Household Tips

Cuz It's "Tradition"...
As many of you know, it's "tradition" that we typically plant our flowers FAR too early each season... usually on that proverbial "first day of spring".

We're just so impatient!

We can't wait to add some color to things around here, and bring the outdoors to life again by planting flowers... it's so uplifting.

We Planted Too Early... Again!
WELL. We broke all our own rules this year and waited until April 17th to do our planting this year. Let me remind you that the first day of spring was on March 20th this year. So we did GOOD, no?

Each year, our neighbor reminds us: "They say you should wait until April 15th each year to plant. That is the date they feel safe that there will be no more heavy frosts."

So we waited. And wouldn't you know it... 7 days AFTER we planted... a FROST Warning!

Hurry Up & Do Something
So, I the far-too-logical (and cheapskate!) one of the household felt compelled to protect our investment by covering up each and every plant, bud, and sprig with a layer of cloth. (I wish I had a picture of THAT... it was pretty funny.) Some (all the potted plants) were brought indoors.

NOTE: I learned on the news that you should NEVER use plastic to cover your plants... use cloth instead. Plastic will suffocate your plants (even if it's just lightly placed on top). Here are some more great tips!

Thank goodness for that "box 'o rags" we had leftover from painting all the rooms in our house, cuz I must've used 40+ on this project alone.

The reason it took so many is because we purchased about fifty little Salvia plants and used them to line the entire perimeter of our front shrubs. (...looks cool, but it was kind of a lot of work!)

The Morning After...
It worked!

At the CRACK OF DAWN (5:45 a.m. to be exact), I got dressed and ventured outdoors to promptly REMOVE all of the individual coverings. I wanted to do this before anyone became aware of my craziness.

You see, I felt that I was the only over-protective one on the block who cared enough about their plants to cover them up.

Actually, I think everyone else around here knows something I don't, cuz virtually NO ONE has planted a thing yet this year... and it's almost MAY!

Tonight: A FREEZE Warning!
Silly me... I failed to keep my ears tuned to the local weather and now they're saying LAST NIGHT's was a few-days-notice "frost warning" but TONIGHT's is a sudden-onset-impromptu-record-low-temperatures-predicted "freeze warning"!

---> Listen for yourself.

...Great. Just great.
Guess I better get back out there and cover everything up again.

It is Spring, right??? (...Not to mention the effect that these drastic temperature changes are having on my two-weeks-and-counting flu-like cold that I can't seem to shake.)