Welcome to Gaia! ::

emotion_hug so sorry for your losts, its sad when someone passes away,hard on our morale, hope you'll be alright, prayers are with you emotion_bigheart

emotion_hug

Still, I know losing someone is so hard, was hard for me 2018, lost my dad, 2019- my mom-in-law sad now I pray that I dont lose my mom, she needs oxygen to breather, her legs, she cant move them too much, yep scared. she means the world to me, hope I do to my loves ones heart listening to Angie from the Stones heart

my grandma was diagnosed with covid and is isolated in her nursing home down in texas

I was living with my sister while I tried to return to our city now that my jobs are returning in person, and she kicked me out because I texted her husband--who she doesn't want to live there anymore--to watch me enter the house because there was an emotionally unstable person nearby when I got home after 11p.

gloomy weather and missing my family right now

What has made me sad and annoyed -- watching cat and dog videos of pets being teased by their owners, just to get a reaction while their owners video them. cat_sweatdrop Not funny!

Spent the last two weeks tending to my seedlings, only to have it flipped over my back porch (the wind blew off the small tray) and disappear into the grass-bed below. While I'm glad to learn A LOT from this tray, this incident adds a new newbie gardening mistake on top of my existing ones. HAHA!

What newbie mistakes I've made?
- Impatient. Starting too early before my last frost date. This caused my seeds to germinate much slower than what seed packets suggested.
- Being too cheap on the seeds. While it's obvious, I've noticed that the seed packets I've gotten from the Dollar Tree had too many broken seeds, which never germinated. The seeds I bought online came out a lot quicker and healthier.
- Starting the seeds too deep in the soil. I used egg cartons to plant my seeds, but a lot of my seeds are very tiny (most gardeners recommend no deeper than twice its size). I couldn't tell whether it germinated or not because it's hiding deep inside the seedling soil mix, so I had to dig it out to see how many seeds have germinated, and repotted it so the roots are in the soil, and the leaves outside the soil.
- Not providing adequate sunlight. I saw the roots and leaves popping out of the seeds, but I still kept it in its germinating state because I didn't know before hand (dark, moist, and warm for germination). I should have started giving it sunlight, because they ended up having long thin spines and yellow leaves (opposite of health). This time, I brought a grow light due to having consecutive cloudy days.
- Sunny but windy day today. I decided to move my seedling tray out to my porch. Come back later to find it gone. If those seedlings survive in my grass, I'm going to be seeing some Marigold, Broccoli, Radishes, Lettuce, and Carrots later this spring. I doubt Alyssum and Kale will make it since they've struggled the entirety of this past 2 weeks (also, they're Dollar Tree seeds). rofl

Today is supposedly the last frost date in my area so I restarted seed germination. Experienced gardeners like my dad (and on the internet) recommended to wait it out a bit more because it's still too cold. Checking my weather for this coming week seems to be true. Lots of partly cloudy days and a random low 40 degrees mixed in there. If this next batch ends up in a failure, I'm sure I am going to learn something new while I'm at it. After all, a book can only do so much. Experience is better teaching/learning tool for gardening, especially when everyone has a different environment that isn't covered by the internet.