the garden: romaine

I'm pretty sure I've made a great new discovery: It looks like you can grow a brand new head of lettuce from the butt of a head that you buy at the grocery store. The technique is identical to what I used in my attempt to grow a new celery stalk from kitchen scraps.

I bought a head of lettuce recently, and I cut the bottom off. I let it sit in water for about a week until new leaves started growing from the middle, like so:

And then I planted the whole thing in a pot, leaving only the new growth exposed.

And it's looking good so far!

And last night, my friend Lily and her boyfriend Zach stayed with us for the night, and we took advantage of the nice weather by grilling out. With a salad on the side. And guess what I did with that lettuce butt? I'm trying to get another one going.

I'll keep you posted on how this experiment goes.

As for the celery, I'm happy to report that it's still alive. I brought it inside for most of the winter and set it in a sunny window. And it was actually thriving, growing shoots like gangbusters. But then I was reasonably sure I saw bugs on the plant, which really freaked me out, so the thing went outside immediately. The cold didn't do it any favors, and a lot of the growth turned brown. But things have turned around in the past few days with the beautiful weather. Here's a shot of the plant yesterday evening, and all of that dark green stuff is brand new. So hopefully things keep going in the right direction.

I also have a bonus celery growing, which I planted earlier this year. It's not thriving yet, but I have not given up hope.

life: postcard in the mail

I got a postcard in the mail yesterday from Lily. And it made my day. Postcards are the best, man. 

Getting a postcard is such a huge compliment. If you think about it, your friend's on vacation, somewhere new and fun and exciting, and they find a postcard rack, and they think of you. And they take the time to let you know they're thinking of you, even when they're in the midst of this new and fun and exciting adventure. 

Lily and I met when we both lived in Arizona. And now we live on the exact opposite sides of the country: D.C. and San Diego. But we have one of those friendships where you know you're going to be friends until you're old ladies, even if you only see each other once a year. 

Now let's talk about how awesome this postcard is. Lily picked it up in Denver. This is Yves Saint Laurent's dog.  

She says she thinks the pup would get along with Victor, our cat. And I agree, mostly because Victor also is white with black spots, and I am a fan of when your dog and cat match. When Tony and I were in discussions about possibly maybe getting a dog, I asked him how important it was to him, on a scale of 1 to 10, that the dog and cat match. He said zero. We'll have to agree to disagree on that.