You'd Think I Was Becoming a Botanist

The day was spent on plants, plants, plants. At any given time I had two books open (heavily papered with flags indicating desirables for the garden), and tabs for 16 websites up on my laptop so I could cross-reference availability, native status, and characteristics, and put it all into a spreadsheet. If only there was a place where all of this data could be put for easy querying and customized results! There actually is a place where it all lives, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service seems to have all the data one could ever want on North American plants, but I wasn't able to get any data out of it using their advanced query tool.  It is also limited on the number of rows it will return. If only data.world had this data! Maybe I can talk to someone there about getting it from the USDA...

In the meantime, bed building begins tomorrow. I will take pictures. this is going to be a rough garden. It's Hill Country Native, not polished suburban flowerbeds. I'm very much looking forward to it! Tonight was the Travis County Beekeepers Association monthly meeting and we had a presentation on, you guessed it, native wildflowers for bee gardens. A very nice woman from the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center presented and made it very clear that I MUST attend the plant sale in April if I want my heart's desire.

Glass, sheep, spinning, knitting, cooking, cleaning, laundry, bathing, have all been forgotten in my mad lust for garden planning--not the gardening mind you, just the planning. I think I'll also be good at the directing of the work. Doing the weeding myself, not so much. Good thing I have guys for that. And it's time to head to bed again. My nightly routine: post, sleep.