After four weeks of nail-bitingly slow, almost imperceptible growth, my tiny egg plants have finally bloomed! I doubted that the little sprouts would ever grow into the flowering plants that the egg packaging promised. (My issues with plant patience aside, that packaging has been known to lie.) But then, in the last few days of March, the eggs exploded with growth, almost if they knew about their Easter deadline.
April Fools!
The thread-like sprouts in the eggs were growing nowhere fast. I hadn't seen any further development in the last two weeks so I gave up on them, cute as they were. Instead of waiting for a flower that may never have come, I planted each egg with a nicely established, grown-by-someone-with-patience, flowering plant, and left the discarded seeds and filler to their own devices in a small pot in the backyard. I will be happy to claim my "Seedling Nurturer of the Year" award as soon as the trophy cup is ready. As long as I'm not required to grow anything in it.
The eggs could not be persuaded into blooming, no matter how much I babied them. The tomato plants, on the other hand, have literally blossomed in the last week, without much coaxing from us. The age old argument of Nature vs. Nurture wages on.
Our garden continues to flourish, and recently we've noticed quite a few bees buzzing around our little plot. All of the plants have added new leaves, and I noticed what looked like the beginnings of buds on the bell peppers.
When we transplanted our herbs from their peat pellets to the larger soil squares I wasn't sure which tiny sprout was which because they all looked the same. In the last week, I have watched as the baby leaves have grown into more recognizable herb leaf shapes. Now, by process of elimination, I can definitively say that the few tiny chive and rosemary sprouts that we transplanted were fatalities of The Freak Hailstorm of 2009. Our parsley and basil have bounced back from their hail beating, and seem to be thriving despite the adversity of losing their closest friends.
This week we added a new plant to our growing botanical repertoire. The Husband is a total sucker for coupons (and commercials on the radio, for that matter... and gardening) so when we received a 20% off coupon to our local garden center it was nearly impossible to keep him from leaving a trail of drool from our front door to the nursery. We decided on a hot red camellia because it is the only flowering plant that will thrive in the shade of our front porch, and we're running out of places to put new plants. It should bloom red in the fall, to match our front door.
Around Our House Next Week: Dressmaking and Easter dinner
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