Hit a very small lick on the '58 MGA last week: in order to start on the floorboards, I'll need to order the bits from Todd Clarke. TIG welding a nut on the end of the broken pozidrive screws makes them MUCH easier to remove from the floorboard flanges...

The madness continues. Day before yesterday I planted the last big batch of seeds. I planted eighteen each of Kermit Hybrid eggplant, White Star Hybrid eggplant, Giant Marconi Hybrid Italian sweet pepper, NuMex Big Jim New Mexican pepper, Purple tomatillo, Verde Puebla tomatillo, Big Zebra tomato, and Copia Tomato. Tonight I planted twenty-five each of Paul Robeson tomatoes and Rutgers tomatoes. I've also attempted to get some old sweet peas to sprout, but that does not seem to be working. The solanaceae total is now somewhere near 400, I think. Once I plant the other tomatoes and peppers and the potatoes, the genus will be represented by somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred plants. I also just transplanted three more of the avocados that I hope will become the centerpieces of the greenhouse in the next year or two. The oldest of them is now about a year and half old, so we should have fruit in two more...

I've just now gotten the last of the peppers from the first plantings moved to "pots." I found another stash of cups from about four years ago this morning while cleaning up in the garage to get ready for Matt's arrival Tuesday. I'll use this as a segue from plants to British cars.

We're going to work on the MGAs this week -- with any luck, we'll get the brake, fuel, and clutch  lines buttoned up on his and we'll move it out of the shop under its own power. It could happen; really...

It's quite a bit farther along than it appears at first glance. Of course, having the complete sill and pillar assemblies to weld in means it'll move in the wrong direction for a while before we turn it around.

Usually when I root out parts, I stir up dust, but I've already been sneezing like crazy since I repotted the Caribbean Red peppers about an hour ago (segue number two...). While I was messing with them I thought I smelled the same kind of vaguely soapy thing that the Habaneros have going on, but I wasn't sure. Now that it's making me sneeze, I'm pretty certain it's the hottness that's doing it. I have the same sneezy response to curry paste in the wok; awesome. Here are the Caribbean Reds:

And, for good measure, a shot of the 117 plants that I've hauled up into the loft and put near a south window under lights. I think that there are 93 in the bathroom and 59 on the kitchen counter. That's 269 so far -- I'll probably plant the more ornamental eggplants, tomatoes, tomatillos, and a few more pepper varieties late this week. It would be nice if the weather would cooperate, but we'll have a few more days of killing frosts before the next warmup. I'll not be putting anything tender out until late in the second week of April. I'm betting the last frost will be the 13th this year, so I might wait until the 17th or so, just so I don't have to cover anything up. 

For the record, I did actually get some of the garden cleaned up and tilled today; not as much as I'd have liked, but I made progress. Now those hundreds of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants have a place to go...

Cleaning up the big garden spot today before the rain begins tonight. I got distracted by these beauties this morning on the way out there. These are the only ones like this on the place -- they have much larger perianths than most of the older flowers around here and they smell really good. I think, since the corona is not quite as long as the petals of the perianth, these would be division 2 daffodils. I suppose I should do some research. I'd like to have some of the poet's narcissus, too -- anybody have a large planting of them?

Don't have time to do much in the way of blogging, but feel compelled to update anyway. Almost everything is up and going great guns. I'll have to get some more grow lights tomorrow or Wednesday so that I can get more of the pots under ten or twelve hours of light a day. Even the Habanero and Caribbean Red peppers are showing true leaves now, and they were about the last to come up. I might be able to move these to pots in a few more days, but I don't know when I'll have the time. Some of the earliest of the tomatoes now have deeper green stems and are fuzzing up a little, so they are just about to hit their strides. This whole plant-growing enterprise would be much easier with a greenhouse.

It's a doubleheader weekend -- two birthdays (Megan is SIXTEEN and G'dad is NINETY-EIGHT) and two baseball games. I've only been able to transplant/repot eighteen Biggie Chili plants so far, and I think that I may have killed a few of those when I amputated most of the root structure lifting them from the trays. I'll know in a few days, I suppose. I think I'll wait to move anything else until it has several pairs of true leaves on it; that was my plan originally. I think I've got somewhat more than a hundred plants already in pots.

I'll hook the tiller up on the big tractor the next time we have a few warm days in a row and get the garden busted up. If I don't, there's no way the potatoes, chard, radishes, and sugar snap peas will stand a chance of getting in the ground before March is over and done. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow; I'm making progress, but it's hard to take pictures while working, and I'll opt for the working every time...