Ready! Set! Germinate!

Today was the opening of the retail store and nursery at Project Native (my employer, maybe I didn't write about that before).  Anyways, we are now officially open for the season!  And with the opening, comes customers.

In and out all day.  Discussing the importance of native plants and pollinators.  Describing their gardens and lawns.  Deciding between this bee balm and that.  Lot's of talk about gardening.  Lot's of competitive talk amongst gardens and backyard homesteaders.  Whose got the most native, most diverse collection.  Naturalized versus native.  Who spent the most hours pulling invasive's, etc. etc.

As you know, I have been stressing about my own garden and it's success for several days.  I promised myself I would not peep under the reemay until exactly 7 days from sowing my seeds.  Up until today, I have upheld that promise, but as more and more customers bragged about their germinating arugula, the more tempted I was to have a peek or better yet, pull back the reemay for good and let the sun do some work on my bed.

I couldn't wait to get out of work today.  I flew out of the parking lot, down route 41 and up the hill to Monterey.  I didn't even stop to make my daily coop run for some unneeded grocery item.  I was barely in my driveway when the seatbelt came flying off.  I opened the door and nearly forgot to shut off the ignition.  Left everything in the car (so out of my routine) and flew up the stone steps up to my side yard and yanked back the reemay.

Dirt.  All I saw was dirt.  Wet, compact dirt.  No sign of green, other than the lingering blade of grass left behind from the previous weeks sod removal!  Feeling defeated, I sulked a bit as I neatly folded my reemay and went inside to continue on my normal daily routine.  Unpack and wash my lunch dishes.  Pour myself a cup of cold coffee left over from breakfast...

And then I thought, why not get on my hands and knees and do a bit more inspecting, just in case there's a tiny little germinated blade of something that I missed.

To my surprise, something had germinated and not just something, but basically everything!  Arugula, tatsoi, radishes and even my tray of lettuce and herbs in the house!  I think I did it!

Because they were so small, I couldn't photograph them, but I thought I would let you in on a couple of other home projects.....

To the left:  Raw sunflower seeds soaking.  I will wash and soak these three times then spread them out in a flat, cover with soil and in about 5-7 days will have sunflower seed sprouts for eating.  They are amazing!

To the right:  Ginger simple syrup.  Made this over the weekend with a friend by boiling sugar, water, raw ginger with some toasted anise seed, cardamom, and allspice. Mix a little with some freshly carbonated seltzer from my handy dandy seltzer machine and you have an amazing homemade ginger ale (kind of).