Above you see a portrait of my grandfather pruning one of the cherry trees in his yard in Plovdiv. Even though he’s lead a busy professional life as an aviation specialist for the government, he’s been growing his own food for 70 years. The cherry he’s pruning in the picture was planted when my little sister was born. In his yard there is a different kind of fruit tree devoted (and named after) many of the important people in his life — mainly my grandmother, their children and their children (sibling + cousins + me). My tree is also a cherry.
Since he can’t see his loved ones as easily as before (recent emigrations have geographically diffused our gene pool) , I make it a point to make sure I keep him as updated as possible of my life on this continent (thanks, internet!). I emailed my grandfather a link to an album with pictures of me and the kids playing with the compost at my work. As part of our exploration of “life cycle” concepts, I had the kids dump a bag of lentils into our worm bin. A week later, we ended up with many little sprouts (below) — which I totally knew was gonna happen, duuuh — !
Anyway, he reacted (translated from Bulgarian)
“Hello Misho,
Thank you for the pictures. It was good to see how you are doing. Your plants are very weak and tall. They sprouted with too much humidity and heat and without enough sun and air and they are very densely planted. Try anew to plant seeds and keep them at temperatures between 18-22 celsius. Plant them about 3-4 cm apart somewhere with less humidity and more light and air. They could even germinate outside this time of year if the frost is waning away.
We are well. Good health from all of us. With love, Grandpa and Grandma.”
I guess I didn’t exactly explain the circumstance of those seedlings, but the man took one look at the pictures and immediately new what was up. I mean, they sprouted in a compost bin. The conditions he described were spot on.
We aren’t going to start germinating our actual veggies at school until the end of this week. Since tomatoes do take a bit longer to sprout, I was going to let that happen over spring break so they’d be ready to be outdoor plants by early May.
