Celestial Dawning in our Living Room

We decided we needed more light.  It wasn't so much an existential realization, but yet another gardening one.  It had been that kind of a day.  Earlier, we had tangentially filled up the 18 deck tubes with soil in preparation for their planting in the upcoming weeks.  In the living room, the four-foot table supporting the seeding trays was busily soaking up the sun with a little reinforcement after sunset, but the grow-lights we had purchased were only marginally covering the seedlings -- and that only if we continued to move them around on the table every day or so.  Given the facts that we were in the process of planting a few more seeds that Steve had mailed us, and that in the next day or two we would need to separate several of the already-leafing sprouts currently sharing space into compartments of their own, more light was going to be a necessity.  The recent issue of Urban Farm magazine had a design for a build-it-yourself model, constructed from basic florescent shop light fixtures and 1 1/4" PVC pipe and connectors.  We decided to give it a try.

Thanks to the helpful employee at Lowe's who was willing to saw our two 10-foot lengths of pipe into the prescribed permutations, and gather up the various "T's", "angles" and "ends," all we had to do was assemble and place.  Now, with this addition of these 4 four-foot florescent bulbs to our previous 2 two-foot ones, our living room is aglow.  It remains to be seen if the new light will coax seeds out of the soil, but it almost certainly is drawing neighbors out of their houses to ponder this new celestial phenomenon:  the Aurora Borealis of Crown Colony Court.

Crop Report:
Cucumbers -- adding second generation of leaves
Brandywine Tomatoes -- strong, with true leaves
Green Zebra-striped Tomatoes -- questionable
Leeks -- wispy, but sturdy
Beets -- Hanging in there
Chard -- withered
Peppers -- encouraging
Flowers -- mixed bag