The start of garden season

It started on about February 7th, as you can see. I planted geraniums, peppers, lobelia, basil, rosemary, and onion seeds, and three-and-a-half weeks'-worth of little plants are growing in my kitchen. In the next week or two I'll open our insulated greenhouse, set up a small thermostat-controlled heater, and move them out. But for now, they're thriving where they are, and I'm happy to watch them grow.

Scratching the gardening itch...

I'm a pretty happy woman these days because of many things growing all around me. Call it garden gratitude.

One day back in February, when it was miserably cold, I just couldn't take it any more. I shovelled my way to the greenhouse door, chipped away enough ice that I could actually get it open, and hauled in a frozen bag of potting soil that we purchased last fall. While it took two days to thaw, My wonderful husband set up some grow lights in our dining room (yes, that's the pink glow when you walk past our house in the evenings, and no, we're not growing cannabis!) and I've been watching seedlings sprout every since.

Some seeds I probably should have started earlier than I did (only planted my annuals last week) and some, I probably should have waited to plant (I can only imagine how leggy some of my tomato plants will get before they can go outside), but it's all good. I've been enjoying scratching the gardening itch, at least a little. So if you need a bit of green in your day, here's a little visit with our present greenhouse inhabitants. Once the annuals are up, they'll go out there, too.

A fairly happy bunch

Volunteer pansies from last fall's pots that I transplanted into trays.

Onions and leeks that I wish I'd started a bit sooner.

Three happy pepper plants (germination rate wasn't great this year).

That wasn't the case with baby tomato plants --

I think every single seed has showed up.

If you want a tomato plant, let me know!

I'm hoping for a June tomato crop for our eldest daughter's wedding --

I've got a few new heirloom varieties, including one called "42 days."

I bought a bag of 9 dahlia bulbs at Costco for $14. 

Thus far, five are viable. Considering that single bulbs

cost $7 at Canadian Tire, I seem to be coming out ahead.

We've been enjoying a few simple salads, too. 

Next week I'm going to plant more lettuce in our cold frame --

can't quite get rid of that gardening itch

even with so much already growing!

After a good rain

I love this time of year, when the garden is just planted, and evertyhing looks so orderly. We've just had a good rain, so give it a week, and the zillions of elm seeds and other weeds will begin to appear. For now, though, I'm enjoying the tidiness of plants coming through the soil, and the sense of potential at the beginning of "the wet garden, sprung in completeness where God's feet pass," as Eleanor Farjeon says in her song, Morning Has Broken.

Garden blessing

For the last several years, each Spring, I've followed a simple ritual to bless my garden. It started because I didn't really know what to do with my old blessed palms from previous Palm Sundays. I'd heard that if you didn't put them into the Ash Wednesday or Easter fires, you should burn them, but somehow that didn't seem like enough.

So I made up a little garden blessing ritual of my own. On a calm, windless day, I take my old palms out to the garden, dig a little pit, put them in it and light a match. I sing This Little Light of Mine (or other spiritual songs that have to do with light or fire) while the palms burn down to ashes. Then I sprinkle little bits of the ashes in the many corners of my garden, and finally the four corners of our yard. And I say little prayers aloud, that go something like this:

God,
thank you for your abundant blessings.

Thank you for this soil,
which you have given,
and for the seeds
that you will make to grow here.

Bless our garden and help it to flourish:
bless the tomatoes and the berries,
the potatoes and the squash,
and all the others,
along with the birds, butterflies,
bees, spiders,
and other creatures who visit
or live here.

(I hope the hummingbird comes back again this year!)

Give us all warmth and sun,
and rain when we need it.

Please protect this garden,
and all our gardens,
from drought or hail or damaging pests.

(And if you could keep the mosquito population to a dull roar,
I'd really appreciate it!)

Protect our trees from strong winds,
and the birds
who come to splash in the birdbath
or nibble the snow peas.

And if we should have one of THOSE storms,
may I be as gracious as Job and say,
"The Lord gives and the Lord takes away;
blessed be the name of the Lord."

(Oh, look, the first lady bug!)

And bless the farmers,
whose gardens are so much bigger than mine!

Please bring us all to a happy harvest,
and help us to share our abundance with others who need it.

Thank you for all the life
that lives in this sacred space.

Bless it,
and bless us,
and help us to remember
that your whole world
and all beings within it
form a beautiful and blessed garden
that deserves our love and care.

+Amen.

And once I've scattered the ashes and wandered around the yard, looking for little points of green, I fill in my little fire pit and go look for the packet of sweet peas I ordered from the garden catalogue.

Let the planting begin!

Simple Suggestion #273... Start a seed

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Well, almost. Spring starts early when you're a gardener, and after a long winter, getting my hands back into dirt is always wonderful!

By the end of harvest in autumn, I'm always too tuckered to tidy up the greenhouse, even. So it sits, a jumble of pots and dead plants, until the sun gets higher, the days get longer, and the hothouse gets hotter -- it reached 35 degrees earlier this week. That's a clear sign that it's time to get on with things.

Now the pots are sorted, the shelves are cleaned, the floor is swept, the thermostat/heater and seedling heat mats are re-installed, and planting begins.

On the left are 40 tomato plants for me (and a few extras for my mom and friends), and on the right, three large pots of lettuce and some small planters for perennials. I brought in a few pails of snow because ordinary precipitation is better for these future babies than ordinary tap water.

Indoors, my little windowsill herb garden is growing quite happily, including one marigold seed that I found on my desk back in January! It seems to be doing better than the oregano that is also growing in that pot (probably stealing all the soil nutrients). And there are a few peppers slowly coming up -- they need more consistent heat than the greenhouse provides (on sunless days it sits between 7 and 16 degrees, colder than peppers like) so I'll keep them indoors for a little longer.

In a world where we are so often separated from the sources of our food and walled off from nature, it's really important for me -- for all of us, though not all of us know it -- to find a way back to seeds, soil, and green growing things, even if it's just a little jam jar on a windowsill. We all need some connection to the mysterious Source of Life somehow -- I'm sure our souls are healthier for it!

So today's Simple Suggestion is to start a seed. Any seed. Watch it grow, and feel your soul expand with it!