Emerging From Chillpocalypse

I know you northerners won't appreciate our struggle down here, but it actually has been an unusually cool spring in Austin.

I've actually had to wear pants. Like, more than once!

I know - I will wait while you cry it out.

So it's a good thing that I got us a pop up greenhouse for Christmas, because our delicate Texas plants wouldn't have made it through the chillpocalypse of early 2014.

Because we had the greenhouse, we actually already have about 20 tomatoes on our tomato plants - they are about 4' tall! We are really having good luck with the Sweet Million - we went this direction after last year's $2000 single tomato - and it seems like it will really be a producer. We are also growing our favorite heirloom - the Black Krim. This is the tastiest, funniest looking tomato I've ever had. I hope it does well - we have some teeny tomatoes on it right now.

Now that the plants have been liberated from the greenhouse it's fun to see a little color in the yard, which is tough in our extended drought.

Here's one of the tomato blossoms.

 And this is newly planted this spring - a Leopard Jew. It seems a little tougher than the classic Wandering Jew, which struggles in our heat - so I hope this one makes it. It's beautiful.

 My favorite planting so far is my Oxalis Coppertone. It has such beautiful colors, and teeny yellow flowers. Really, really pretty.

 And my chives, which are going like gangbusters and survived winter in the greenhouse, even gave me a flower this week.

That color and my little goldfinches on their feeder are great inspiration for backyard coloring.

This coloring experiment was with Country Morning (retired) and Derwent Inktense pencils. 

I checked this morning and I have three buds on my roses too - so soon I can pop some real flowers in a vase!

Now, in case you missed it, here are two great videos illustrating the profound differences between cats and dogs with how they react to magic:

First - dogs.

And now - cats.

Yep - that pretty much sums it up.

Loveyameanitbye.