sleet a cometh.....

Sleet is a coming.










So to keep my baby plants warm and protected from the weight of sleet, I gather all the milk jugs/"frat boy" red cups/cottage cheese containers I can find in the recycle bin. Being a dad of four kids, I have lots of milk containers!! :-0

Then I cover with an old shower curtain and sheets.














Then the finishing touch with a good 'ole blue tarp.














It's the ghetto-farm boy version of lasagna!!

Hope it keeps my baby plants warm and protected.

survived the cold? for now....maybe.

Well I think my lettuce and pea babies survived this week's "touch of the the north". It was 20 degrees several nights. I armed the plants with covers of milk jugs and heavy tarps to keep out the cold.

Here is what they look like today. Some of the lettuce actually grew. Tough lil' buggers.














Today is 65 degrees and overcast with rain coming. So I used the warm and wet weather to plant the spinach youngins'. They were looking a little sad in the shed. Think it wanted to be free to grow. We'll see.....














Here are are the Earliana and Roma tomatos in the shed. I kept the fluorescent bulbs on today since it was overcast. The light gives them an angelic glow. Perhaps a sign of much produce come June! ;0)

burrr.....

Last night the temperature was 20 degrees. Ouch! And tonight is not that much better.







So I resorted to three layers of plastic and empty milk jugs over my lil lettuce and pea plants.
Live babies plants live!!!!! You can make it until Wed!!!! Spring is a comin'!!

cups of dirt now planted

So I planted my lil cups of dirt yesterday.

Planted lettuce and pea seeds in Dora the Explorer cups on January 15th. I set up a ghetto-rig green house with florescence lights to be the sun and incandescence light to be the heat.
















Work so far.

Now they are planted in the garden. Many frost filled nights ahead.















Hopefully the plastic shower curtain (background) will protect my lil' plants.

new vigor

Motivated to start blogging again. So here we go.

A little background.

I have a fear of writing. Not a fear as an uncomforatalbe feeling; a fear as in terrified "i'm 'bout to pee my pants" type of fear. (example the the last sentence took me 20 minutes to write). My fear... it's called dyslexia or something like that. It grips me into a procrastinating fear lots of times (actually, all the time).

So I don't write or blog and all the God is teaching me goes forgotten or unsaid or both.

But despite my fear but I will push through and write. Because I think I have some stuff to share. Lots of it will be sucky writing, but better than nothing; which is what I have been doing.

This reboot of the blog will be the sum of my adventures in growing a:
garden,
family,
and church.

probably mostly gardening, but we'll see.

I renamed it "cup of dirt" because of my past, present, and future loves.

Past: I used to be a geologist and love any kind of rock, dirt, or mud. dirt for me always brings a sense of opportunity. (still do love dirt and still consider myself a geologist)

Present: I love me some veggie gardening. The fact that I can plant lil' seeds and eat big fruit later is so cool! However, the seeds start off in little cups of dirt that show little to no promise. But a little love, correct temperature, water, light and POOF out comes a plant.

Future: Currently I am a counselor, pastor, mentor which is very similar to a my old geology gig Trust me it is very similar (look for a post on this in the future). Sometimes people are like cups of dirt, just needing the correct care to grow as God intended.

So come back often to read my tales of growing stuff.

-T