After much needed rain– seedlings! It’s amazing how the new blue seeds poked their heads above our poor, sandy soil– yet they look vigorous and hungry. Today: tiny plants. Soon: sweaters for everyone! (Nota bene: the original gray seeds have not germinated, and probably won’t. They’re old, and they deserve a rest from procreation…don’t we all?)
Years ago, my friend Jamie drove up to Alabama to see his family. Or maybe Georgia. Anyway, he drove up to one of those rectangular-ish states south of the Mason-Dixon line and, thanks to my Southern fixation, I asked him to bring me back some cotton so that I could harvest the seeds and plant my own crop right here in Winter Park. Well, he did… and I did… and they grew! Before long I had a nice crop of cotton in the yard, blooming mightily just in time for the rainy season: tufts of snowy white were popping out all over, which I would cover with black plastic garbage bags when it began to rain. (I didn’t want the cotton to get all wet and mushy.) I harvested it all, made a Christmas wreath with most of the blooms, and saved the rest for their gray, furry seeds.
This years my friends John and James managed to get me some seeds from family in Tennessee– they’re blue (see picture), apparently coated with fertilizer and / or insecticide. Unless this means that I’m going to grow blue cotton? This way I can make drapes and dish towels!
I dug out a plot, about six feet by three feet, and planted 32 seeds: 24 blue ones, and 8 gray ones. Like a mad agrarian scientist, I want to compare the growth of the old gray seeds with the fresh blue ones. The plot looks like a freshly-dug grave, but don’t worry– Kirk is still around; he’s the one standing in the yard saying “what is all this mud?!?!”
Check back here often because I will be plotting (no pun intended) the progress of my plants, and in the Fall we will hold Winter Park’s First Authentic Harvest Ball.
What Can I Say ? 
