Plant diaries (Day 2) 24 June 2013

Woke up this morning for work and before I got dressed I rushed outside, expecting to see a forest, but to my surprise and abject disappointment, the lack of any development whatsoever was glaring.  Feeling a little crushed and dead inside, I consoled myself by thinking that my expectations may have been a bit optimistic, but not unreasonable, considering the love and attention I had put into the previous day’s toil (in the soil).

I picked myself up from the short brush with clinical depression through reminding myself of the rabbit and tortoise story – slow and steady, like a hat, and feeling that the soil was still adequately moist (and soily), went to work.  A big task for the day was out of my hands, the guys’ first encounter with the sun.  Now our balcony gets a decent amount of sun, but like an elephant on a conveyer belt, it moves.  Luckily dale (the roommate) was at home, and he was entrusted with marking the sun’s path across the balcony and establishing the optimal SUS - sun exposure spot, in which the pot will ultimately come to settle. 

Like a nervous mother, looking at her kid’s first trip to shark cage diving, I couldn’t help but worry about my seed’s wellbeing.  I may have left work a little early ‘to beat the traffic’, and was relieved to see that the pot had moved from whence it lay earlier in the morning.  This means Dale had done his job and the seeds had had a serious sun party.  We then sat down and he explained how the sun had behaved and we debated the perfect pot position.  After a quick check-in with the newly-planted homies, it was time for the parsley to move into its new home.  The seeds were drained and transplanted into sector 4 of the pot in a very delicate procedure, which can only be described as ‘putting the seeds from a bowl into the soil’.

Still no growth from anyone’s sector, but maybe everyone was waiting for Parsley to move in.  What’s a party without the parsley?  They (you know ‘they’, they very smart), say that germination is the most important part of the growing process, as despite the lack of progress on the outside, under the surface there is a whole magical mix of nature’s elements brewing – like a poop.