Back to blogging: Killing plants and starting seeds

I haven't had much to say about gardening in a while, so I've been maintaining radio silence. I've been keeping up with watering and basic tasks like that, but nothing really new or exciting was going on. But now I'm back on a domesticity kick and part of that is preparing for my next round of planting.
First the sad news: I killed a cauliflower plant. Unfortunately it was the only one producing a vegetable, so I'm disappointed about that. I'm being pretty philosophical about it, though. I am pretty sure that I didn't clear out the tray under the pot quickly enough after rain and it succumbed to root rot, so at least I can learn from it and move on. I figure this was my practice garden anyway! Still, I'll be sad to not have home-grown cauliflower to eat.

Bear witness to the shame of my empty pot!

The good news is that my kale is getting huge! I don't actually know when I can eat it, but I guess now? Anyway, it's very pretty and I'm quite proud of it.

I guess this is edible now?

Now that it's almost spring (at least in Florida), I'm starting to plan my spring garden. I want to grow tomatoes, some sort of fruit and some herbs. I poked around the plant section of my hardware store today to get a feel for what they have, and I am getting excited about planting. One thing I found were lavender seeds. Lavender is my favorite herb, and I got an herb-drying rack for the holidays, so I bought it and am going to try to start them from seed. We'll see how that goes.
To practice seed starting (and also experience near-instant gratification) I am sprouting some arugula in soil. I read about microgreens and was rather taken with the idea of not having to wait long for them, so I grabbed some arugula seeds and a cheap little clay pot and threw it all together. Then I moved it to my south-facing balcony because the package said it needs full sun. Now I just have to wait and see. In the meantime I'll be figuring out how to sprout my lavender.

Doesn't look like much now, but hopefully soon
this will be filled with green.