Planting and Fake Flowers

I've been staying at my dad's house since Thursday. Wednesday night my bellydance class was on Spring Break so my mom kindly drove me out to Laura's house so I could check out Trivia Night at Stout, the Irish pub in Brighton. I joined the Young Turks team for the evening, and though I didn't play a big role in winning the rounds, I had a lot of fun! Too bad I don't have a car or moped so I can't come out to trivia nights more often. I suppose I will have to find some in Ann Arbor. The other problem is the fact that I have just resigned myself to staying in most nights.

Lately I've been reading about gardening, as Spring is quietly sneaking up on us. This year I am going to have a garden, and I want to make sure I do it right which includes starting my seeds early enough.

I decided that container gardening would be the best option for me, in addition to the flower beds at mom's. I want to order some Michigan wildflowers, the butterfly mix, which goes for $10/oz at the Michigan Wildflower Farm. Here is another great michigan wildflower resource:
http://www.wildflowersmich.org/

From my reading, however, I learned that potted plants don't use soil because it is very heavy and not porous or nutritious enough for the root of potted plants! Instead, you need something called potting mix, shown below
or you can make your own out of vermiculite (or perlite or sand, but vermiculite seems to be the best way to go), peat moss, and fertilizer such as Osmocote, a slow release fertilizer and limestone, which balances pH levels. This is necessary because certain plants need more or less acidic or alkaline soil. I found this information at this really clear and to the point info sheet:

http://consumerhorticulture.psu.edu/files/homemade_potting_media.pdf


I'll probably just buy a ready made mix because I don't want my potting medium in bulk, nor do I want to spend that much on buying the ingredients.

I need to look for pots though, as well as germination pots. Mom wants me to do a little bit of fake  flower arranging inside our house, so I'm really excited to have to go buy some flowers for that. I'll take a picture when I'm done. It's going to be an exciting challenge.

I have a few other craft projects in mind such as attaching beads, feathers or paint to some little hair clips I have; collaging; knitting; sewing pockets to the inside of my winter jacket and my Northface zip-up, a project I found in ReadyMade magazine and I also want to make a travel journal out of the scraps I brought back from my time in Maine.