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| please ignore all the dirt at the base of these, the kitten has been busy. |
like many people during corona, i became a little bit obsessed with one thing in particular. growing avocado plants. i was ordering gorgeous boxes of buttery avocados from freshland and after seeing a tiktok (naturally), i started saving the seeds and trying to get them to sprout. i remember trying as a child, with three toothpicks stuck into the seed, suspending the pit over a glass of water. i don't think it ever worked, but tiktok had a better way.
you soak the pit for a couple of days in water, then peel off the brown outer skin. then you wrap it up in a damp paper towel, stick it in a ziploc bag and ignore it for a month or so. after about a month, it should have sprouted a little root like this one. and then it's time to suspend it over water.
i collected old milk bottles in thrift stores, as they work perfectly for this and you don't have to do the pit any violence with toothpicks. you just fill it as full as you can and make sure the tiny little root can touch the water.
i had five pits that had sprouted (and yes, i might have an equal number that are still nestled in their damp paper towel), so i set them on the window sill in the kitchen to sprout. the root will grow a bit more and then a little nub of the tree will sprout out and its leaves will begin to unfold.
once they're well-established and have really good roots (i neglected to photograph that part), they're ready to be potted. i had five from late last summer that we were ready to pot last weekend and it was warm enough out in the sunny greenhouse to spend a bit of time getting them potted up.
i have quite a few bigger plants from the ones i did that first year of corona. they're thriving and all have lovely new leaves forming at the top, as they sense the light returning. they're on various window sills all over the house. they make a nice gift when you're invited to a birthday or just as a hostess gift. they're quite easygoing. i give mine a good watering once a week and they all seem to be thriving. in our climate, i don't ever expect to be able to plant them out (though who knows, with climate change), nor do i really expect that they'll ever produce avocados. someone told me on instagram that they wouldn't, but i'm not so sure. all i know is that it's a little obsession that i quite enjoy.
i even drew some and made avocado plant prints last weekend during our printmaking course. it just feels somehow magical, getting a whole live plant from the pit of an avocado that i ate on toast.
what a weekend. one of my work besties was let go on friday. it was such a shock and i felt so badly for her that i didn't sleep that well on friday night. but it got better on saturday - i went with a friend to moesgaard museum, a sort of extension of the danish national museum, near aarhus. only it's much better. their exhibits present bog people and pottery shards and bits of gold and bronze dug up from the ground in a new light. literally - the exhibits are lit so well. it's actually quite dark in the museum and then well-placed light shines directly on the objects, highlighting them perfectly. we had lunch there as well, then went for a walk on a nearby beach.
this iron age bog man - grauballemanden - looks more well-lit than he actually is thanks to my phone's light compensation. he's really wonderfully displayed - in a circular room, with very subtle light, which feels quite like a sanctuary. you can sit on the bench and contemplate him. instead of feeling like some kind of exploitation of someone who has no choice in the matter, it feels like a reverent and respectful space.
husband managed to find someone who was giving away a greenhouse if you were willing to take it down yourself, so we spent sunday morning dismantling our new greenhouse. it's one that had plastic panels, rather than glass, and they were extremely fragile and sun-damaged. but we're going to cover it in netting and use it for growing brassicas and hopefully keeping away those pesky caterpillars that eat up all the leaves in the late summer.
the wind is rising outside and in the coming week, it will already be february. interesting to see what it brings.
