More Garden Updates (annual cult meeting on the side)

 I know I posted a garden update a couple days ago, but those were taken on my phone and, to me, that doesn't count. I'm joking, of course. I'm sure there are hundreds or thousands of people that blog with only cellphone photos. I managed to make it out to the garden a little while ago to take some pics. It's rained most of the week, so it's cloudy today and a little cooler - cloudy days make for great pictures.

All of our stuff seems to be doing fairly well. The row of corn really sprouted up this week and looks great! A few of our zucchini plants are starting to get blossoms, as well as the cucumbers. That's always a good sigh, shouldn't be too much longer before we start getting full sized vegetables! Our tomato plants are all loaded with blossoms, the plants are just a tad on the small size, but they look healthy at least. I'm gonna get a couple more seed packs next week to (hopefully) fill the lower garden.

I'm sure everyone is wondering what the secondary part of my title means. Well, I'm sure everyone remembers my post 'The Cult Next Door' from back in January. If not, I linked it, so go give it a read. Well a couple times a year the "cult" has an annual meeting. The last one they had didn't do that well due to COVID, but this one seems to have had quite the turnout. Cars has been coming in since Wednesday and today starts their festivities. 

I'm not nosy per se, but I do like to see what they're up to on occasion. I know I'm horrible, but I use my telephoto lens to sneak a peek every once in a while. I haven't done that yet, but I'm planning on it. Just like last time I won't share any pics I get because I don't want to get into any kind of trouble, but I will verbally report back with my findings. 

I guess that's all for now and this week. Hope you enjoy the pics!

These tiny beauties will be orange cherry tomatoes.

Cannot wait to eat them.

Our corn sprouts - they look awesome!

The plentiful lettuce row.

Green beans are growing nicely as well.

Some of the larger tomatoes are starting.

Here's one of the zucchini blossoms.

Some random yellow/orange bug I found. Love bug pics with a macro lens.

Eggplant blossom.

I never knew eggplant blossoms were so pretty!

Single-Celled Organisms Under A Compound Microscope From Amazon

 This picture and videos I'm about to share are actually from a couple days ago, but I'm just now getting around to actually getting all the videos uploaded via YouTube. I don't know why Blogger makes it so difficult to upload a functioning video, but it's nearly impossible. 

Anyway, I went kinda crazy the first two days I had this microscope - so much so that my eyes and head are hurting from constantly looking into the extremely bright LED light. I mean, it's my own fault and once the new wears off I'll be good to go. It's just all very fascinating to me. I feel like I've looking at everything around the house and some things outside. 

There's still a BIG part of me that hates that I bought it and spent the money on it. I mean, it was one of the cheaper microscopes (under $90), but there's still lingering guilt. I'm extremely cheap and feel like it's my life's mission to hoard every dollar, but I know I can't be that way all the time. Still, I don't like spending money on myself, it just makes me feel weird.

I bought myself some new earring a couple weeks ago and feel the same way. Not so much now because I wear them all the time, but I still have the mentality of, "Oh, but what if we need that money for something more important?" I don't know, that's just the way I'm hardwired now. Back in my late teens/early 20s it was a completely different story. I made decent money, more money than I had ever made before and I was only freshly 18! I spent it just as fast as I could make it.

I'll always remember my gran telling LaVaughn and I both to put half of our check in the bank each week and save it. Of course that was nonsense to us at the time because we were young and stupid, but now... I get it. 

Okay, I'm gonna stop rambling and share the pic and videos. Hope you enjoy!

This is the best (and only) pic of the unicelled organism that I could get.

And here are the videos:

              

              

              

Rainy Day Garden Update

 The weather has been so nasty the past couple days. So much so that I don't even want to get out and take pictures with my camera, which is why I will be posting photos that I took with my phone. I don't like posting cellphone pics, but it's better than nothing I guess. 

I've also been highly preoccupied with my new microscope. Which is obvious, but I am going to have to chill out a bit because it's starting to hurt my eyes. Between love and madness lies obsession.

Because the weather has been SO weird lately, it's really stunted the growth of the garden. Our first batch of seeds we planted didn't germinate, so we had to replant again a week or so ago. Thankfully it warmed up enough for a few days and things finally started to sprout. It's actually looking like a garden now and not a giant patch with potatoes on one side and tomatoes on the other.

Well, here are the pics. They're nothing special today, but at least it's a little something.

You can see more things starting to sprout now.

See, looks like an actual garden!

My muddy eggplant blooms.

The green beans are looking amazing.

Green beans also have such beautiful leaves.

Our sparse looking lower garden.

National Optical 40X-1000X Compound Microscope

 I couldn't really think of a better title and since that's exactly what this post is going to be about, I just decided to go with it. I was browsing videos on TikTok weekend before last when I stumbled upon a random video of single-celled organisms (or unicelled organisms). It wasn't anything crazy, just some really awesome videos of the micro-creatures. One of the top comments was someone asking what the best microscope was and the OP replied with, "Any good compound microscope". After that, my search began. 

Microbiology is something I've always been fascinated with. I still remember back in the early 90s when I was like 4 years old. I was staying with my grandma when her house was behind her daughter, my aunt Eva. Well my aunt's son was in town for a week or so on leave from the Army and he brought a lot of his belongings from his house. He told us kids to pick something out that we wanted out of his overly packed car. Well there in the backseat sat a microscope and that's what I had my heart set on. Since I was the youngest of the kids I was the last to get to pick something out, so naturally one of the older kids snatched the microscope and I never got to even touch it. 

I've only ever used microscopes in school and we really only ever got to use premade slides. And it was school - which I always hated - so I never really got to enjoy myself. I really feel like I've overshared, my apologizes. Long story short, I researched (cheap) microscopes on Amazon for a couple days and ended up finding an awesome review and unboxing of one on YouTube and that's the one I went with. 

It arrived in the mail today and I went nuts! I kid you not, after all the animals were fed and things were done for the day, I started messing around with it and didn't stop for hours. Max has a kiddie pool outside with water in it, so that's where I got my first sample. It was amazing! I saw so, so many little single-celled organisms... it was just amazing. I also tested out sink water and filtered water from the fridge to see if there were any little creepers - thank god there wasn't any. 

I have a few videos on my phone that I'm going to try and upload. Since I didn't have a specific attachment for my phone, the videos are a little wonky, but I did eventually figure it out. 

This is the tiny amount of water that I used.

This is how it came packaged. It was actually very nice.

Here's the video:

           

Gardening Update/Photo Dump

 What a day, what a day. I lost track of what all got planted today. I think it was a row of radishes, a row of okra and a row of carrots. All of the rows had to be dug and watered with fertilizer... fun times. So much bending and squatting is going to be the death of me. I can stand and walk around for hours at a time, but as soon as I have t squat for more than 20 minutes, I'm done for. 

At least we finally have the majority of things planted. I also planted a row of spinach, I almost forgot about that. I just have to find some zucchini plants next week and pick up a pack of lemon cucumber seeds since ours did horribly due to the cold weather. I'm just over this gardening season. We had such a late start due to the temperamental weather and cold ground. 

Oh well, not much you can do about it. I finally took some pictures of the garden and a few random ones of the flowers. I'm steering clear of the outside world if I'm going out solely for picture taking. Ever since my tick fiasco yesterday I'm super paranoid. I guess that's all for now, hope you enjoy the pics!

Beautiful orange flower. Not sure what kind it is.

That's out freshly picked lettuce on the left, the middle in the spinach that I planted and the right is our radish sprouts.

Closer look at the radish sprouts.

I think radish sprouts are so pretty.

The radish leaves are almost clover like.

This is one of the 4 eggplants that I got and also planted today. They're getting ready to bloom!

Okra sprouts.

Green onions.

Here's the lower part of the lettuce row.

And here's the cucumber sprouts I was talking about! 

They're all over the zucchini plant.

I hope I'm able to transplant them easily.

Zucchini is looking good! I hope it continues to do so.

Here's a few of the zucchini plants.

And here's a partial view of the two rows we planted. I wish I could explain how long they are.

Our potato plants are huge and gorgeous!

They're doing better than anything else I think, lol.

Some pretty light pink peonies.

And a Rose of Sharon.

Forceful Blogging

 I'm not really forcing myself to blog, per se. It's just been a busy week and I didn't really do anything yesterday worth blogging about. I didn't really do anything today worth blogging about either. I did work in the garden for the longest time today clearing up the rows in the lower garden and getting a couple more prepped and ready for seeds tomorrow. 

If you're not used to bending a squatting on a daily, such as myself, it really starts to wreak havoc on your muscles. My thighs get sore, my lower abdominal muscles get sore... it's just miserable. I'm usually okay after the next day or the day after that, but I'm definitely feeling the burn, lol.

It's also been really, really hot lately, so having mini heat strokes while gardening has been fun. I'm joking, of course, heat strokes are nothing to joke about. I love gardening, don't get me wrong, but I can't wait until cooler weather.

I guess that's all for now. I did manage to take a few photos today on my actual camera. Nothing special, but at least it's something.

Purpleleaf Sand Cherry leaves, my fave!

Beautiful purple peonies.

Peonies are so underestimated.

These purple peonies are some of my faves.

I wish I had a size comparison next to these flowers. They're SO tiny!

I also think this is where I acquired my first tick of the year. *gag*

Lastly, some pretty weeds.

Company Customer Service Class

 I know I'm posting kind of late tonight, but since I have no photos from yesterday or today (probably tomorrow as well), I thought I would go ahead and get a quick word in. I think I mentioned last week that I had a mandatory customer service class to do today, but I'm honestly not sure. It's something that every single person working for that company has to do. Since COVID is still an issue, they were limited to only 5 employees per class. LaVaughn and I ride together, so there was no way they could put us on separate days due to the office being almost 2 hours away from us in Cape. Luckily that wasn't an issue.

I'm still uncertain as to why we had to take a customer service class, considering we don't really deal with customers. I mean, what they were teaching in class today was basically common sense -- I guess a lot of people don't really have that anymore? Who am I kidding, of course they don't. It was only supposed to be an hour long class, but you can always assume something like this is going to run over, which it did by over 30 minutes. It normally wouldn't bother me, but we had a grocery pickup waiting on us.

Speaking of grocery pickup... I always do the grocery pickup at Fredericktown Walmart on our way home, but sometimes we go home through Farmington and I do it there. Not once have I had a bad experience. I mean, on the rare occasion I'll get a bad substitution, but never really anything to complain about. I also think the longest I've had to wait is 15 minutes. Not bad, right? Well Cape Walmart is an entirely different story. They have about 10 or so more pickup spots, which is super confusing because it only goes to 19 on the app and we were in 21, naturally. After I checked in we waited... and waited... and waited. I'm not joking when I say we sat there for over 45 minutes waiting.

In the stores defense, the lady did say they were unusually busy that day and had people call out. She wasn't even supposed to be working that section.

After that I ran in Petco and grabbed a couple Gouramis, then we stopped by White Castle to get some dinner. They have a really awesome deal right now - 10 sliders for 5.99. We didn't have to wait in line too horribly long, but that all changed when they had us park. Then we had to wait a whopping 18 minutes! I was legit on the phone with them when LaVaughn told me the lady was coming towards the car.

It was just a horrible long day and it seemed like we had to wait on everything! This is why I don't like Cape; they're too busy and have too many people.

After our nearly 2 hour drive, we finally made it home. I'm exhausted, like really exhausted for some reason. I think it's because I've been getting up early for the past few days in a row and it's finally starting to catch up on me. I guess that's all for now...

This is a pic I took today on Snapchat, which is where the filters come in. You I hate posting blogs without posting a photo, so this retro pic of White Castle will have to do.

Hyla Versicolor

 For some reason I'm saying this title in my head like Valar Morghulis, lol. I know that's not even close, but that's just burned into my brain at the moment. So, as the title suggest, today's topic is going to be the Gray Tree Frog. I mean, not the only topic, obviously, but I did find an amazingly beautiful Gray Tree Frog outside today. On my Purpleleaf Sand Cherry, no less. 

This little guy was so chill, he didn't even move much when I was plowing my camera through the leave to get to him. I had to literally almost touch his face with the lens - yet another reason why I need the 105mm macro lens - and he still didn't move. He was alive, if that's what you're thinking. I mean, he did move here and there and was breathing the entire time.

I've only ever got to photograph spring frogs and the occasional toad, but never one like this little guy! And he was SO close, so I'm really on cloud 9 right now. I'm going to forewarn you, I took quite a few pics of him and plan on sharing them all. 

As sad as it sounds, that's really my only excitement for today. I worked in the garden for a while today. Planted a bunch of okra seeds and watered the newly planted cucumbers, but that's pretty much all. I have all the gliders food ready to go for the weekend, even enough for Tuesday because we have to go to a stupid class in Cape Tuesday for work. Definitely not looking forward to that. So it's gonna be a very long weekend and beginning of the week for us.

I guess that's really all I have to share for now. I hope you enjoy looking at the pics as much as I liked taking them.

Here's the adorable little Gray Tree Frog!

He has such pretty eyes.

Very salty expression for a gray tree frog.

Look at his little round body!

Obviously there's gonna be weed pics.

I think I like this weed pic the most.

Pretty white wildflowers.

Vines growing up the side of a decaying building. For some reason it reminds me of The Last Of Us.

I also found another bug, but he wasn't cool with me taking pics.

More frog pics!

I love how chill this guy was.

My stalker photo. Peeking though the leaves and spying on a frog.

He was the best little frog model.

More weed photos.

This is probably my favorite.