See…

POTATOES! Alan watched some video on youtube and grew us some potatoes. I wasn’t expecting big grand potatoes like you can get at the grocery store because I watched those youtube videos too.

They’re tiny little things.

But how awesome is that? Alan GREW them!

Also this basil is going strong.

He’s been experimenting with growing things in buckets.

Or tiny cups.

Not everything is making it and I don’t know what will happen when it gets really cold. But hopefully they’ll make it like our roses. They just will not die. We don’t even water them.

Let’s hope.

But anyhoo…MUSHROOMS!! I saw someone on a blog somewhere growing mushrooms at home with a kit. I had mentioned it to Alan before but we didn’t know where to get one. Then one day we were at Home Depot and they had a whole shelf of them! So, we grabbed one telling Isabelle it was a fun science experiment.

I snapped a picture mostly everyday. I didn’t plan on making it into a little slideshow. I thought I’d share pictures with my regular posting. But I never got around to it so now it’s a slideshow.

It was very simple to grow, basically cut open and mist with water two times a day. Inside there are additional instructions that say for best results soak the mushroom bag for 24 hours. I decided we’d do that with our second batch. Because, yes, you get TWO batches! One on each side.

Well, everything was going good. The mushrooms started growing. It was so amazing how quickly they came out. But this is also where I messed up.

Isabelle was misting them regularly twice a day like instructed.

But I didn’t notice that she was supposed to be misting the mushroom medium that it’s growing in, not the mushrooms. And I think that’s why our mushrooms stopped growing and started looking dried up.

Well, we’re working with our second batch now and this time we’ve soaked it. I hope we get nice big ones like the ones in this time lapse video.

So, yep, that’s what’s growing on. Mushrooms.

The plants are watered by the fish he is growing for us to eat. Yes there are fish in here. I so handily dandily circled it for you because this is the only picture I have. I took one measly crappy photo where you cannot even see the fish. Yeah, yeah, yeah…more pictures I will take. And evidently I am now Yoda or something.

Look. Herbs. Herbs!!! Ok, these pictures are so old I think this is the only one that survived. Our thyme, cilantro, and parsley didn’t make it. But since then Alan’s planted loads of other stuff I don’t have pictures of.

And what have I gone cuckoo for? Film photography.

I bought a Polaroid Super Shooter. I mentioned it last month.

It is an instant camera that uses peel apart film.

You focus by measuring how close you are to your subject. I guesstimate it.

I obviously am very bad with distances. But I am still having fun.

So much so that I pulled out the Argus Super 75 that I bought three years ago. I bought it to take TTV (through the viewfinder) pictures with. I’ve only taken one. Now I’ve taken my second TTV picture.

And here it is before cropping. I never did get around to making the black tunnel sock like thingy that people use for TTV photos.

I had to get creative to prop up my 75 to take this photo. It was on Gorillapod.

I pulled out the 75 not to take TTV pictures but to use film in it. REAL FILM! It uses 620 film, which they no longer make. But 120 is the same size, it’s just on a different spool. The camera will not take it so I respooled film! It’s at the lab right now being developed. They are probably going to look like the instant photos above since it has the same measure to focus thing going on.

So yeah. That’s what we’ve gone crazy for lately. Wait until I show you some more recent photos.

You may have noticed, I turned off comments a week ago. I decided to give it a try after running across a couple of blogs that didn’t have any comments. I thought: What an interesting idea. You don’t have to worry about spam then! But do you guys miss it? Is it totally anti-social? Have any comments on that?

Then I kept up mad scientisting my site: I changed my banner today and my twitter background picture. And now I have an idea about my “I Heart” section.

Have you noticed my “I Heart” section in my sidebar? I copied the idea from Secret Agent Josephine’s “Eye spy with my little eye”. Well anyhoo, my idea is that I’m going to start drawing the “I Heart” section to get my draw on. So, instead of grabbing a picture of what I’m loving I’ll draw it. I’m having drawing withdrawal I guess.

It’s been almost 6 months since I had this I MUST draw urge. Blame Secret Agent Josephine again. She’s started to draw daily and it got my yearning for it up and going again.

What else can I go mad scientist on?! Well, I think I’m done with my site for now so moving onto the real world and a GRAND EXPERIMENT.

And the title of this post is Mad Scientists because the GRAND EXPERIMENT involves Isabelle.

Ok that sounds so mysterious and exciting. But it’s not really. Do you remember what it was? It was us trying to grow things. Ooooohhhh!

It failed miserably last time and I’ve been wanting to try again so we bought a whole bunch of new seeds.

And this time we’re serious. We even bought planting gear!

That’s right. Gardening world, watch out, we’re well equipped here! We planted a seed, a single seed of corn, a week ago. (We learned this time and didn’t go all crazy planting a gazillion seeds.)

And lo and behold, it groweth. A plant thing sprouteth yesterday.

Ok so I’m not down with the gardening terminology. A plant grew. Is that what you say? A plant sprouted. A seed has…oh whatever.

We are mad scientists and mad scientists don’t need to talk properly. They can use crazy words. They’re mad! Bwa ha ha!!

And to prove our awesome powers, LOOK:

We have the power to mutate helium. This balloon has been up since Isabelle’s birthday back in September. It’s mutant helium. All cower at our mad sciencing. Bwa ha ha!

Ok, I obviously need to go to bed now. But seriously, Isabelle’s balloon…Craaaazzzzy!

Pictures of our grand experiment taken back at the end of January. Everything was growing and Isabelle and I were watering them regularly. Even the bulbs were coming in.

Well then the nausea hit. So no more watering. No more grand experiment. When I finally went back out to check the plants this is what was left.

The sugar snap peas grew big and tall and even had pods on them before the sun withered them right up.

And the bulbs sprouted and flowered. I think these were tulips.

And I missed it all.

It took quite a while with Isabelle being “helpful” like sticking the sticks every which way. Or pouring them all out onto the floor. Or throwing the little ties around. Yeah. Fun times.

Now if I can only remember to stick them outside for hardening off…

But then I got lost. I started going through pictures taken at the beginning of this month. During our crazy planting things phase.

Remember these?

Well I forgot to mention that we planted them, me and Isabelle. I finally used that little jar.

But we went a little overboard with everything. Too much dirt and too many pebbles. But what can I say? It’s hard to do things carefully with Isabelle trying to pour shovelfuls of dirt on top of everything. I rushed through and this is the result.

The little jar terrarium is busting out. The lid barely encloses it all. I need to replant it. Yes. Replant it. That’s what I’ve been saying for weeks. Maybe after the new year.

Me and Isabelle are very excited. We’ve been dancing around singing, “they’re growing, they’re growing!” And Isabelle is constantly asking me to take pictures of them.

But then the other day Alan brought up a very good point. What are we going to do with them all? They’re getting tall and pushing the lid off of the little planter greenhouse thing. They need to be moved. But I think it might be too cold for them to go outside. The first batch we planted outside hasn’t grown a bit. And I don’t have enough planters or space for them inside.

I really didn’t think it through, the whole planting stuff. Sure it was fun. Sure it’s awesome they’re growing. But um…why did I go crazy and let Isabelle plant sooooo much.

So yeah, they’re growing. Crap.

Last weekend I broke down and went to Rite Aid to get Isabelle a Chia pet. I saw one of their commercials and thought: guaranteed green things! Well when I was there I saw they had Christmas trees for only $25. I was very tempted to buy them but I decided we’d support the family owned farm instead. So off to the Christmas tree lot we went.

And you can’t beat the pictures and fun from there.

We ended up getting two trees, a big one for us and a little one for Isabelle. When we got home we decorated Isabelle’s little tree.

We started decorating the big tree.

We didn’t get very far though because one of the light strands didn’t work. Well, halfway didn’t work.

We sat there meticulously checking each bulb, a few were burnt out. After replacing the bad ones it still didn’t work though, soooo frustrating. So we didn’t finish decorating the big tree. That didn’t keep me from turning it on though. It sat there with just one strand of lights lighting up the lower third of the tree.

So, this past weekend, we bought some new lights. And wouldn’t you know it, one of them DIDN’T work!! Aaaargh!! But we did finish decorating. I just spread the lights out some more.

And you know what else happened this week? Green things popped up! GREEN THINGS!!

Guess I didn’t need to get a Chia pet after all.

Ok, not really. I’m soooo lying. We didn’t grow plants. We replanted plants and planted more seeds in between drawing with chalk. That’s a castle Isabelle drew.

She also drew a lollipop. And, yes, that’s what she says they are. I did not put the names to them. I drew a menacing message and when Isabelle sees it she says, “I drew that!”

Isabelle thinks gardening is so fun. She loves digging through the dirt with her little shovel and sticking the seeds in. In her rush to plant everything I cannot tell you how many times she knocked over the envelope of seeds.

Whenever we spilled seeds, it would be a mad dash to grab the seeds up before Isabelle started planting them willy nilly. Alan couldn’t make holes fast enough for Isabelle to plunk the seeds into the container. In the end I said, “oh let her do it”, the result being: a gazillion seeds in the too small holes.

Then at one point we gave her some dahlia seeds.

Dahlia seeds do not look anything like sugar snap pea seeds. Isabelle must have thought I was handing her pieces of dirt or something because she just tossed them into the wind. Luckily I had only given her 2 seeds and not an entire handful.

Once we finished planting her Wall-e tree she tried to go after my terrarium plants.

But that’s for another day (because I’m a dork and didn’t have all the supplies needed)

So, the grand experiment continues. We’re still waiting patiently for something green to come up.