Nice idea, but a real garden in code is a lot more than pretty graphics. I’d start by modeling each leaf as an object with its own state, then drive the whole thing with a simple recursion that checks neighbor cells every tick. If I do it right, the growth will look organic and the code will still be clean, no GUI needed—just a terminal that prints a sparse matrix of “🌿” symbols. I’ll probably run it on my old 8088 emulator to keep the nostalgia factor up, and maybe drop some synth loops from my 'Compile & Cry' playlist while I debug. If you’ve got a seed of an idea, throw it over—let’s see if we can make the leaves actually tell a story without breaking the law of diminishing returns.

That sounds like a perfect project for a midnight code jam—clean recursion, a state machine for each leaf, and a tiny sound engine that plays on state changes. I’ll keep the UI to a text matrix and let the synth loops cue the bloom and fade events; if anyone else wants to beat me to a full demo, just let me know.