Tony Baloney Pics

Some more pics of my Carolina diamond back terrapin that just walked into my life, as a little baby all caked with mud, into the hallway in front of my door. He's more friendly than the sliders were, and instead of hiding when people come by, he gets all excited. I'm not exactly sure if he's a boy actually, an educated guess. I won't be sure until he's bigger, in which case I'll change it to Toni if it's a girl.

Turtles new toy

I put the rubber ducky in with the red eared sliders to see how they would react. They pretty much bite everything, so I think their reaction was typical. I still haven't decided one names, the boy is definitely Jose Ole, but I haven't found a good name for the girl. The carolina terrapin is named Tony Baloney, in honor of a lil bush cartoon where president Bush calls Tony Blair 'Tony Balogna'. This is him down here, he's a little bit bigger than a quarter now. For now he's in a seperate tank. Perhaps when he's bigger I'll move him over, but for now he's about a third the slider's size, so he'll be living solo.

St. Mary's College sunset

Illustrations

so i recently got corel painter and have loved using it. i really like the watercolors setting, it has animations of the water absorbing into the paper and the color spreading. here are some things i've made with it

Thank you turtle notes

I drew these pictures for my thank you notes but never ended up using them.

garden pics

basil: marigolds
zinnias

my garden

Low mainteance garden in a newly made bed this year in zone 7, in very very sandy soil that had pretty much nothing growing there before. My main problem is watering, the ground there dries out very quickly in the full sun area. No weed problems, and am just noticing bugs now that I have flowers blooming. Two days ago I added a recycled weed mat, which is pretty much the same brown paper we used to cover the tables with in art class. It's doing a great job of retaining the moisture. I water daily, have a few containers in the ground for self watering, and fertilized in June. We compost around the tomato plants, which are seperate and to the side of my main bed.

I used burpee's zinnia mix, Burpeeana Giants mix. Zinnias germinated very quickly, and I moved them outside to the back of the bed along the wall when they were about 3 inches. They were pretty floppy in the beginning but I propped them up with more dirt and eventually twisted hangers because storms kept knocking them over. Each one survived. They twisted easily to face the sun once they fell over, but they quickly twisted back once I proped them up straight again. Planted 5 as single plants and one as double plants right next to each other. The double plant seemed to support each other, the one twisted around the other. The two one the ends of the row needed the most propping, they didn’t have anyone to bang against to get straight again. Will definitely grow again. Flowers had dark pink center, so far have light white/pink, yellow, orange and darker pinks. Got to about the height of my knee or a little big higher. But I did get a packet that said they would be 6 inch blooms, they’re like 2 inches. So far there is one bloom per flower at the top, and it appears that each off shoot is going to have a flower at the end to. I'm guessing in the end, there will be about 5 to 7 flowers per plant.

I also have sparky mix marigolds. Marigolds grew faster than the zinnias, and did even better when I planted the 2 inch plants outside in clumps of two. Like 24 hour germination, and are doing great outside. Are about 5 inches and bushy.

Russell Lupines, grew these as an experiment. Grew faster inside in green house condition, so would probably keep them there longer. They first grow one fan set of leaves, then a second and then a third. So far the first two fans appear to be dieing off, unusual looking. I thought I was growing marijuana, kind of looked like that. They are doing well outside, just not growing as fast. Planted these near the back because they can be tall.


Planted basil in clumps, about 4 to 6 plants per dirt cube and they did fine. Later I went in and pulled out the scrawny plants and took them inside. They recovered quickly within 2 weeks, and I planted them back outside. Basil is doing nicely. Cilantro didn’t do well, dried out and died quickly even in part shade on porch. I think the parsley and oregano dried out on vacation because kelly didn’t water them, would like to try those again.

Squash doing well, even in yard surrounded by grass and weeds. Bry accidently ran them over when they were about a foot with the lawn moser, which caused them to stop growing long runners, and instead, grew bushy. It’s about 2 feet across, perfect circles and flowering normally.

This summer we have about 8 accidental plants -- seeds that we threw out to compost but germinated, and grew. There are about 6 cantaloupe plants and 2 watermelon plants. Other seeds that I experimented with for accidental plants but were a no go included grape seeds, cherry pits and apple seeds. I'm waiting on the results of the raspberries.

I planted pumpkin plants with a little more care this year. Last year I threw them all over the yard in different spots to see if they would come up and only an ornamental gourd plant ended up growing. I still put seeds in different spots but I was sure to watch and make sure a pumpkin plant grew. I ended up with a lot of pumpkin seedlings and forgot where I planted most of them. I put them in the weedy area in our backyard that borders the woods. I know where one is for sure and water it, and the other day I found another one. Again, it was run over by the lawn mower so it took a while before I recognized it. So 2 pumpkin plants for sure.