tl;dr
I'm going to be experimenting with more artificial methods of germinating seeds and growing seedlings.
because
I want to experience as much poetry as possible without letting romanticism about an idealized process get in the way.
I'm not sure if death swept through or if life just never took hold but as the population of seedlings has grown so has the number of things that have lived a life so short that there should probably be another word for it.
anyway youtube doesn't care that I brought to life and was directly responsible for the death of another living thing and so I found a bunch of other experiments I can be doing to explore ways that are going to make my seeds more successful.
one of the things I'm going to test immediately is a method of germination that uses damp paper towels instead of actual soil. supposedly nature isn't very fooled by our attempts to trick it into thinking soil is the same thing as their natural habitat and so you may as well go all the way on artifice.
the second point is related to the first - that we need to do what fooling we can because simulation of nature (or some idealized version of it) actually does lead to better, more successful, and stronger seedlings.
I'm going to try using a grow light to give a new batch of seedlings 12 hours of artificial light and a few hours a day of an artificial breeze, which supposedly (and quite logically) helps the roots become stronger and more sturdy.
if anything I think one of the things I learned through planning these next experiments is that getting strong seedlings into the ground, I can only imagine, is just the beginning of the challenges.
I'm going to take my time to enjoy living in each moment of awe, learning, and ignorance. I want to keep a forcefield of magic around the process. I want to experience it on a floral timescale.