I found the perfect abandoned lot for this task right across the street from the Judas Chair that I reupholstered. I hadn't ever heard the term "seed bomb" before, but Googling it turned up this fascinating Guerilla Gardening page and my imagination was immediately captured.

I initially planned to make polished clay seed bombs, but after the initial prototype I decided that although they were both beautiful and aerodynamic, they were way too labor-intensive to be suitable for wide-area dispersal. Instead I opted for the "explosive egg" model, and as luck would have it, I had some suitable eggshells all set to go.

I placed an order for a pound each of common California poppy and arroyo lupine seed from Larner Seeds, which is the gold standard for California wildflower seeds. Ordinarily I would narrow my focus to locale-appropriate varieties (e.g. coastal form poppies and either yellow or silver bush lupine), but for purposes of this task I knew my best odds of success lay with seeds that would be both cheap to buy in bulk and hardy to the point of invasiveness. When the package arrived, I could nearly feel it pulsing with potential -- a veritable powder keg of raw life force.

It took some time to figure out how to get the seeds into the eggshells until I remembered a small funnel that I have for filling up my favorite hip flask. It did the job perfectly; I filled each egg to the brim, sealed up the holes in the eggshells with biodegradable paper napkins, and I was ready with a full complement of seed bombs.



Chucking the eggs over the fence into the darkness was enormously satisfying. An oval of pure white tracing an arc across the night sky, vanishing from view, and then the satisfying CRACK followed by the skitter of seeds scattering over the ground. As passersby started to give me looks, I began chucking the seed bombs faster, two at a time, and made myself scarce before anyone showed up to ask me any difficult questions.

Now, the task doesn't end there -- the seeds had to be nurtured in secret. Given that my target was an inaccessible piece of land, though, which is the typical use case for seed bombing, I couldn't very well go and water, fertilize, and weed the lot. I considered returning with a Super Soaker to perform long-range watering, and while that had a certain appeal, I knew that there was no way any appreciable amount of water would actually make it to the seeds, especially since I couldn't even see where they had landed. I also considered performing a rain dance, but that plan was thwarted by my not knowing any rain dances.

Then I remembered the countless pseudoscientific studies that have proven that plants grow better when you play music for them, and I knew what I had to do. Since video uploading on sf0 seems a little wonky, go to this YouTube playlist for the proof of me serenading the seeds.