Seeds of doubt

Ever had seeds meet with an untimely soggy fate? As Toby learns with his new salsify seeds, it all comes out in the wash

- Toby

NOW I’m no Elon Musk, but my lumberjack gardening shirt is always so stuffed full of seeds if it was planted on the Ghost Dunes of Mars I’m sure it would only be a matter of time before the Red Planet turned green.

Recently, though, disaster struck at Buckland Mission Control imperilling the precious payload in my shirt pockets, including a newly collected clutch of salsify seeds. Lisa, oblivious to my Martian plans, washed the shirt on a rocket-hot temperature, giving the newly collected seeds a broiling.

Being a modern man, I knew that complaining about this might mean that my clothes would never be laundered again. So instead I have produced a homemade poster that Lisa can study at her leisure, showing easy-to-follow pre-wash pocket checks and protocols. Meanwhile I, like Tom Hanks in the film Apollo 13, have tried to find a life-saving solution for the salsify…