Welcome To The Jungle...

...we got fun and games, we got every plant you want, but we don't know their names! That's the truth, I have no idea what half of the plants are that I have around the apartment. Last night we acquired three more additional plants, they arn't exactly small ones either. In fact, one is named Andre - as in Andre the Giant. That bring the number of plants in the apartment to sixteen - I had two more, but they have not survived due to several different cirumstances.

The challenge right now is to figure out where to keep all the plants so they can get enough sunlight. That's one of the back things about a basement apartment - the sunlight isn't easy to find. The house sits looking to the northeast and our backyard faces the southwest, so we don't get a lot of sunlight until later afternoon - and then it suddenly the sun is behind the mountains. I do enjoy having the plants around the house though. It is amazing to me how much more inviting they make a home look. Likewise I have taken a greater appreciation to homes with landscaping or lack of for that matter. I have also found it interesting how the plants respond to temperature changes and humidity changes. During the fall my skin becomes very dry, and I can see when the plants begin to experience the lack of humidity as well.

Here's the new plants waiting on the deck to go inside. A little creative mind will be needed to properly place them, but you know me, I can think as obscure as possible when needed.Yesterday afternoon I was checking out the garden, at least what remains of it. The pumpkins are rippening nicely and I even spotted a few more strawberries turning red. We have a bunch of potatos and carrots to pull as well. As I was weeding through the potatoes I was surprised by something unexpected. "What's this? It can't be! Wow, a cucumber!" There it was, growing right under the potato leaves. This whole time I had thought that the cucumbers were a lost cause, but looks like we are gonna get one outta the deal. Ha ha! I guess, one cucumber for a ten cent bag of seeds isn't that bad - can't buy one at the store for ten cents anyway.

The pumpkins really spread out as well. One plant even grew nearly the entire distance of the side driveway. You can see it was a pretty lengthy vine - and yes, you can see Brooklyn was encouraging me to keep kicking her tennis ball while I was taking pictures! We thought we only had two orange pumpkings, they look really good too. They are well rounded and firm - we have two more additonal pumpkins that are growing at the end of the long vine you can see, they are not orange though.

Well, like I said, we thought we only had two orange pumpkins. Turns out we have three - one was hiding, just like the cucumber. This one was under some pumpkin leaves and had started growing between the decorative stump and the railroad tie I placed for the edge of the garden. It was in a tight space, and it's a little deformed from the restrictive room. It is also a lot smaller than the other pumpkins, but a pumpkin none-the-less.



Laura made it back to Missoula in one piece. I picked her up at the airport at 11:30 pm - it is amazing the number of people flying with animals and carrying pet crates around at the airport. I sat in front of the airport for 15 minutes and counted three or four come out the doors, need I remind everything this was at 11:30 at night? Maybe that isn't odd, but I found it amusing.

To round off the day's good news, the street cleaners came by and have our street looking much better. We were in need of some cleaning around here, a lot of pine needles, leaves, rocks, and plain ole' garbage. Thanks Mr. Streetsweeper!Until again

-=Nolan=-