Totally unmotivated. It's cold. It's wet. It's windy. The entire property is soggy. My big gardening accomplishment yesterday was finally getting the Front Border tidied and pulling a small patch of winter cress in the South Border. By the end of that half hour, my fingers were numb, my feet were wet despite boots, and I felt like I'd never be warm again. Today looks like a reprise of the same. At least there's a bit of sun. I've got a ton of laundry to get out, first load is churning away even as we speak. I miss my old washing machine. That bugger could turn out a clean load in about 30 minutes, start to finish, and you could toss in whatever at any time throughout the cycle. This "improved" scybalum I have now takes FOREVER to do a load and the lid locks after the wash cycle. It won't fill while the lid is up. Who comes up with these things? I long for my mom's old wringer washer that we filled with a hose and emptied into the floor drain. In a pinch or on a good day, we could even roll it outside and do the laundry on the back porch.
On a brighter note, I've got more flats of seeds started in the kitchen. Lettuce, okra, chinese cabbage, sage, and oregano. Those last three are iffy. The seeds are from 2020 and I don't know how vital they are. Today I'm making up flats for my annual flowers: marigolds, zinnias, cosmos and amaranth (Love Lies Bleeding...creepy name, creepy flower, but I saw it in a "jungle" garden and it's creepiness worked beautifully). I'm holding off on starting the castor beans, morning glories and calendula (may just direct sow those last two), and the sunflowers; I think those will go in next week.
Today I'm going to try an experiment with catmint cuttings. I have fair success getting catmint cuttings to root in water, but I have some fibrous blocks of something that looks sort of like fiberglass batting and I want to try rooting some cuttings in that. I was given a whole wodge of these little yellow blocks several years ago and they've sat in the greenhouse doing nothing. The instructions say to soak them, squeeze out excess, insert the cuttings, put everything into something that will retain moisture, and hey, presto...rooted cuttings. We'll see.
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