Last week, when I was busy, I went a little too long between watering the plants I’m growing from seed in my basement. Of the hundreds of tomato, basil, pepper, eggplant, thyme, marjoram, lettuce, and various kinds of flower plant babies that are down there, I only lost a few viola seedlings due to my negligence. But some of my other seedlings suffered a little too.
Some of the tomatoes, specifically, started looking pretty sad. The cotyledons that are still hanging on (those are the leaves that start growing before the true leaves present) especially started showing signs of distress. That’s not a huge deal, because those first leaves will either fall off (or I’ll pluck them off) soon anyway, but some of the rest of the plant parts were starting to show a little yellowing or drooping too. They’ll come out of it. But I can identify. Last week I wrote about how I haven’t been keeping up with my AL Project very well. And this week, even though I was really trying to get to bed earlier, I still didn’t do as well as I probably should have. And I’m feeling it.
I got a new watch recently when my old Fitbit started being less than reliable. The new watch is a Garmin and it has a couple of features my old watch didn’t: one called “Body Battery”, and another that tracks my stress levels. I don’t know how it gauges it all exactly, but I’m pretty sure heart rate has a lot to do with the stress level, and the amount of rest I get compared with how much activity I do determines my “Body Battery” levels. Whatever it is, I’m not doing great in either category.
So I feel a little bit like my poor plants look this week–a little withered, probably not looking my best. And, just like them, I know I’ll come out of it when I start getting more of what I need. There is light at the end of this tunnel–the classes I’m taking this semester will be over in about a month, and the school year will end soon after, leading to my first “summer break” since I got back into education.
Of course, between now and then I have final projects to complete, reports to write, lots of books to order, planning to do for next year, plants to pot up, a conference to go to, and approximately 23,000 books to figure out how/where to store during a library renovation. And then, about two weeks after school is out, my summer classes will start. But at least then I won’t have to worry too much about school for a couple of months…except to do SO MUCH more planning for next year, and decide how to arrange all of the new furniture and the 23,000 books on the new shelves once they’re installed. And inventory. And weeding the collections in all of my buildings. But I’ll get there. I might be a little worse for wear, but I’ll get there. Probably…
growingmoxie.com 