64/90, indoor gardening

It may be that graduation is less than a month away. It may be that the sun's out. It may be that all of the things I've done to make this house feel like home are now packed away. It may be that my body doesn't know what else to do with the nervous energy sparking in me like a chewed-up electrical cord.

Whatever the reason, I can't shake this nesting feeling. Instead of working on assignments– and at times, even instead of working when at work– I'm developing a future homestead: reading about gardening, finding the perfect way to make sweet tea, looking at luggage we'll be needing to buy soon, lusting over cameras, looking for unique ways to turn things into bookcases (most popular "thing" to bookcase: the ladder).

I pushed through several hours of work last night, then realized that most of my time working (most of my time being home) was spent walking up and down the stairs to get a drink or find things to pack. Most of my time in my room working was spent pushing Baby away from something she was chewing on or trying to take pictures of her.

I needed to settle my mind and calm myself down. I needed to put my hands to work and have a tangible thing that I accomplished. At Target picking up a bag of food for Baby, I noticed that their standard selection was back in the One Spot. The plastic shovels and spades and garden gates, the flowered placemats, the theater popcorn containers. The small hothouse pots of herbs with astronaut dirt.

I walked out of Target with rabbit pellets, a new lipstick (my color for the wedding), zinnia, marigold, basil, bell pepper and chive (and clementines, of course). The plan was to wait until I got back to Ohio and settled in for the summer, then work with my grandma to start learning how to garden. I can't start a garden in my parents' yard, since I'll be gone after a few months, so I was planning to leech off of a bit of space in my grandma's backyard garden.

My five little pots line the window sill and have three inches of growing to do in the Muncie sun. If all goes well, my grandma may want to transplant a few of them. Otherwise, I'll be transplanting the little darlings into larger pots and having my own little urban garden. Now, I just need a few Topsy Turvy tomato growers.

So yesterday afternoon, I set myself to gardening in our kitchen. I started with a snack, scooping avocado out of its shell with a spoon. Then, I rinsed the avocado pit in warm water, stuck three toothpicks into its sides and suspended it over a glass of water.

This sounds familiar for good reason. Statistics say that roughly one in five avocado pits will sprout. The last several tries (roughly seven) were failures (example), but I think I've figured it out.

Past mistakes & Their Corrections

1. Using toxic Muncie water --> Using filtered water
2. Hovering the pit over water in a Ball jar --> Using a wine glass to help
1. Keep it classy
2. Keep less water under it at a time
3. Keep the bottom of the water from turning icky and thick
3. Stabbing the pit with Q-tips --> Stabbing the pit with toothpicks like you're supposed to
1. Which means I now have approximately 500 extra toothpicks
2. Correction, I baked bread last night and checked it twice, so that's 498 toothpicks

So we're off to a running start with the avocado. I'm not naïve. I'm not expecting her to grow and flower and give me avocados in 5 years unless I move out to California. I am expecting the large root, followed by a little sprout that can be transplanted and will grow like any other very temperamental house plant.

I then put 1/6 c of water into 5 bowls, dropped in a dehydrated pellet of dirt, watched it expand, drained the extra water (ok, so maybe I guessed on the 1/6 measurement), let it dry a bit and put it into five little cups labeled with their futur inhabitants. I then sowed 5 seeds into each pot, pushing them 1/4" into the soil with a fork (it was handy).

Next to the wine glass in the kitchen window, the little seeds are warming themselves in the sun. I'm going to keep these guys going strong, watering them with a mister per their directions and not messing around in the soil to make sure the seeds are still ok. By summer, they could look like this: