What Do Chamomile Tea, Spinach Containers, Toilet Paper Rolls and Mason Jars Have in Common?

What do these things have in common? Well, they are all a part of my improvised, gleaned from Pinterest and work, what-can-I-dig-out-of-the-recycling method of gardening. 

Yes, gardening. 

It's true, I have trouble keeping house plants alive (even when those house plants are cacti and succulents...). But gardening has intrigued me for a while. Last year when I had considerably more time and space on my hands (and a much warmer climate!) I was thinking about, and even planning, a garden. Then, of course, I decided to go on an extended trip to Thailand and Laos with a friend during planting season, and that was that. 

This year, trying to escape a winter that won't end (more snow coming this week!), and working at a place that espouses the many benefits of urban gardening, I decided I'm going to give it a go. 

I signed up to receive free seeds and transplants from an organization called Denver Urban Gardens. At EarthLinks we collected the applications for our participants and dropped them off for them. Since I was the one to drop them off, I just filled one out myself. I mostly asked for transplants (thinking if the plants were already in adolescence when I got them I would have a better chance of keeping them alive). I was surprised though at what seeds I had ordered when I went back a couple months later to pick them up: 

Kale, cantaloup, and lettuce. Kind of random, but whatever. Making stuff up as I went along I decided to imbibe my seeds. (Not with alcohol mind you.) My supervisor had passed along an article about a gardener who tried soaking his seeds for a day or so and how they grew a lot faster. I figured, why not?

I poured half the packets into some random jars I had on my shelves. I planned on planting them the next day...but didn't get around to it. In my memory the article had said to soak them for 3-5 days. After  a couple of days I reread the article and realized, no, they said 12-24 hours. Oops. I figured I better get some stuff and get them planted soon...

After church I wandered around Lowes looking lost for organic potting soil and seed starting mix. I finally found what I hoped was the right stuff and hauled it out to my car, quite proud of myself (for no reason really). Then, I waited a couple more days...Finally on what seemed an appropriate evening (by which I mean there was a blizzard blowing outside), I sat at my desk in my pajamas with the spoon from my coffee cup, some toilet paper rolls, and the soil and got to work planting. 

At work participants usually carefully place three seeds in a triangle formation 1/4 of an inch into the dirt with tweezers (or something like that). My wet seeds were clumpy (and I soaked way too many) (seriously, how many kale plants was I going for?) so I just kinda spooned them in here and there. 

Making it up as we go along, folks.

The seeds all planted and cosy in their spinach container green house!

Then miracle of miracles, 2 and a half days later: 

A baby lettuce plant!

I really couldn't believe it! They were sprouting already. Two rows of happy little plants. It's so amazing and surprising that I keep forcing David and housemates (and anyone else I have any kind of sway over) to come look at them every day or so. It feels like magic. 

This is my little set up in the sun in one of our front rooms. I water them with a mason jar with holes punched in the top. I had seen someone water the seedlings at work this way--and seriously, it's mesmerizing how the water falls out of there in little lines as you shake it. I've also got a couple of tulips that were free give-aways, and a mason jar full of camomile tea. Apparently you can treat your seedlings for root rot (?) or something moldy sounding, by spraying them with camomile tea. I don't really understand that, but, again, why not? I couldn't find a spray bottle so I just squeeze the tea bag over the seedlings and sprinkle it on there. Good enough for me. 

Look at them go! I even have two little kale plants coming up now. Who knows what those cantaloupe seeds are doing under the soil (but honestly I didn't have much hope for them from the beginning). I did open my seeds the other day to find lots of fuzzy mold growing on the side of the TP rolls though. Hopefully that's not too bad of a thing. I've been leaving the lid off and giving them a good dose of chamomile--so we will see. Who knows how this experiment will turn out!

I have another batch of seedlings soaking in water (...for probably about a week now...): okra and bluebonnet seeds. It's my Texas batch. I'll hopefully get them in soil by the end of the weekend. But, we will see...

Anyway, that's my new little project. I felt a little hesitant about it in the beginning, but then I decided, hey if I kill them all--it's ok. Gotta take some risks, right? Even if it's just with free seeds. 

Finally, this week in workshop we used a TED talk for our "reflection" time. It's got me even more jazzed for gardening. We all enjoyed it, so I'll share it here too: 

Greetings From Denver

Hello from the Mile High City! My, my, it's been a while, no? Quite honestly, it's been a while since I have been able to catch my breath. Life has been rolling along at full speed for the last month. I've moved to a new city, to a new house, acquired nine (yes, nine) new housemates, started breaking in two separate jobs in new fields, and...a million other things it seems.

As of tomorrow I will have been in Denver for a whole month. That's hard to believe mostly because it feels like it must have been at least 6 months.

In the midst of all this craziness I have been using just about every milligram of free time to sleep or silently stare at a wall to try to regain some strength. I've been doing a horrible job at keeping in touch with everyone, so, well, here we have it--a new blog! It's a bit impersonal, but I don't see myself having time for all the phone calls I'm behind on anytime soon. I'll see what I can do with reviving the Week in Review bit, but for now I'll throw in some tidbits from the past month. I haven't been doing a great job of taking pictures either (and they're all from my phone), but I'll share what I have. (Feel free to throw out questions in the comments if you're curious about anything.)

OK, a month in Denver in review!:

• My house is massive and laid out like a maze. I still forget where the stairs are that go up to the third floor sometimes. I think there are probably some secret passages lingering behind boxes in our basement. 
• A large chunk of my housemates are from the midwest. I'm already afraid of the things I'm going to start saying or how it will affect my accent. Hot dish anyone?
• Friday I learned how to harvest worms and how to put together a worm bin at work. (These are one of the gardening items we sell.) It's probably just as gross as you are imagining it.
• In the mornings I work at an organization called Earthlinks. If you want to learn a little more check it out here: Earthlinks-Colorado.org (You can also click over to the staff page to see their newest staff member!)
• In an effort to live a more sustainable life, to be in solidarity with the poor, and because, well, I am poor, I take the bus or walk everywhere I can. I take the bus in the morning half way to work and walk the rest of the way. At lunch I take two buses and walk a little bit to get to my second job, then I walk home at the end of the day. My attitude might change once it gets cold, but I love these times during the day. My morning walk is peaceful and full of gardens and snapshots of the skyscrapers and mountains. The bustle of downtown Denver at lunch hour is energizing. The walk home is stress relieving. 
• I've seen quite the characters on the bus, too. Sometimes these characters are people I know from work, so we chat for a while. (It's a nice feeling of connectedness.)
• Bus 44 frequently tries to ruin my day. 
• The weather has been fantastic. It got a bit cold for a day or two (high 40s in the morning/evening), but has been sunny and hovering in the 70s for the most part. 
• The sun really does shine constantly here. (Cue Ben Harper's She's Only Happy In the Sun)
• My room in the house came complete with a horrible painted mural. Since the room is pretty tiny it was dominating things. I don't have anywhere enough energy to paint the wall, so I got in a problem-solving mood and tacked up king sized sheets. Not beautiful, but satisfactory. 
• I have seen more rotten food in the last 3 weeks than in the rest of my life combined. (We get a lot of "day old" type donations at the house, and at Earthlinks we get food off a truck that comes by with expired or wilting food the grocery stores threw out. On top of that, many of us get random things from our worksites that they can't give out to their clients anymore (yes, we happily take the things they can't even give away to homeless people!). We try to use all this food on it's last leg, but, I'll be honest: a lot of it get's composted.)
• After this year, I will have cured myself of any desire to ever eat a bagel again. (Matter of fact, I'm pretty much there now.)
• We've actually been eating quite well. We rotate so that 2 different people out of the 10 of us cook and clean each weeknight. There's been a slight learning curve, but I'm pretty impressed with a lot of what we have come up with. 
• One of the perks I love about my afternoon job at the church is that I have an office. A real, downtown office. 
• I'm developing a healthy fear of the answering machine at work with all the sad and desperate stories I find there daily. 
• Monday afternoons at the church are exhausting--but the good kind of exhausting. The kind of exhausting where weekly we feed about 1,200 people in 4 hours. 
• Living between downtown and the huge city park is a great location with a lot of energy. It's also nice to head out to the foothills to the suburb where David lives once a week or so. It's amazing how much different it feels. 
• Actually, every 4 blocks or so Denver feels like a very different city. 

OK, that's plenty of bullet points. Some pictures to finish things up: 

My, um, interesting, whole wall, multilingual mural. Complete with mirrored flowers. Yeah. 

My solution. 

Our first day of work dinner. I helped cook this meal that turned out to be a bit overzealous, but delicious. (Seriously, cooking for 10 people mostly from scratch (because that's cheapest) can turn out to be like cooking a Thanksgiving-esque meal every night.)

Work in the morning

My afternoon office!

After a particularly long and heavy day (and week) I spotted this guy on the back of a wall. I figured no one was looking at it anyway, so I might as well take it...

During our first week or so of orientation we were subsisting on basically nothing but carbs: bagels, rice, pasta, bread.  We hadn't yet received our weekly batch of produce from the farmers market that gives us their unsellables, and we were longing for pretty much anything that came from the ground. That day our generally kind and well meaning director showed up at lunch with a peach. A peach that she ate in front of all of us. Waved it around a bit as she talked. (Oh man, we were all experiencing a range of emotions that were not the most generous!) After relaying this story to David, he showed up later with...giant peaches! Best. Peach. Ever.  

We also found a park throwing an end of summer festival--complete with a hot air balloon "glow" and fireworks. All for free! (It's true. We make poor look exciting.)

And finally, some shots from my morning commute:

Somebody forgot a few important things at the bus stop...

I'm not sure why, but I love this building.

My morning worksite is in a bit of an industrial area that is full of interesting artwork. 

Waiting for good ol' bus 15 (hotbed for interesting and/or homeless people) downtown at lunch. 

The End.