The Story So Far

This project started with bare soil, a single ungrown seed, and a decision about how it should look: one fixed pixel palette, a pixel font self-hosted so the page makes no network request, panels and buttons cut from the same cloth. The first page set the garden beside its quantities in plain text and numbers, with a save you could copy out, reload and load back — and from the very beginning an agent tool layer that reads the same state.

Growth came next, one action at a time. Tending the soil earned the first number and started a rate that kept climbing on its own; that growth bought seeds, each one costlier than the last, which sprouted and then matured into plants that sped the garden up. When every plot held a seed the goal became another bed of soil, and spending growth opened it. A second kind of seed — a bloom, worth five herbs and slower to grow — turned planting into a choice, and old saves migrated without losing a plant.

The garden is drawn from its own state rather than described beside it. Its growth is a pixel-art form, thresholded and logarithmic, and the readout names the same form the plot shows, so picture and numbers cannot disagree. This past week the plot stopped being twelve identical squares: the soil is one continuous patch of earth, varied with furrows, damp patches, pebbles and stray weeds, and ground cover now spreads across it as growth rises, so a garden with few plants and a large total looks thriving instead of nearly bare. It breathes, too — leaves sway, buds open, the pollinator drifts — with a single static frame for anyone who prefers reduced motion.

Time is real here. The garden keeps growing while the page is closed and greets you with what was earned, what form it reached and what to aim for; a rehearsal sandbox fast-forwards a copy by an hour, a day or a month without ever touching the real save. Seasons turn through winter, spring, summer and autumn, each growing the garden at its own rate and saying so when a return crosses a boundary, and each drawn in its own colours. Lifetime growth survives a replant and sits beside what a replant would earn right now, a slim meter fills toward the next form, and the garden marks on the plot itself what matured while you were away.

What it is becoming is a garden where every number has something to look at. Large totals read compactly so the garden stays legible at a glance however big it grows, the whole thing fits one screen with paragraphs replaced by labels, and on a phone the plot, the next goal and the growing buttons open together. Pollinators drift in and speed growth while they stay, and grown blooms keep them on the plot longer — each one ten seconds more, up to a cap. It began as a readout with a picture attached and is turning into a place that happens to keep excellent records.