Green Things

Spring came first with that breeze that just smelled like the weather changing. The snow is still here, the ground still frosted and white and icy and yet there is Hope.

Birds come next, their songs making 40 degrees feel warm, their warbling waking in me the desire to Plant Something.

I pore over seed packets and catalogs and calendars, calculating grow times and growing zones, marking when to plant what in my schedule book.

Then I get Soil. It may be potting soil from the garden section at Walmart, or good compost from our neighbor, but soon I am filling plant pots, and poking seeds into the rich dirt until various containers fill every windowsill.

Hope.

We watch those containers expectantly every day, almost hungry for the sight of life. Watering them. Praying over them. Hoping to see some green in this world where Spring does not come. 

I drink in the smell of the dirt and water mixing – the smell of spring. I will soon tire of dirt and weeds and gardening. Talk to me in July and I will be wishing for September when the garden is over. But for now, no effort is too much, and those first seedlings popping up create so much excitement in the household. They’re growing!! We do happy dances in the living room and clap our hands and the children are excited because Mommy is being Fun.

Each day we count them and there are more. Each day we water, hoping we’re not watering too much, and on sunny days we move our baby plants out into the sun only to carry them carefully back inside every evening.

They create almost as much worry as a human baby. “Look how leggy they’re getting! Are they getting enough sun? And this one wilted. What happened? Do yellow leaves mean they don’t have enough nitrogen?”

But some survive and grow and as they flourish spring keeps springing and soon the plants are not the only green thing, only one amidst a host of other Spring Things.

And so then I will transplant my coddled, well loved plants to the garden or the raised beds where they will grow and flourish or waste and die but I will not care then as much as I do now about my Green Things.

I know we’re behind a lot of you as far as spring goes, but what are you planting right now?

Postscript: I recently joined Instagram to share more of our everyday lives. Follow me at _alaskanhousewife for more stories. I just posted an account of hunting for moose antlers in our creek bottom.