First planting

By Rose, April 7, 2014

A bunch of plain brown dirt doesn’t make for the prettiest portrait background, but that’s the reality of gardening. It ain’t always pretty, and it’s usually kind of dirty.

It took me a while to get all of my seeds organized, so I direct-sowed a few days later than I’d initially hoped. That’s okay, though. Gardens are forgiving.

By following the planting calendar from Mother Earth News, I separated my seeds into bundles according to date. The breakdown is this: Now, mid-April, May, mid-May, June. Under the “nows” are almost all of my leafy greens — the boks, lettuces, arugula, spinach, and one row of white radishes for Jon’s mama.

Once I finally got everything ready, Jon went ahead and tilled up the garden. It was quite noisy for about half an hour. For all you non-gardeners and newbies out there, you till a garden to loosen and generally aerate the soil. In the rocky Ozarks, we also do it to do our best to break up our gigantic rocks and fossilized dirt clods, which can make digging virtually impossible. Once the nightmare of staking tomatoes arrives later in the season, you’ll see what I mean.

I got me a garden recruit to help me plant, which is always appreciated. Honestly, planting seed tape is just about the easiest thing in the whole entire world. You just lay it down and scatter dirt over the top. It’s wonderful, mindless, so simple.

But some people wanted to ride mules instead.

Or they just… plum got distracted.

Needless, the work is a joy and not difficult. It’s the waiting that’s hard.

The waiting.

The endless waiting. Waiting for dirt to part. For green to spring. For spring to come.

For Winter to hurry up and get over itself, to let spring in. The close of another blessed day.