Happy Birthday to Me

It's me and it's my birthday!

Today is my birthday. Yeah! Not really too exciting because I never do much on my birthday. Plus I'm 21 and that may be young to everyone else but to me I'm feeling old. Since It's my birthday I thought this would be a good time to tell everyone about me.

My name is Priscilla. I'm now 21 but really feel like I just turned 50. I'm still a newbie gardener even though I started last year around May. No one really believes I'm a newbie because I surprising known quite a bit. Online I don't sound like I know a lot because I'm scared to give the wrong information. It's great to be a gardener down in San Antonio, Texas. I can garden most of the year. This year it is was a mild winter so not many of my plants died.

I container garden on my balcony. There is no house and no yard for me. Of course like every other women I want a house and extremely large back yard. Maybe one day I will get this house when my husband decides to buy one. Yep I'm married, I know I'm young. We have been married for a year and my husband is in the Air Force. We have dated for 4 years before that and were high school sweet hearts. No kids for us any time soon. Maybe 4 years from now or even 3. Yes people do ask me all the time if I have kids. No it's not out of the ordinary to be married at 21 in San Antonio and have a child. All our friends in the Air Force that are married and around our age do mostly have kids. I do have a furry kid though. My dog Kasha who is a Year and some months old. She's my pest but I love her dearly.


Kasha my furry kid.

I like plants, like many gardeners do. To me the best part of gardening is learning. I love to learn and research. Everyday I'm online and looking through blogs and websites trying to build my knowledge. Even though I learn something everyday I still can't remember what I have to remember for my herbaceous plants test tomorrow for my class. My future is really a question mark right now. For all my years I was certain I would be an artist. I didn't want to do anything else and I would draw all the time. As I grew up I took on painting and any other art and craft I could do. I went to art school for 2 years at 2 different schools. In these schools I was studying Graphic Design. For 5 years before I started college I really thought I wanted to be a graphic designer. Once I went to college and started to learn what I would have to do as a Graphic Designer I realized it was not what I wanted to do. It wasn't fun to sit in front of the computer and struggle to create something in a medium I wasn't good at. Go figure the one thing I wanted to do was the one thing I was bad at. Mostly all arts and crafts I'm good at. I'm not tooting my own horn here at all. Really I'm good I've won contests and scholarships and even the superlative in highschool.



So why did I change from wanting to art for the rest of my life to wanting to garden? Really I'm not sure and it's scary. I took a year off from school and during that year I pursued my hidden love. I've always been a nature loving. I'd inspect plants when I went past them and loved to get my hands dirty. Once I started to learn about the plants it was love. I knew I would spend the rest of my life learning and that was great to me. When I started to volunteer and build my own plant collection I knew gardening was going to be my life. I felt like I had found a part of me that had been missing for so long. Maybe one day I would like to combine art and gardening into one. I'm not that confident in my art really. Art is one of those thing you feel like you are never your best. I could just get the confidence to try and doing botanical illustration but right now that is intimidating.

When I look back at all my years of doing art I noticed one thing. Whatever I drew I always leaned towards nature. I'd draw plants and landscapes and abstract flower related pieces. I even bought gardening and plant books to draw inspiration. Once I transitioned into the world of gardening I already had books to study. Those books I never studied before I just looked at the pictures. Now I read and look at the pictures.

Garening and Me Questionnaire

Took this off of Playing in the Dirt's blog.
1. Why did you start gardening?
I started gardening because I have a strange fascination with plants. After visiting the Botanical Gardens and suddenly opening my eyes to the world I fell in love. It's something I always wanted to get into but never did. After doing some reading and browsing online I realized this could be the rest of my life and I would be forever happy

2. Do you remember the first thing you ever planted in a garden?
Well the first thing I planted as a houseplant in my apartment was curly locks ivy. After that on my balcony it was either my weeping dwarf crape myrlte, pampas grass, or corkscrew vine. The pampas grass is gone now because well it's HUGE!!!

3. Everyone goes through the Crazy Newbie Gardener thing: tell us about one of the silly overzealous things you did then:
The most overzealous silly thing I did was buy pampas grass seeds and plant them in a planter on my balcony. That was back in the days when I didn't know squat about gardening. I thought "Oh that plant looks interesting and it's good for zone 8. Cool I'll buy it". Not even taking into account how high it got or anything else.

4. Favorite plants: what was your first favorite plant, and is it still your favorite? Do you have favorites that come and go, but one all-time favorite that you've always loved, no matter what?
I've always had a heart for ivies. To me that ivy covered building is my dream house. If I could just keep on buying ivies for my apartment I would. I just don't buy them anymore because I am in love with the curly locks ivy that I just keep cutting and rooting and getting new plants from. My new favorite is dianthus. Those frilly fringe flowers are great and I love their foliage too! I have many favorites. I'm always wanting vines vines vines.

5. What's your favorite gardening or yardwork chore?
My favorite is potting plants. I like to dig the holes plop and cover. Anything that is repetitive but does not require great strength since I'm a weakling currently.

6. And your least favorite?
Anything that requires arm muscle. My arms do not have muscle.

7. If a Magical Garden Genie granted you three wishes right now, what would you wish for?
I would wish for a home with a large yard. Right now I just garden on my balcony in containers. What I would do to have a yard. Next I would wish for endless amounts of money to spend on plants and all the things that are need like fertilizer and soil and pots. Lastly I would wish that whatever plant I wanted would grow where I put it and in my zone and thrive.

8. You have ten dollars left to your name, and you get to spend it at a nursery. What do you buy?
A flowering tree. I would buy a flowering tree because it would be something that would last me many years and grow to great heights. If I bought just any old plant those precious 10 dollars would be gone in a year or two.

9. Tell us about one thing you learned about gardening in the past year:
I learn tons about gardening in the past year. I went from knowing nothing at all to knowing enough to sound like I've been gardening for a while. The most valuable thing I learned was to buy plants that will work in what you got. Don't try to pretend they won't grow or that you will prune them to the size you want.

10. Will you be trying anything new this year? A plant you haven't grown before, or a new technique?
I'm sure I'll be trying many new things. I would like to purchase more plants but really I don't have much more space for any new plants. I would like to try and learn even more and more and more everyday. I'll be making lists of seeds and plants I want for next year though so I won't go on spontaneity. It's better to look for something that I know will survive then hope will survive. I'm sure I'll learn many new things and techniques and try new things when I do my internship.