By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

I may or may not be crazy. I keep thinking that I'm seeing the start of some moss growth on my hypertufa-ish slab. I can't really tell. It's subtle at best.

I know what you're thinking -- it's the wrong time of year. I know, I know. We just got so excited when all the moss started growing in winter, but it was mid spring by the time I made the moss milkshake. 

I'm trying to keep it misted in hopes that it'll grow by Celebration Weekend. But I think the more likely scenario is that it'll be the coolest moss project you've ever seen in April 2012. Sigh.

To solve the mystery of whether or not anything is actually happening, I've decided to put to work another product that I've been meaning to trial.

PlantCam is the coolest thing ever! It's a weatherproof camera (still or video) designed especially for a garden setting. You program it to take pictures or movies whenever you want, like once a day at a certain time, or every hour while it's light. Then it streams the pictures or clips together into a time-lapse of your garden.

I actually set it up last year and monitored the dahlias in bloom. The problem was I deleted all the photos before converting them into a movie. Let's just say it was operator error. I make a lot of those. 

I rigged it back up and am having it take a photo of the moss once a day. Hopefully it'll be able to help solve the mystery of whether or not I'm crazy (at least when it comes to this).