be coming from the patio roof or anything, it doesn't smell like anything, it's yellowish in color and I don't think the rose likes it because some of the leaves had black spots in them (which of course could be a touch of black spot and have nothing to do with the oil.) I couldn't find anything on the Internet about it so I wiped the leaves off the best I could and i will keep an eye on it. I thought maybe it could be from an animal but it doesn't smell like anything, thankfully! The last thing I need is animal markings all over the patio!

The wildflowers are starting to sprout despite my heavy handed watering technique,hopefully enough of them will come up to make a nice container wildflower garden, I have no idea what flowers are in the mix but I would like something to attract bees.

Unfortunately the Morning Glories aren't doing to well, I'm not sure why. A few of them the stems just withered and the rest look a little peaky, the larger ones seem to be doing better but only time will tell. They might have had too much trauma to their roots during re-potting, if I lose all of them I will start over and sow them in plantable pots like the peat pots but using a peat free alternative like coir which is made from waste coconut shells. I realized I was using products made out of peat and I need to stop which means I also will need to change my potting soil, which kind of sucks because the stuff I was using was good and inexpensive, but not destroying the peat bogs and their habitats is more important than me getting cheap soil! 

Now that the garden is growing both in amount of plants and in plant growth, the chance of pests and problems grows with it. I was checking over the plants last night when I made a horrible discovery! Aphids on the Habaneros! I immediately googled and saw my best bet to combat the little critters without chemicals was a soap spray to kill them and just hand picking them off. I wanted to use a mild soap so it wouldn't damage the plants so I used my homemade soap and sprayed and picked. I got just about every aphid I could find off the plants, they had favored one in particular for some reason, and this morning there were almost no aphids.  I repeated the soap spray and I also noticed that the Chocolate peppers had a few on them so they got the same treatment. They don't seem to have gone for any other plants yet but I am keeping an eye out as this is war and it is a war I will win! 

The good news is that despite the bugs, the weather, and cloudy days this week, everything seems to be doing really well. The dill is putting on adult dill leaves, the fennel has exploded with new growth, the patio tomatoes is full of fruit and the heirloom tomato is full of blossoms. The Jalapeño and Cilantro seedlings are all still doing well but hopefully they won't get leggy looking for the sun, they look like they are reaching a bit. But even the heat and sun loving herbs like the basil and rosemary seem to be patiently waiting for the sun to come back out. Everything will be going back in place either tonight or tomorrow, as soon as the cold North wind dies down, I don't want to lose anything else to it. It looks like most of the cucumbers are going to live but another bout with that wind would finish them off, the same with the morning glories. Until then the rest of today will be spent finishing the plant hangers so they can all start living in the sun again and hopefully this will be the last really cold snap until Autumn!

Science? Or marketing BS?

my soap and bath bombs

So we sell this product and a few others like it at work, it's a Scientific Explorer Spa "Science" Kit (the quotes around science are mine.) Now I'm a bit conflicted with this, on one hand it's perhaps a way to interest girls in science and chemistry by having them make something they enjoy. On the other it reinforces the idea that if a girl is going to interested in science, it better be the science of making her pretty, because that's really what matters. Now don't get me wrong, you all know I love making stuff like this, recently Jen, Colleen, Jack and I all made our own cold process soap, bath fizzies (which I left in the plastic bag instead of taking them out to finish drying so they all expanded and stuck together which is why they look like blobs, they still work though), and body butters. I bought a bunch of fragrance oils and I made different scents, I love this stuff. But I'm not sure that these kinds of kits are really about science or girls learning science. I even opened one at work to see if there was any actual science inside, and there was, a bit. In the instructional booklet there is a paragraph about how the olfactory system works, not too bad, and a survey the child can fill out about of how the scents affected them, (basically aromatherapy) which is an experiment I guess but seems a bit iffy scientifically to me. Mostly the text went on about yummy smells, pampering, that sort of thing. I read some reviews on amazon and it seems I'm not alone in feeling these toys are in fact sending the wrong message. Most of the other science kits are fairly gender neutral and usually have both a boy and a girl on them doing science-y things, only one bothers me though, it's a chemistry set and the boy on the front is looking into a microscope at a bug (that's sounds like biology not chemistry but whatever) but the girl is looking at some sparkly rainbow pinwheel thing and the caption near her says "It's chemistry! Make beautiful ornaments!" While his caption says "Perform tons of activities and experiments!" Hmmm... Now I don't have any kids but what do you all think about this? Gender bias and weasel marketing or no big deal?

The other product that really bothers me is this Plaid iron on transfer for babies. It reads "Does this diaper make my butt look big?" Really? I mean I realize the babies can't read the damn thing but what disturbs me is that people think it's cute and funny. I don't think is either of these things, is anyone else as disturbed by this kind of thing as I am?