They're coming outta the walls!

See this?

I shot it on Tuesday, when I went to check the moisture in my incubators. The thing on the right, obviously, is a zombie morning glory that's starving for light. The thing on the left is one of those flesh-eating aliens that I received from Veseys on October 27 and had to plant indoors because it was too late to put them outside.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!

The aliens are coming. This one was actually probably two days old already when I spotted it. As of this morning, there is a second one. Unless the third one rotted to death, which doesn't seem plausible given the success of the first two, it won't be far behind.

Sigh... Now we're all gonna die.

And another thing that's been going on for at least two weeks is this:


This is a crappy photo because the light was miserable, but you can see it's Deng Xiaoping. And it's leafing out. What the Ford? What kind of tree leafs out in early November????


This is bad. Either the flesh-eating aliens are going to kill everybody, or they're actually lily bulbs, then they'll flower in December and be unavailable when Yards in Bloom judging rolls around. And Deng Xiaoping is going to have to keep those leaves for 10 months, which isn't necessarily the end of the world, but not what a mayday tree needs, either. This is absolutely the worst time of year for plants to be growing.

See, if you ever look at a map, you'll notice that Hay River is on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, one of the largest lakes in North America. This time of year, when it's well below freezing but the lake is still open, steam rises off the lake, thusly:


That big cloud isn't a storm, it's steam off the lake. When the wind is from the south, as it was that day, we get bright clear skies with a menacing cloud to the north. When the wind is from the north, the cloud blows over us, and it gets overcast, and it snows. And if it's a strong wind, it breaks up the thin ice on the lake, thus retarding freeze-up. Once the lake is completely frozen over, it stops snowing and we get mostly clear weather until break-up. And this is why, if you're obsessively tracking my photography, you might notice that I have almost no photos shot in November. Of any year. Because there just isn't any light here in November.

Back to my garden, therefore, plants shouldn't try to grow in November, because there just isn't any light. No one has seen "direct sunlight" in weeks. And even if the weather cleared up, the hours of daylight are still decreasing for another month. If my house plants want to go nuts in January, that's fine by me; by then we get actual "sunlight" and it's increasing. Plants that grow in November are either going to be spindly and pale, or they're gonna need a grow light. And as I've already mentioned, I can't afford a grow light. Plus there's nowhere in my apartment to set up a light garden, really. Though I suppose I could find a way. I always find a way.


Well, I suppose all this is irrelevant now that we're about to be picked off one at a time by flesh-eating aliens, right?