This year, for Christmas, Mr. Bean got me a greenhouse cart. Three levels. With humidity trays, adjustable lights, and a cover to keep all that earthy goodness perfectly moist and away from munching kitties.
He knows how much I have struggled with getting my garden plants started from seeds the last few years. We have no south-facing windows, and so invariably, my seed-started peppers and tomatoes end up leggy and small, and I eventually give up and go to the garden center for flats.
Not this year.
Last Sunday, because Easter was so out of kilter for all of us anyway, I came home from church and got busy starting my seeds out on the back porch in the 70-degree sunshine. As it turned out, several friends stopped by (Thank God for our friends. Seriously. I think we all would have ended up...well, I don't even want to think about where we would have spent the last five months without them) toward the end of the seeding time and all stood around, drinking champagne and making all the appropriate Oooo and Ahhhhh noises over the greenhouse cart.
But here I am, a week later, and I have lovely sprouted veggies. Not spindly, sickly, hung-over looking things, but hearty, thick stemmed beauties, resplendent with secondary cotyledons. Well, I was so tickled I started another two flats of flowering herbs today.
We can get lost in ourselves sometimes. We go to work, we struggle through our relationships, we search for meaning in our everyday activities. But sometimes, we can marvel at the simple miracle of plant growing from seed, the smell of wet earth, the bringing forth of beauty and sustenance from what seems to be nothing, and we can remember that the world is a remarkable place.
I'm going to go thank S. again for my Christmas present. He always knows what I need, even when I don't.
I'll update you after the garden gets roto-tilled in (amazing that I got a greenhouse and he just happened to get a roto-tiller for his tractor), and we start getting down to serious business for this year. Our neighborhood is especially hungry this year, and I'm looking forward to having our garden help sustain us all in more ways than one.
In the meantime, feast your eyes on these lovelies:
6 comments:
Okay, I've only read as far as secondary cotyledons, and had to comment immediately.
decrov
Okay now, don't let them get too leggy!
couseri
and another thing about about me, my garden is where i get lost in..one of my favorite places to be!!! I shall take some tomotoes in August please:)
I wanted to post a comment about how industrious you are or how great it is that you can still find a simple seed growing in earth to be a beautiful thing... but I have to type "restch" as my confirmation word and I just don't like it.
:) hugs
... restsch
BHD, I said secondary cotyledons just to turn you on. I'm glad it worked. And I have the lights set 6" over the plants. If they get too leggy there, I'm just giving up.
And Kate, I think that, if you're going to b*tch about your word, you should have to define it:
Restch (r|stch) v.intr. To complain, vociferously, while remaining in a state of complete immobility.
"All he did this weekend was lay on the couch and restch"
Oh Gawd. i'm a restch!
Jay
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