About Lettuce

It was a challenging winter for Mr. Marvelous.

1. There was the back injury (a dislocated rib) that had him down for six weeks in November and December.  
2. That was followed by a bout of mycoplasma pneumoniae.
3. Let's not forget the knee injury on the ladder.
4. Interspersed between all this was his regular and routine bouts of sinusitis which usually turns into either bronchitis or pneumonia (it's a toss-up each time). 
5. He had to go to Wisconsin on two separate occasions for work
6. Oh yeah, it was one of the hardest, longest, coldest winters that this area has had in quite a while.

Normally winters are hard for him because he can't get out and work in his garden.  This year, even if he had wanted to, he wasn't in very good physical shape to do much.

I did ask him to start some lettuce for me under the grow-lights in the basement.  I figured that would accomplish two things.  It would let me have some lettuce for salad, and it would let him get his hands in the dirt a little bit.

So one January evening when he was feeling moderately healthy, he went down in the basement, got out the aluminum pans and the potting soil, and planted some lettuce seed for me.

See? These really are not just for lasagna

We turned on the grow-lights and waited.

We faithfully watered the pans and waited.

We waited.  And waited.  And waited!  And nothing happened.

Finally in late February, Mr. Marvelous gave up on the lettuce and started some other seeds.

By the way, have you priced potting soil lately?  It's ridiculous!  We can't afford to waste it, so when seeds don't germinate, we dump the dirt back into the bag and re-use it for other pots.

By April we were noticing something peculiar in amongst some of the seedlings. We giggled a bit.

We even started finding some in the bag of potting soil!

Then we looked around the garden where we had transplanted some things from the pots.

I guess it finally germinated.  We have a lovely crop now!

Now if the tomatoes and cucumbers and carrots would just hurry along.....