Spring (Almost)

I can't stop thinking about my garden. I say this and laugh because I am not a gardener. I have very little knowledge of growing things. This is an improvement over last year when I knew nothing, but my Organic Gardening for Dummies is still an advanced text for me.

Still, I can't stop thinking about the garden. It started last year as a science experiment, really. Alex wanted it. He has an uncanny knowledge about things that grow, probably gleaned from my father. He has followed him year after year around his yard of blooming wonder. Ask any experienced gardener and they will tell you to start small - perhaps a container of cherry tomatoes on the deck, a tiny plot in the yard. This, we ignored. Plan a garden with a four-year-old, the ideas are grand in scale. Cherry tomatoes - no. Watermelons, pumpkins, and of course, the rutabagas. These things need space. Give a powerful rototiller to a man who has never rototilled... you will have space. We had a big garden and a decent sized new herb garden to boot.

And it grew. It was not award winning, but nature is as giving as she is cruel. The deer chomped the heads off the sunflowers just as they were about to bloom, but they bloomed again, just before the frost. The last of the butternut squash still sits on the kitchen counter. The eight jars of salsa we canned from our produce have long since been eaten. A few rutabagas still pop their rotting heads from the newly muddy earth. Every tomato, every squash, every cucumber, no matter how ugly, was a sign of our great success. Even our mistakes were beautiful. The tiny nasturtium overtook the herb garden with its fiesta of blossoms. The cosmos planted to add a dash of color grew stems as thick as young tree trunks and towered over the kids' heads. We walked into the garden everyday with anticipation. Disappoint was rare.

Today the sun shone bright overhead. I played frisbee in the yard with Cate and stopped for a moment to lift my face high and breathe in its warmth. I have fallen in love with yoga this winter, but it was today in my muddy yard that I truly understood Sun Salutation. Its series of poses naturally capture and pay tribute to the first spring rays. A true salutation. We tossed the frisbee around. I pushed Cate in the swing, but I couldn't resist my true desire - a visit to the garden. Full of anticipation, I pushed aside the dead dry leaves. I was not disappointed. The first green sprig of thyme. The tiny sprouting leaves of mint - their smell pungent and clean. Later the mint will overtake the herb garden (another experienced-gardener warning I chose to ignore). I will fight it like an enemy as it encroaches on its more delicate neighbors. But today I rejoiced. Spring.

We were too late to order seed catalogs. As I said, I am not a gardener. I had no idea that any form of catalog existed that would be out of stock - especially weeks before even the most optimistic of us begins to believe in the coming equinox. I imagined Alex and I, and maybe even Cate and Steve, pouring over the colorful pictures, carefully accessing our temperature zone as we fell head-over-heels for cranberry beans and heirloom tomatoes, our hearts breaking that the season would be too short to do justice to the elegant Japanese eggplants. Instead, we will start as we did last year - laying out a map and then modifying again and again as we find things we can't resist at plant sales and greenhouses. We'll accept the leftovers of the more experienced gardeners who know the limits of their soil and space. And we'll wait for our garden to grow.

I only wonder what the deer and rabbits will take a liking to this year...