Time marches forward, but the garden cycles around. Oh, for sure there will be some new characters making their way into the lineup this year, but for the most part, it’ll be many of the tried-and-trues stepping up the plate for another at-bat. Seed catalogs have arrived, and so in about a week or two, I’ll have my finger on what I’ll be ordering for the upcoming season, but for the time being, it’s always good to have some old seed hanging around so that when the impulse hits to plant something, as it did me on New Year’s Day, the need can be satisfied.
Having just stocked up on potting soil was a great idea because as January 1st swept in, I could take full advantage of the moral urge to better something or other. Last year I planted my first seeds on Jan. 3rd, so this year I was a full two days earlier, though I neglected to realize that I left myself no room to improve on earliness in the coming years. Next year I’ll have to clean the potting room AND plant seeds on the first in order to feel like I’ve bettered.
This year, after the pleasant hubbub of a New Year morning family brunch had subsided and the day had quieted, I slipped into the basement seed room, fired up the fluorescents, and laid leek, lettuce, and parsley into trays. When green shoots emerge in a few days, there’ll be no turning back, and the season will have begun in earnest. Plus a room full of tender green plantlets flooded with full-spectrum fluorescents becomes a kind of therapeutic space to wait out what is always a long, wet slog through spring into summer around here, so I must plant more soon, if only to insure psychic balance.
I hope the New Year came in well for you, and may new possibilities, real and figurative, sprout for you in the now begun 2013.