March Madness has started a little early around here. Only for us, it's not on a basketball court. Our 3-point baskets are hanging, netted with nothing but peat moss, and bricks, in small shards, are added to the soil to achieve perfect pH balance. So, move over, Mike Krzyzewski:
Katrianna has convinced the whole family to participate in a "Grow Off!"
Are you ready for this?
Yes, it's a round-robin-redbreast tournament to determine who can grow the healthiest plants. (Vegas lists "Little Sprout" with a -6½ point spread over "Big Sis." Parents aren't expected to make it out of the first round.)
My daughter's intense interest in sprouting seeds is not so much for our consumption, but serves as a necessary developmental step in her dreams of large-scale cultivation. Her future plans to be a naturalist have long included setting up Katrianna's Nature Center to oversee endangered animal breeding programs.
In her pitch to get us to make gardening part of this year's homeschooling studies, she explained it as follows: It is imperative that we devote ourselves to honing our gardening skills in preparation for one day, in the very near future, when she will have to grow healthy and abundant foods to feed all of those endangered animals. We aren't just doing this for her, understand, we are doing this to save all of the world's endangered animals from starvation. (She was astute enough to pick this tactic instead of simply admitting her budding sibling rivalry - see previous post.)
Recently, she also added a new "growth potential" caveat, outlined in her 501(c)3 charity proposal (now at 17 pages and counting), that she plans to "branch out" into endangered plant propagation and save all those threatened botanical species, as well. So there, put up your Dukes, Coach K and Jane Goodall!
At this very moment, we have all sorts of sprouting vegetable, herb and flower seeds indoors. In addition, Katrianna's "forcing" an Amaryllis bulb by the tried and true method (just pin its leaves behind its back, eventually it cries uncle). She's also making eyes at several sprouting potatoes, performing intricate kiwi experiments & hatching pinecones in hopes of reforesting the entire western United States.
Finally, during this morning's breakfast, she successfully captured some squirmy pomegranate seeds from a fresh fruit and potted them up. Relying on the De-meter system as my measure, I wouldn't let her eat any more than six of the seeds, though... Just in case she pulled a Persephone and inadvertently managed to delay spring. Don't you Hades when that happens?
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