project sprouts

omg so.

Over the weekend, temps in NY were a blistering 80 to 90 degrees. Blistering is a poor choice of words, it was more like meltingly sweltering. I was a small, sad, damp puddle, too overheated to even consider dragging my sorry self anywhere except to the shower to cool myself. No AC unit, so I finally decided I'd had enough and hauled myself off to Home Depot. I was too hot to even bother putting makeup or real clothes on (I was in my pj's/gym clothes).

All this lethargy, but I perked right up once I stepped inside Home Depot. Partly because HD was about 30 degrees cooler, partly because I was thinking about how much I adore the new sandals I'd gotten myself as a reward for attempting to do something productive like fetching myself some AC (whoever put a shoe store next to HD is a genius), but mostly because I saw green things! Cute, little green things! In the basement level of HD, they have their semi-nursery and growing tools and seeds and I couldn't help myself.

I checked the boxes of AC units piled high in the front of the store and made sure there was no danger of them running out of units while I had a look around, and hopped onto the escalator going down. I didn't come back up for another hour, I was so taken by all the fun things I found.

Limited space, limited resources, but I decided that it didn't matter. I was going to have sprouts and pretty green things in my apartment this summer, dammit!

So I grabbed the smallest window box I could find, a plastic liner, some soil, and a packet of seeds marked "container herbs." I realized that was maybe a poor decision because I can barely drag an AC unit around with two free hands and now I definitely had less available hands than that, but luckily I am a small girl and the HD employees were very kind and they carried the AC unit all the way through the checkout line and onto the street for me. And the taxi cab driver was very sweet and told me "Don't touch the box! You hurt yourself!" in broken English, and hoisted it into the trunk for me. And my roommate carried it up the stairs for me once I got home. Profuse thanks to all, a big tip for the cabbie, and a returned favor for my roommate absolved my guilt and I set to work on my makeshift garden. What I really should have done was install my AC, but I was too hot and tired from all that work (that I didn't actually do myself lol).

I filled the container with soil, dampened it carefully, scattered half the seeds, and tucked them in with another quarter inch of soil. Swept up all the dirt off my floor and carefully set the box in full sunlight. I kept watching that box, checking it every few hours, hoping something would happen. Like a pot set to boil, nothing happened while I was watching it. But I went to sleep last night and woke up and SURPRISE! Little white pins reaching up out of the soil, some of them with tiny green berets. I counted four sprouts this morning and I said my goodbyes tenderly as I hopped out the door for work. I can't wait to come home and see how many more little seedlings have popped up in the last twelve hours. I'm so excited. I need to probably calm down but...eek! They're so cute!! <3