Shoots of life

[igenlode]

I'd just come to the sad conclusion that my second batch of over-enthusiastically-planted basil seeds (this one kept indoors, but indoors isn't all that warm at the moment) had dried out, de-mucilaginated, and lost all chance of germination, when I noticed several pale necks lifting up in the various compartments of the seed tray. :-)

(I planted them two to a compartment, as the seed is last year's.)

Comments

[betweensunandmoon]

That's good to hear. :)

How's isolation treating you?

[igenlode]

Even better, the section of the tray that I tumbled out all anyhow into a yoghurt pot in order to balance it on the (narrow) kitchen windowsill, on the grounds that it was warmer in there, is also showing what I suspect in certain angles of the light to be a pale white sprout -- I daren't stir the earth to investigate, and I keep thinking I must have been imagining things and then locating it again when the sun comes out ;-)
I really didn't have much hope for that one, as I couldn't see where the seed was when transferring the earth, and had come to the conclusion that it was either dried out or buried too deep. But it looks as if I just may have had success with one of that pair of seeds as well.

We shall see. It's very early days, seedlings are notorious for damping off when young, and basil likes hot conditions, which we're not getting a lot of at the moment. It thrived last summer -- or at least I got three plants to adulthood -- which was why I was hoping to do it again. But the seed is older now (and I'm not likely to be able to get any more, since the panic-buying has now spread to vegetable seed).

Isolation is my natural state of existence anyway :-p
I never go round touching and stroking people, I don't go to pubs and clubs, I have no companion for my expeditions, and I live with my head constantly full of words to be written down, not spoken.

My various concerts and rehearsals have been cancelled, but I'm not particularly sorry about that. I'm trying to keep up the singing, because those are muscles that do go out of training if unused, and because I want to keep all the stuff I spent several months learning 'in repertoire', but I'm not working nearly so hard on it as I would be if I had the spectre of having to stand up and perform without music at a rehearsal in a couple of days' time.

And I have an awful lot of things to do -- including a heap of mending going back a couple of years -- that I still don't seem to be getting round to... Right now I have a column to write that I've said I'll submit by Monday. It's ten pm on Sunday night, I've written 114 words of which a good deal is quotation, and I really shouldn't be looking at Dreamwidth :-p