Philadelphia is further along than Toledo, spring-wise. I saw daffodils and dandelions and buttercups and forsythia. One of my fellow trainees exclaimed, “I’m from Toronto and we still have snow on the ground. I was so excited to see a dandelion!”

We went to the King of Prussia mall yesterday (second-largest in the country, the only available entertainment by the time we got out of the class) and I went to Smith & Hawken, a gardening store. It was so funny to see soaker hoses for sale in a mall. They also had racks of Seeds of Change seeds, which I’ve never seen in a store before. Also small plants for sale. Only the conviction that I would inevitably leave it on the plane stopped me from buying the stevia.

I got back about midnight last night and was in bed by twelve-thirty. This morning, I checked on the plants. Some of the basil is coming up, including some unlabeled pots that I believe are red-leaf basil except that the cotyledons seem to be green. So we’ll see. The hot peppers and the eggplant still are not up, which disturbs me, but everything else seems to be doing fine. The tomatoes are purple on the bottoms of their cotyledons, just like last year. I guess it’s time to break out the fertilizer.

Outside, the Goliath broccoli and the Chinese cabbage were fine. One Sorrento broccoli plant had bloomed, and the other was eaten, only a stem remaining. I picked the flowers on the one (tiny yellow flowers, very pretty) in the hope it would come to its senses, and pondered the other. Was it rabbits or bugs? Why was the other one spared? It was on the outside of the bed, but so was a Goliath broccoli and it was still there. At any rate, now that I’m home I’m hardening off more starting tonight, and we’ll see how things go.