Sprouting.

This year will definitely be a year of more gardening than usual, due to the reasons you all know. In an attempt to a) have more variety in plants and b) more order in the seed stash, I've put all of the old seeds of some kinds into earth.

As expected, some of them just did not do anything at all - they were too old. I was especially sad about that being the case with my chili seeds, as my plants have all died, and I was so fond of the colours of the Ecuador Purple.

A week or so ago, I remembered that I have some home-grown dried and roughly ground-up chili in my spice rack, so I spiced up a flower pot... and lo and behold, these have actually sprouted:



It will take a while to find out whether they are Ecuador Purple, or the other kind (a no-name random one). I'll happily do that, however.

Some of the old seeds, it turns out now, only took a lot longer to germinate. I'm sort of flooded with tomatoes, accordingly... the day will come when I'll try to get some of them a new home. Soon-ish.

In other sprouting news, the willows are now really working hard at growing back:



There's daisies blooming:



and, of course, the neighbour's bees are still getting their free drinks here. (He's promised to pay for them with honey at the end of the year...)



(All hail the good macro lens on the camera...)