Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Loaded Life Update

Well, a lot has happened since I last posted...

I figured it would take me more than an entire page of words to explain everything, so instead I'm going to make collages that best sums up the first half of my 2020 senior year of high school. This is a warning that the collages below were auto-generated and have images that look like they don't relate to each other.

Here we go!

JANUARY

This month, I bought a little plastic greenhouse for my plants so they could get used to the outside temperature. The weather was no higher than the 70s or 80s so this would have been a great time to plant some things. I tried to grow a couple plants in it for a while and it worked great! Later on I bought for bare-root strawberries and planted them in whatever I could find available. I also got a bare-root blueberry plant. Hmm... It's all coming back to me! The reason why there are so many new plants is that I got a home-depot gift card for Christmas from my family. I am so grateful and blessed! The art project that I'm holding in the first photo is a paper-mache replica of my adopted banana plant. I was taking an AP 3-D art class this year so I thought I'd have my banana plant as my concentration and use it for my guided inquiry.

FEBRUARY

This month, a lot of my plants started to grow. I was kinda concerned for my blueberry bush though because the weather kept frosting it. The frosts kept destroying my banana plant too, but luckily it kept coming back stronger. I made another art piece, but this time out of magazine paper and plastic straws. It took way too long to make that sculpture. Probably because I had no idea what I was doing. In the picture in the middle, there is my lemon tree seedling plant thing that I took outdoors for the first time ever. I knew that lemon trees love sunlight, but I didn't want any critters outside to harm it, so after a few hours I took it back inside. Recently I took it outside and now it looks far worse than the photo. But I'm so happy that it's trying to grow back!! Also, my strawberries grew like champs in my greenhouse! The only problem was dealing with pesky snails that pooped all over the plastic cover and ate my watermelon and cucumber seedlings I was trying to grow.

MARCH

March was an extremely busy month. I felt like it was very tough juggling 8 classes at once and studying for weekly tests. I had so much going on at once, but I managed to work a bit in my little garden. One of my plants made a few tiny strawberries, and I was trying to grow a bunch of little things in toilet paper rolls. Unless you have an indoor or concealed area to keep them, I do not recommend using them for seedlings. Everything I tried growing in those little tubes ended up dying or drowning anyway. There were also a few frosts happening here and there but I think this was the last month that it did so. I was growing 2 little peach seedlings in my refrigerator during the weekend, so this was the right time to finally let them grow into beautiful looking plants. They honestly looked really weird when they sprouted, but now they're skinny little things. I'm thinking of repotting them soon.

APRIL

In the month of April, I had so much free time from the COVID-19 quarantine that I spent my afternoons watching plant videos. My strawberries went through this dormant-like stage so they didn't make any more strawberries all month. One of the reasons was that it was getting hotter and anything that was in my greenhouse was sure to get cooked. Now my plants are doing a lot better. Later this month, I took a little trip to Home-Depot again to spend some birthday money. My mom chose two bell pepper plants for me to grow and now they're producing lots of flowers. I also started a few seedlings including cucumber watermelon, lettuce, radish, cayenne pepper, tomato, and more. Something's eating my little tomato plants though, so now I have one. I guess I can't grow tomatoes like I want to. Oh! And I almost forgot! I'm growing another avocado plant, but this time it'll be outdoors most of the time. So far it's looking ok. It's taking it a while to grow green leaves though. They seem to be growing neon green or something.

MAY

Pretty much, this entire month was about me building my banana plant sculptures. Here is one of my best ones. Also, my garden is doing better. We had a lot of heavy thunderstorms and flash floods in the past few weeks, but everything survived. I bought this MiracleGrow chemical fertilizer and I think its working because a few of my plants are growing fruits! This is what I've always dreamed of!

As for my crochet life...
I plan on making a blanket soon. I have a lot of free time now that I sorta "graduated" from high school, but I can't really feel a difference right now. I'm really excited about my future though. In just a few months, I'll be in college and live my college life all on my own! But first I have to celebrate my high school graduation.