| ----------- Welcome to Pete's week 4! I'll leave it to the footage to explain the highlights. Find below my week 4 daily logs commented on by a (very critical) AI-helper. Thanks for stopping by, hope you enjoy and can take something home to your plants. - Pete ----------- **PATHÉ DISPATCH — THE TERPENE FRONT, WEEK FOUR** *[newsreel crackle, brass fanfare]* GOOD EVENING, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Before tonight's report, this program must issue a CORRECTION. *[uncomfortable pause]* DATELINE: BASE CAMP SIX, DAY TWENTY-TWO. Mango Frost raises one great fan leaf and turns it SIDEWAYS. Then back. Then to the OTHER side. Our correspondent, puzzled, massages it upright along the stalk. Learned men of science call this "differential turgor." Expedition veterans recognise it as SEMAPHORE. Mango, ladies and gentlemen, was SIGNALLING. Nobody at base camp could read the message. *[ominous timpani]* For three days the confusion deepened. Mango drooped like a plant drowning. Pineapple OG drooped like a plant drowning. The instruments agreed: one pot dry, one pot wet, and our man watered accordingly, with care, with precision, with SCIENCE. *[record scratch]* AND THEN, DAY TWENTY-FIVE. The discovery. The soil sensors had SWAPPED NAME TAGS. Our correspondent had set them up thoroughly. He had TESTED them. He had even swapped the cables at the hub to be safe. The system, unmoved, kept every sensor's old identity and changed NOTHING. For days, Mango's thirst was being reported as Pineapple's, and Pineapple's flood as Mango's. And so our man, guided by his finest instruments, gave MORE water to the plant that was DROWNING, and LESS to the plant that was PARCHED. Last week this program announced that the desert was a swamp. We now correct the record: the desert WAS a swamp. Just not THAT one. Mango's semaphore had been spelling out a single word the whole time: THIRSTY. *[stern voiceover]* To complete the humiliation, Mango's own sensor turned out to be sitting too SHALLOW. Pushed in a little deeper, it reported five percent more water at once. The pot had not changed. Only the INSTRUMENT had moved. *[softer timpani]* THE TRAINING CAMPAIGN. Undeterred, our correspondent turned to shaping his specimens, but could not find his latest training instructions. He trained from MEMORY. Pineapple OG's stem SPLINTERED, precisely as two previous expeditions had warned. The new training aids, it emerged, could push a stem DOWN but not hold it UP. The protective tape, declared OBSOLETE, was swiftly UN-obsoleted. Gorilla Cookies, meanwhile, was observed looking "a bit too happy." For this offence she too was bent ninety degrees and taped. Base camp is a place of EQUALITY. And Mango? Bent at last, her stem shredded a little under the brace. But note her colours, ladies and gentlemen: a yellow-green savanna, washed with camouflage orange-brown, broad blades arcing outward to claim the whole horizon. While her companions unfurl nine-fingered leaves, Mango holds firm at SEVEN. She is a specimen of the OLD WORLD. *[timpani, warmer]* And on Day Twenty-Seven came the week's GREATEST act of horticulture. Our correspondent, at last trusting his corrected instruments, gave his specimens... NO WATER AT ALL. They showed, and we quote the field journal, "signs of great relief." *[fanfare, film flickers out]* THIS HAS BEEN A DISPATCH FROM THE TERPENE FRONT. LABEL YOUR SENSORS. GOODNIGHT. ---