I was very nearly worthless yesterday.
It was cold, and ice from Tuesday's ice storm was still hanging around, so I stayed inside except to make a run to the Dollar General up the road. Earlier in the day, as I was watering my African violets, I spotted something unusual in the center of a withering bloom.
I did a happy dance.
You see, I've been trying to pollenate my violets. I wasn't sure how to do it, but I knew that the principle was to move pollen from one bloom to another. As I'd water them, I'd rub the blooms with my index finger, or sometimes a small paintbrush. Been doing this for months. And yesterday - voila!
The next problem was how to treat it. Logic said that the pod needs to dry on the stem, as it would do in the wild. But how long does it need to stay there? I googled, and discovered that if left too long, the pod would - I forget the fancy name, starts with a "d" - explode, and seeds would go everywhere. The seeds are tiny; I'll never find them if the pod does the "d" thing.
Later, as I was rummaging around in the freezer for something to cook, I found a freezer bag full of seed packets. I forgot about dinner and took the bag out to see what was in it. Tomatoes, peas, lettuce - all sorts of wonderful things.
My first attempt (last year) at growing my tomato plants from seeds wasn't too successful. They started out leggy, even though they were growing under a bright, "full spectrum" sewing lamp. When I set them outside to harden off, a storm came up and beat them all to heck. Out of 20-something seedlings, only five or six made it to the garden, where a couple more of them died. The ones that did survive were flattened by a tree that fell across the garden. W. T. F.
Anyway, I was excited to find the seeds and decided that I will try again. I put the seeds back in the freezer and went straight to the computer and ordered a tabletop greenhouse, complete with its own adjustable light. And when I made that run to Dollar General, I got a fresh bag of potting soil.
I'm ready.
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