Let the Growing Begin!

Finally, they are in soil.  When it came right down to it, it took more effort than I had anticipated -- psychologically, if not physically.  For weeks, I have been accumulating seeds for my "farm."  I have relished the several experiences of browsing through the catalogs, making my selections, and anticipating the deliveries.  I have kept them bundled together in the box that contained the first shipment.  I have accumulated supplies.  I have counted the days, "anxious" in every sense of the word.  Eager.  Fearful.  Apprehensive.  Giddy.  And then for purely irrational reasons -- impatience, a full moon, whatever -- I decided that yesterday was the day.

On my way home from meetings, I stopped at the garden store and assessed my options for soil.  What a wonderland!  This gardening thing is a linguist's paradise.  I mean, where else do you get to toss around words like "sphagnum" and "peat"?  Where else do you find labels celebrating and extolling the virtues of earthworm casings and bat guano?  Even if nothing grows, I'll get to talk about all kinds of cool stuff.

Finally, it seemed like I was ready.   I laid out the seeding cartons...and then decided I wasn't ready.  I needed something under them or surely I would ruin the table.  I removed the cartons, and spread out towels.  And then I was ready...and then I wasn't.  Wouldn't it be better to have some kind of plastic over the towels?  Retrieving some rolls from the garage, I fashioned something as close to a waterproof membrane as I could manage.  And then I was ready.  I filled the cells with the casing and guano-rich soil...and then decided I wasn't ready.  I was going to need a mister.  As I was driving back from Target, it crossed my mind that something about my subconscious was imposing delay tactics.  Perhaps like the way that saying something out loud makes it somehow more real, actually inserting a seed into soil represented a kind of commitment to this large and largely unknown undertaking; as if sowing a seed was tantamount to crossing a line of no return.  As long as I was reading or shopping or studying or talking, I could pretend my way through this whole mythical farming/gardening undertaking.  But actually planting a seed, staking in the identifying marking stick, and, yes, misting the whole undertaking -- all of sudden, this was real.

But, as with a marriage, I am now committed; "in" -- for better or for worse; the dirt under my nails standing in as an enduring and virtual equivalent of the ring upon my finger.  Never mind that I hardly know what I'm doing, there is attention to pay; nurture to contribute; guidance to provide; knowledge to acquire; experience to gain; beginner's luck to appreciate and failures to learn from.  It isn't imaginary anymore.

I know that the very thought is preposterous, but I almost felt a hint of disappointment when I woke and passed by my little tabletop foreshadowing of a garden and found no green emerging from the brown.  After all, the very seeding had been so long in coming, it almost felt right that the seeds, themselves, would have somehow sensed the magnitude of the moment and hustled themselves into verdant growth.  No, not even I really expected it.  Even I know this much about the glacial pace of growing.  But that didn't stop me from wistfully looking twice.

I have a hunch that this won't be my last lesson in the great and powerful discipline of patience.  One more thing about which I have an almost infinite amount to learn.  What I can for now is that I have started -- actually.  No longer is it all about accumulation of supplies and tools and dreams.  Suddenly it is real.  The undertaking has commenced.  And I can't seem to take my eyes off of it...

...or stop smiling.