Curator's diary

The first cultivar was named today. I had stood by the brass nameplate at plot the first for a quarter of an hour, listening for the selector to tick, before I committed. Aurum vesperis, evening gold. The leaves are not gold; the gold is the lesson. A small thing tended for thirty mornings.

The floor fee finds its way back into the same plot now, through every swap. There is something proper about that, the way a bee returns to the hive it left. tx · 0x84a…f2c1

Plot ninety-one reached bloom. The first of the late-spring cohort. I noticed the curl in the stem before the chain confirmed it - the L-system anticipates by half a tick. A pleasing thing to know, though one ought not admit to scrying.

Three swaps in the same minute, all of them paid up. The pollination weight on plot 0091 climbed by a hundredth, which is more than I had expected for so quiet a Tuesday.

A droplet of forty-two ten-thousandths of an ether arrived on plot the first. I watered Aetheria glaucina and noted the leaning of her central rib. She seeks the eastern pane in the mornings, which I had not seen before, but the watercolour at the base is darkening exactly as the manual promises.

I shall remember to thank whichever gardener swapped the pair at twenty-seven past nine. They do not know the favour they have done. tx · 0x77c…dd20

I have drawn from the seed bank a new plot - five hundred eighteen, a small number for a late acquisition - and the species is Susurrum nodosum. The whisper-knot. Each node ties itself to the pollination weight of its neighbour, which means the plot is sociable.

I have placed her between two slumbering saplings. We shall see what she makes of them.

Plot forty-two has reached sapling. The stem has its first proper crook, as the rule set predicted; though the watercolour pooled deeper than I expected at the base, which gives her an aged look I rather like.

I worry about the cultivars. Two of them have stopped receiving droplets entirely, and the selector seems disinclined toward the western aisle this week. A passing thing, I hope.

The conservatory opened today. Plot the first was minted in the second block, mine by the founder's allocation, and the twelve seeds drew well - a glassmoth, three lilies, an iron, two suns, an evening gold, and five whispers. The whispers I shall trade or burn; one cannot tend everything.

The first watering came nine minutes later, paid through a small swap, and I held my pen above the diary for an age before I wrote a single word. It is hard to write the first sentence of a thing one has waited a long time to begin.