Friday, May 02, 2008

Sisters + 9200 Miles: Casts and Seeds

Casts and Seeds
My sister homeschools her kids. In Australia, there's all kinds of nature education: even on holiday, they participated in a nature program, and made casts of animal prints. Can you see the paw prints of the kangaroo?

It's getting to be Autumn there. Opposite sides of the world mean opposite seasons. She's thinking of apples and winter is coming. Me? I'm reveling in Spring. Starting seeds in newspaper pots and egg cartons. My Favorite 11-Year-Old stopped by last week and we planted these together. Swiss Sunset Basil, Ponytails Amaranth, Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth, Purple Tomatillos, Ornamental Freak Gourd (not its real name but I'm calling it that, as a lover of all things freaky). Together we immersed our hands in the soggy soaked coconut shell soil, and filled the pots. Then with a chopstick, poked at the soil to bury the seeds. They're sprouting now, the amaranth to be the first up. Today my eye spied the basil emerging. Emerging. I like that word right now. It's how I feel in Spring.

3 comments:

Rozanne said...

"Love Lies Bleeding"

I love it when plants have overly dramatic names like that.

Must muster the energy to weed today.

Anonymous said...

Sand prints, if you don't mind I'm going to nick that idea for my art classes, cheers!

Anonymous said...

i love Love Lies Bleeding and Love in a Mist and Bleeding Hearts and basically anything with "love" and/or "bleeding" in the title.

So apropos of everything right now.

I planted: a lipstick-pink geranium, purple n pink columbine (2 colors on the same plant! nice), MORE lavender and... something white and frothy and something pink and frothy.

Did i already post this comment? Because I meant to tell u this last week, when I bought the plants, then I forgot. Also, the hollyhocks that were supposed to come up are looking AWESOME now and getting tall and sturdy. The strawberries? Going nuts. Yay.

And. You ID'ed the two plants absolutely correctly: phlox and wallflowers. http://www.flickr.com/photos/wackymommy/2411714491/

Thank you for the technical expertise, Lelo-lelo.