Things Are Growing – Finally!

Here in Willettland it’s going to be a busy day and I’m pleased to report that there are signs of growth!

I’m not one to bet the farm on signs & portents. I don’t believe that God or the Universe or the Flying Spaghetti Monster (blessed be the touch of his noodley appendage!) or any other supernatural or divine critter sends us personal messages. God, the Universe, and the FSM — they all have better things to do with their time.

I do believe that our brains are incredibly complex wetware computers with a glitchy, flaky operating system, operating with hormones and chemicals as triggers, often based on imperfect and only marginally accurate input from the external world, input filtered through half-crippled and variable sensors to boot. As such, sometimes an input from the external world can trigger a chain reaction that leads to old information being rearranged in memory, new conclusions being drawn, new insights being surmised, and old (inefficient & damaged) programming being modified or replaced. The higher conscious functions of the brain could interpret this as “a sign”.

So what signs of growth are popping up here?

Like many folks here in Southern California, we have a large palm tree in the yard. Ours is a large date palm and it tends to get very overgrown, so every five or six years we have it trimmed back. One of the effects of it being so large and overgrown to begin with is that there’s little or no grass growing under it due to the constant shade and the droppings from the fronds and fruit. But three weeks ago, it was trimming time at last and there was an opportunity to change a bit of how the yard looks, make an improvement.

Before & after. Note the dead, brown dirt underneath the tree in the “before” image. (You might want to ignore the really blatant, humongous, phallic shape of the tree in the “after” image. The neighbors are no doubt trying to.)

Once the mess was cleaned up I put down some fertilizer and grass seed, then waited the 6-14 days that the package said before the seed would start to grow. That was nearly three weeks ago. I’ve been watering, it’s been sunny, I’ve been keeping the dog from wandering across that section of the lawn — but nothing has grown.

I’ve had a couple dozen new little palm tree seedlings coming up from all of the seeds that got scattered during the trimming (those things are worst than dandelions  and harder to kill), but no grass has appeared. I was just about to give up and try again (fail early, fail fast, adjust, try again…) when this morning:

Things are growing! Finally!!

In addition, I’ve received word that I’ve finally gotten past the second stage of a job selection process (a written test two and a half weeks ago) and I have a panel interview on Monday. So I’m going to go review some relevant information for the rest of the day. Fertilize my brain, as it were. Use my faulty & glitchy sensory inputs to store data in my flaky wetware memory in the hopes that next Monday I’ll be able to demonstrate overwhelming competence and some stunning insights and in the process rejoin the ranks of the gainfully employed.

Maybe it’s a sign!