Because it has been a cold spring I was somewhat surprised by May. Normally I have been combing seed catalogs with my old lady glasses on, being a plant voyeur long before now. Suddenly it was the weekend before Mother’s Day and I realized a truth that all serious gardeners take to heart; always, always get your plants and flowers before the Mother’s Day crush.
Paul and I try to split our weekends into two separate days; Saturday is adventure day and Sunday is clean-it-up day. If Saturday is mainly sunny, we will take the dogs and do some hiking and ball throwing. Rain might mean wandering a favorite antique shop, lingering over lunch or wearing raincoats, hiking and ball throwing. The main objective is to get outta Dodge. When you work for yourself your home is, obviously, your office. Work can often be disguised in a quick check of the computer or a business discussion over breakfast. We have found that, in order to truly relax it becomes necessary to leave the house/farm. Once we are in the car, the phone is shut off and we can just enjoy each others company, as well as Bronte’s dog breath as she leans forward from the back seat.
It becomes part of our week to think about what we will do on the weekend. This week, as the calendar page turned, we decided to hit the plant and vegetable places. On the ride there I felt oddly apathetic about it all. Personally, I have found that the past three years of social disappointments have left me unable (unwilling?) to get as juiced up about the small things as I used to.
However the moment we saw the greenhouse I felt that old familiar rush of plant adrenaline. I pretty much left Paul in the mulch in my hurry to get to the plants. When you walk into a greenhouse, there is that comforting “woosh” as the door creates a vacuum with the plastic. Suddenly, no matter the weather outside, it is balmy with that smell of earth and vegetation. If we could bottle that, I’d wear it behind my ears. Everywhere we looked was color. Hundreds of hanging baskets gently swaying, rows upon rows of bright green vegetables starting. I pulled our list from the back pocket of my overalls and it was game on.
Outside stood rows of various sized pulling wagons just waiting for us. Because it was not yet Mother’s Day, the pickings were good. Paul put his hand on a beat up Radio Flyer and looked over at me. My response was a good eye roll and a snort. He quickly moved to the station wagon size carrier which was so big that we had to parallel park it at the front of the store and make several runs back and forth with our plants (did I say we?) Within forty five minutes one wagon was full and we had added a compact size.
After almost having to mortgage the farm to pay, we loaded the truck and headed off. Late that afternoon we unloaded the brilliant blossoms. Soon our deck was covered with flowers in our color of choice this year, red. Cut cardboard boxes spilled over with baby Kale, a variety of carefully chosen tomato plants, peppers and lanky pots of broccoli. In the heat of the moment, even knowing I would have to be dragging every single plant back inside each night for a week or more, I raced down to our basement and hauled up the new hand painted clay pots that we had purchased when there was still snow on the ground. I hung the hanging plants and stepped back to get a better overview of it all.
As I stood there thinking summer thoughts I realized that something had thawed in me. I dimly recognized the feeling as excitement. Something so simple as a spindly vegetable plant trying hard to stand upright in its container was giving me hope.
All we have to do is turn on the radio for a few minutes to learn the myriad difficulties happening in our world. While it’s necessary for us to hear and to know them, it is equally important that we remember that spring does return, even when you get snow in late April.
In a couple weeks I will open the gate to our garden again. I’ll be faced with cutting raspberry canes, spreading manure in the beds, and pulling dead bean stalks off their posts and, later, potato bugs. In the corners of the garden I’ll find shoots of asparagus and rhubarb struggling up through the winter-hardened earth.
I will see it all, pick up my shovel, turn the soil anew and begin once again.