Saturday, March 01, 2008

A dirty story

The weather has been quite nice lately. It was apparently the sunniest February on record for the UK. It's gotten me itchy to plant things and get things growing in our backyard and in my allotment. I started off some pepper plant seeds a few weeks ago and was very pleased to find that all of them had sprouted. My secret? A wet paper towel in a plastic tray, covered with plastic wrap and put into our boiler cupboard. A steady 25-30°C and hey presto! Seeds grew. So obviously paper towel isn't the best nutrient base for seeds, so I transferred them today to some pots with soil. Along with them, I planted 4 different types of tomato seeds in soil as well. They were all sitting on our bed, catching a few rays before being put to bed in the cupboard.

Off I went to take a bath after potting the seeds and planting a few other things like sage in the backyard. Before I went to the bath, I got Lena up out of her crib from her nap. She enjoys standing on her chair and looking out to the street, especially after napping. So I left her there and told G. where she was before going off to my bath. G. was downstairs playing a computer game. As I got into the bath, I had a passing thought that it was awfully quiet in the rest of the house. But I decided that I had passed on the baton and wasn't going to interfere.

About 20 minutes later, I heard G. go upstairs and several exclamations from him. Soon he came down and brought Lena into the bathroom. Her hands, feet and mouth were covered with soil, along with a light dusting on all her clothes. She had crossed from her room to our and gotten into the pots, tracking dirt all over our bedroom. I was 5% sad about the plant setback, but 95% amused by what had happened. Lena joined me in the bath while G. worked on cleaning up the mess. He commented that she had been really quiet all the time she was upstairs. I told him that whenever she is quiet for too long, I always go up to see why she's being quiet. Not really the way I'd choose to get that message across, but hopefully effective for the future.

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