I'm a Moss Maven.

No one ever told me what Date Night would turn into when you had a kid. Come to think of it, I never considered asking because every night is Date Night when you are childless; it's only when you are suddenly responsible for a little person's life that you look up one day, see your partner scraping poo off a diaper into the toilet and think "oh, hey. I remember you...you're kind of cute, want to go out?" only to fall asleep 10 minutes later just because the baby finally went down. A year into our new roles as parents and we're finally realizing that baby-free time is OK. It helps that we have two eager grandparents who want nothing more than to stare at Bean all night so really, I don't know what took us so long.

Enter: the Moss Date.

I like moss. A lot. In our current house we have a fantastic shade garden with a lovely brick path that is covered in moss. When we bought the house, the previous owner told us that it got slippery and so every once in a while he (sit down for this one) sprayed bleach on the moss to kill it. He was generous enough to leave us his bleach-spraying device, even. After promptly throwing the sprayer out, we sat back and watched the moss take over, carpeting the walk and making the space feel positively enchanted. I had no idea how to cultivate moss, but any time I'd be digging around in the shade garden, I'd toss any dislodged mossy bits onto new ground, stomp on it a few times and leave it be. Turns out, this plus a little water is about all you have to do to grow moss.

So when Moss Acres hosted a moss workshop in nearby Radnor, I said to Andrew: I'd like to go to that and can we drop off Bean at her grandparents and have dinner and call it a date? And that is how we ended up getting a coffee, learning about moss, and having grilled cheese at a diner on our (I think) second official date since Bean arrived.

And here is what I am thinking about now...

- There are 22,000 species of moss. I'd like to know about at least 10...seems like a good start.

- I need to gather some of the moss from this house and move it with us to our next house. I also need to start sourcing old bricks so that I can recreate our little path. And I need to take the rock that I moved into the garden which is now covered with moss with me to the new house. Sorry new homeowners, you can't have my mossy rock.

- I need to put a moss green roof on the chicken coop in the new house. I don't know how I'm going to accomplish this, but I really, really need to do it.

- I need to spread the word that sphagnum moss / peat moss is bad bad bad because it is being overharvested and is destroying ecosystems.

That is all. Go moss!