Life is Good!

Wow! Did things ever get busy around here! We're packing to move, building at the new land, having showings on our current house, and trying to sell another piece of land, so we can begin the actual construction on the new house. We're doing all of this while trying to live normal lives with teen kids and every activity that goes with that....."Mom, can you take me here?" I think I will call my new (to me) car Benson, after the butler in that old television show, "Benson". It carries the groceries, runs errands, chauffeurs kids and does pretty much anything I need to do to keep a house running.

Learning how to care for a greenhouse in the SC heat and sun has been a learning experience. I would call it a challenge, but I so enjoy every minute I spend there, that "challenge" just doesn't fit the need. I have learned, so far, that plants will go into a bit of shock even moving them into a greenhouse, sometimes shade cloth is needed, and mostly, be patient and remember this is all under control. I am glad I am doing all of this learning now, instead of later when I move ALL the plants in there. I almost lost all my coffee trees, but they are all bouncing back now, even without shade cloth. I left the dead and dying branches on until after I got them into larger pots, and then once that shock was past too, I pruned them heavily. I noticed, while pruning, that everywhere a branch had died, there were little buds growing, and by pruning back the dead stuff, within a week I had scads of new growth all over the plants. That made me feel amazing!! Granted the plants didn't cost much, as they were on sale, but I still had cared for them for a year before this time, so losing them would have been a major bummer. I am totally thrilled!!

My stevia and lavender seeds never germinated. The greenhouse was getting up to temps over 130 degrees! I think they just cooked in the soil, but try try again. We installed 2 vent fans. One is a small 5watt solar fan, which we installed first. It just wasn't enough for the South Carolina heat. We converted an attic fan into a wall mount fan, added a power cord, and plugged it into our system. It's a 14 watt fan, and between the two of them they move the air nicely, and keep the heat down below 120 degrees in the heat of the day....a definite improvement.

Once we installed a water system on the land, I added a timer and automatic drip watering system. That was a whole new learning experience! I flooded the greenhouse twice trying to get it all adjusted, but over all, the plants are LOVING the drip system....now that I have it set to drip and not spray, the length of time better and the number of times per week regulated. My rain plant even bloomed inside the greenhouse.This is MUCH better than trucking in water every week!!

The sunflowers are almost as tall as the garage! They are forming flower heads, so I am excited. I had to transplant three of the sunflower plants, because out of that entire package of seeds, only eight plants sprouted. Seven of those eight were within a foot of the row, so instead of simply pulling a couple plants to thin them, I transplanted them further down the row. Two of the three transplants lived. Success!
 
So much going on, so little time each day and so few days in a lifetime to get it all accomplished. That saying, "Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer to the end one gets the faster it spins." is so true! Or at least to me, it seems to be true.

Today is a down day for me, with my only needing to make a few phone calls, send out a few bill payments and cleaning my house, so I plan to spend some time in a bubble bath later. Who knows? Maybe I will even polish my toenails. No matter what I do I will get out to play in the dirt a bit later.
Peace!