Seeds

We planted some lettuce, beans, and peas today. Tomorrow we’ll put in cucumber and tomato plants, and some kohlrabi, and hope for the best.

It was hot — in the 90’s. In other words, it was a fairly abrupt change from the fridge to the oven around here. But as usual, it was satisfying to commune with the earthworms in this yearly ritual.

It’s remarkable how unspectacular planting a garden is: sticking little seeds into dirt, sprinkling some water, and walking away from a patch of ground that looks exactly like it did when you started (only wetter). It’s all about the future, all about hoping that something good will come of a seemingly insignificant, seemingly low-impact investment of time. It’s about tiny, hard objects with a hidden plan waiting to break through the shell in response to a little sunlight above, a little gravity below, a little moisture to soften the hard walls that have meant security and preservation for the plant embryo hidden away in the dark.

So much of life is planting seeds. I need a garden because it condenses the whole unbelievable process from seed to harvest into the length of one season.

Tossing some weeds over the bank, my daughter startled a doe. We informed her that she was a little over-eager, and she should come back in a few weeks for lunch. But the truth is there may be no lunch even then, for the deer or for us, if this little guy and his wife don’t restrain themselves.