What a Difference a Year Makes: Indoor Gardening

Indoor gardening can be as delicate and complex a process as growing plants outside--soil choice, natural lighting, water level, and other factors affect whether or not seeds sprout and later on, thrive.  This being said, I much prefer indoor gardening for its obvious verdure aesthetics, as well as for the convenient ease of obtaining plant trimmings.

What perhaps is most interesting to me about my indoor gardening experience, besides whether or not seeds sprout and plants grow and thrive, is my strong personal preference for growing specific plants from seed rather than from already established seedlings. 

For instance...

Spring and summer 2013:

Arugula roquette (rocket) seedlings, grown from seed and transplanted--unfortunately, these guys didn't make it through winter.  Also grew lemon balm, oregano, and chives from seed, all of which continue to thrive.

Spring and summer 2014:

New plants grown from seed this year are shiso (pictured), chervil, and miscellaneous lavender--still crossing my fingers for the asparagus fern.


Of course, it's much easier to nurture an already established plant, so why do I have such a strong preference, year after year, for growing only a few choice plant varieties from seed?  I guess it's the nurturing aspect of this delicate growth process that I really enjoy, the chance to track on a daily basis tiny spurts of growth from seed to sprout to seedling, and--if I'm lucky--to full-grown plant.  Calling this a true bonding experience is an accurate description of the situation at hand (have you read Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire?), for I never tire of these select plants, and continue to ensure their lush indoor growth as best I can--just short of whispering to them.  Soon I'll surely have an indoor jungle, but that's fine with me.  Maybe I should have called my new main website The Indoor Gardener?  However, that doesn't have the same ring to it as The Introverted Writer, I think!

Plant Study

A few weeks ago--or was it last week?--I happened upon my indoor sill plants in glorified light.  Not a glowing, halo-esque type of lighting, but the bright-yet-moody, ambient light that characterizes the time in-between late afternoon and dusk.  It's perhaps an hour at most that the light stays within this range, for it's not the soft drape of morning light, nor is it the harsh tint of the afternoon's.  Clouds were rolling in haphazardly, staggered in their movement, much like a child's first time on the ice: I had but a half hour's time before the clouds overtook the sun completely.

I usually edit my photographs on standard PicMonkey for clarity, color, and brightness.  But today, in this blog post, I wanted to capture the stillness and depth of my original shots--so here they are in their unedited forms.  Not too scary a sight to behold.  However, these images are the first that I've posted on this blog that have not been edited in some way, shape, or form, even if slightly.  Maybe you can tell the difference?

Oregano

Shiso

Arugula Roquette

* * *

Welcome, dear September!

P.S. All Internet connection issues--our outdoor connection wire was cracked, plus our modem was overheated--have been solved.  A new modem and some new holes in the wall later, everything is as good as new.  Thank goodness, I say!