Happy Saturday! Welcome to another week of #WeekendCoffeeShare, the host – Natalie the Explorer is taking a break, therefore, there’s no link-up this week but it doesn’t mean we can still have our fun.

So last week, I wrote that I wanted to wait until mid-month to start seeds. Well, after writing that, I got bored with my weekend and, well, I couldn’t help it. I started a total of 144 cells full of veggies, perennials, and annuals. I mostly started the seeds that takes a long time to germinate and/or grow until I can transplant, plants like peppers and lavender. Those require a lot of patience and checking.

By the time I left for the office on early Tuesday morning, most of the veggies had germinated. I’m talking about lettuces, mustard greens, bok choy, cabbages, and kale. Some of the lettuces waited until Wednesday and Thursday but by Friday, all the veggies were up. These were sowed on the 4th of January.

Having a humidity dome and temperature-controlled heat mat helped a lot because most seeds germinate well in 75-degree-Fahrenheit (~25-degree-Celsius) and that’s the temperature I’ve set the heat mats.

I wonder what my seed-starting space will be like in March when I go on my trip. I will have to delay starting tomatoes because of the trip. I wonder if I will have some of my cold-weather veggies in the ground by then. What about the perennials? Will they be pretty by then?

I remember last year, the plants didn’t seem to want to grow and had a lot of bug problem. I am still trying to find out whether that’s caused by the coco-coir or the peat moss I used for soil. This year, I’m using 50/50 coco-coir (coconut husk) and vermiculite, to hope to deter this problem. Cross my fingers.

I officially completed the Japanese course on DuoLingo this week. I’m now in the Daily refresh section to keep me from forgetting. I’m also trying to determine what language I want to learn next. I actually started learning Spanish but am not finding it to be as easy as I thought, particularly in the pronunciation department. I’m also giving Korean a try, so…

I guess I can now call myself tri-lingual – Chinese, English, and Japanese. That’s a little dizzying to say. I don’t know whether my Japanese will ever get to the same level as my English since I don’t live in Japan so I don’t have the opportunity to use it. I do think I can do basic communication like asking for direction and check-into the hotel and order food, which in many ways, is all I need to get around when I travel to Japan.

My goal of learning Japanese has always to help me get around Japan on my trip because from my last trip, I discovered looking the way I do, people assumed I know the language and that’s quite disadvantageous when I don’t know the language.

I will share more thoughts throughout the week as they pop up or if they pop up. Until next time…