I haven’t done a full tally but I am quite sure I’ve used up at least half of my sick days from work this year already. I started coughing again on Saturday night, and well, after the work day I’d had I figured I had just over done it and my cold that I caught the previous week was rearing its ugly head for round two. I thought this still, on Monday, when I had burning congestion in my chest, a nasty cough and my nose had become a faucet. I decided to go home early, after taking care of some business, and by the time I got home I had a fever — and I still have it. So apparently I have the flu. I was hoping to be back to work tomorrow but even after some honest effort today to make myself get up and do something, anything — clean out the dishwasher, take out the recycling, anything, I still have the cold sweats and hardly energy enough to walk from room to room. Boo. I even had a flu shot this year. I think its high time I get my butt in to see my naturopath about my AWOL immune system.

So since I have hardly dragged myself out of bed for more than trips to the bathroom and for refills of OJ, there isn’t much new to report. I did however realize that I haven’t reported my new grow lights. These babies are due to a special, unexpected Easter egg from my granny. I never would have been able to afford them otherwise, and so they are a real treat. I’ve been dreaming about proper grow lights for years, for my orchids and other plants that need a little more than a north facing window all year, and these are just the thing. I’ve had something makeshift that I built out of an Ikea shelf and small fluorescent bulbs for years, but this is the Cadillac of grow systems. The light units can be raised or lowered as needed, and the shelves are built-in drip trays.

I couldn’t have gotten these at a more appropriate time, because my little tomato seedlings are going hog wild and I had run out of space in the only south facing window that I have that has shelving. I’ve since been able to re-pot about half of them and they have doubled in size in about a week.

I repotted a lot of my tomato seedlings in to recycled milk bags. This is a tip I got from the Terra Edibles website, and its not a bad one. The idea is you can roll up the baggies as the tomatoes grow and add more soil. The plants will grow more roots from the covered stems, and create a stronger, healthier plant. Planting in the bags was a bit tedious tho, and a bit messy. I also ran out of bags very quickly. It’s a good thing I saved lots of small plastic pots from last year’s plantings — I’ll need them for the other tomato seedlings I haven’t gotten to repotting yet.

I also figure these grow lights will be great for allowing me to grow more fresh herbs and possibly even salad greens in the off season. Hooray!