Grow Basil: Simulate Plant Growth Rules on a Grid and Count Surviving Plants After N Days

Question

## Problem

You have a grid of cells, each either containing a basil plant (1) or empty (0). Each day, the following rules apply simultaneously:
- A plant with fewer than 2 plant neighbors dies (under-nourished).
- A plant with more than 3 plant neighbors dies (overcrowded).
- An empty cell with exactly 3 plant neighbors sprouts a new plant.
- Otherwise, the state stays the same.

This is Conway's Game of Life with a basil theme. Given an initial grid and `n` days, return the grid after `n` steps and the total plant count.

```python
def grow_basil(grid: list[list[int]], days: int) -> tuple[list[list[int]], int]:
    pass
```

**Example:**
```
grid (3x3) =
[[0,1,0],
 [0,1,0],
 [0,1,0]]
After 1 day -> blinker oscillates to horizontal
output count -> 3
```

## Follow-ups
1. How do you handle boundary conditions -- wrap around (toroidal), or treat outside as always 0?
2. For very large grids (10,000 x 10,000) that are mostly empty, what sparse representation would you use?
3. Detect if the grid has reached a stable state (no changes) and short-circuit early.
4. Parallelize the simulation using multiple threads -- what are the concurrency concerns?

Grow Basil: Simulate Plant Growth Rules on a Grid and Count Surviving Plants After N Days

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