The Homestead Hobbyist

On Thursday night, I was volunteering and met a woman whose name I recognized somehow... Turns out, I remembered her name from the DC Urban Gardeners e-mail list I'm on, and she's the program director for the America the Beautiful Fund, which gives out free seeds. I need to read up about it more, but it seems like a great initiative!

At work the other day, I was cruising around on Craigslist looking for free planters or espresso machines or whatever, and I saw this post from a lady in DC saying she had free seedlings and clumps of groundcover to give away. I replied, and when she got back to me, she said most of them were gone, but since I had expressed interest in just a tiny amount, she'd see what she could pull up for me.

I walked away with dozens of plants, including about a dozen irises, clumps of ornamental grasses, sage seedlings, vining flowers, variegated groundcovers, lemon mint, and a lot of other things I just can't begin to recall. I guerrilla gardened my recently laid off coworker's front yard with the irises, some of the groundcover and pretty grasses, and... Er, really, I don't know what else. Some variety of black-eyed susans, and I stuck some of the tomato seedlings I had going in his front yard too. Let's see how they do. I'll get some pictures if things take off.

On my way home, I saw a woman trimming ivy in front of a townhouse. I stopped, said hello, and asked her if she wanted plants. She was a bit flabbergasted, but I successfully offloaded the lemon mint, some unidentified flowers, crysanthemums, and, um, those other flowers. I ended up having two clumps of "those other flowers" left over, and the pretty white-flowering things that the woman said she had kept indoors for 10 years before she knew they could overwinter. I am happy I ran into that lawn-tender before getting home--I don't know what I would have done with the rest of those plants!

Not only fresh-dug plants, but the woman gave me almost her entire seed collection. Datura, morning glory, zinnia, coneflower, peach, walnut, sand dollar seeds, catnip, all sorts of seeds! I don't even know half of them--they're labeled as "orange flowers on long stem" or somesuch. I'm excited to see what I can do with these.

And just yesterday I decided not to spend $40 on 15 seed packets from Richters because I thought I had enough seeds and didn't need more. At least I got a lot of the seeds I would have ordered without having to pay for them. Rue (Ruta graveolens) was something I was interested in for some reason, and the lady had some growing in her front yard and had a giant bag of seeds that she gave me. I love their smell, although I'm not certain I would eat it, I'd have to find the perfect dish to make with it, but it seems like a tiny bit would be good in curries.

I'm so incredibly excited... So many seeds of vining plants! Oh DC, such a wealth of gardening... I would never have guessed!