Spring has come to our windowsill. These are Morning Glories from a packet of seeds that my sister collected from her garden and sent me a couple of years ago. I came across them while sorting through the living room closet last week and figured they were probably long-dead, but I soaked them overnight and threw them in some soil just to see what would happen. We found an onion left over from last fall's farm share growing in the cupboard, too, so I put that in the same pot.And lo! just a few days later, we've got a very crowded little Garden of Oddities sprouting in the kitchen. I guess I should have spaced the seeds out a bit more. It's really the wrong time of year to be growing them, and I don't have the heart to thin them, so perhaps the outlook is grim for our seedling friends. But take heart, Morning Glories. I'll string some twine from the curtain rod and see if we get some climbers.
Here's our second early spring miracle. It's a paperwhite narcissus, my birthflower. My parents used to give me a bunch of them every year on my birthday. I've been trying to grow them in my apartment for a few years now, but I keep getting bad bulbs. (Either that, or I'm doing something wrong, but there's not much--that I'm aware of--to go wrong here: Put the bulbs in a dish with rocks, allowing just the very bottom to rest in water. Wait for bulbs to grow.) For the last two years, I haven't even been able to coax them to put roots out. I bought four more bulbs in early January, but after 3 weeks nothing had happened. Finally, one of them (this one) put out the tiniest nib of a root. I threw the rest out and left this one on the windowsill as an experiment. Now I'm so glad I did! It's got a robust tangle of roots and some substantial stems that seem to grow an inch a day. I'm hoping for some flowers later in the month.
