First Blackberry Blossom and How I Almost Killed My Herbs

Let's start with my pride and joy, then we can get to the killing.  My dear thornless blackberry started out (in April of this year) as a stick with a few leaves on it (okay, it had roots, too - I'm just sayin').  I can't take that much credit for how well it's doing (this time of year with all the rain, humidity and sunshine, it would be hard to keep it from growing), but I am very proud that I have not killed it.  


My joy is from the fact that it has its very first blackberry blossom.  I don't have a terrible amount of luck with flowering plants and I've wondered if this poor thing will ever actually bear fruit.  The blossom is a sign of terrible goodness and I practically broke my neck running back inside for my camera after I saw it. 

In the wild, these white blossoms turn pink as spring turns into summer, but here we are well into the season, so it was a surprise to see one at all!  I wonder if we will start seeing green berries soon.  I'm hoping they'll make the transition from teensy green things to pale red teenager berries and slowly turn into black juicy beauties.  But this is the plant's first year, it's not in the ground and it is unfortunately under my care, so we'll see...


Anything could happen.


To prove my point, I had an appointment for a walk-through of my yard with a lawn and plantcare company last week and I commented to the guy that I kill most plants and can't be trusted.  Then I pointed up to my deck (from the street, you can just barely see the herbs) and said it was a miracle my planter of herbs was still alive.  Two days later, I went out onto the deck to get some basil and saw that all the plants in the planter were withering...  Because it didn't rain for a week...  And I didn't water them...  Because that's how I roll...


The good news is that I've managed to bring the poor things back from the edge.  I really need to be more careful.  Imagine if I was responsible for a whole yard!  That would be bad, you guys.

It only took a few days of monitoring the soil to make sure it wasn't too dry or too moist to get them back to okay, but they are definitely mad at me.  And who can blame them?


Does anyone ever wonder how my cats survive?  Yeah, me too.

The Black Thumb: A Change of Venue

After writing yesterday about getting more organized and creating a routine to keep me sane and healthy (on LostGirls), I spent some time going over my stats for all five LostGirls sites.  I kept thinking about the small amount of pageviews that The Black Thumb has (it also has a very small amount of posts and comments).  The more I thought about why I still want to write about gardening (even though I'm an absolute beginner at it), the more I realized that it is more practical for me to put my gardening posts on Uncrafty (formerly known as Crafts for the Uncrafty).  Uncrafty has always been about trying new things, learning more about crafts and various arts.  Gardening certainly fits in with that, especially at the basic level that I'm writing about.  So The Black Thumb still exists on its own URL (with posts from 4/13/12 to 5/26/12), but any new posts will be part of the Uncrafty world.  


If you are still interested in following our gardening posts (I say "our" because other people have asked to eventually contribute or collaborate), the right sidebar of Uncrafty has a variety of ways to keep track of us: on Facebook (via NetworkedBlogs), on Twitter, through an RSS subscription (posts and comments) or via email.  Thank you for reading!