9 weeks. That is not very long as time is reckoned by men. But somehow it feels like an eternity. Even eggplant shouldn't be started for another week. But has that stopped me? No, I have intrepid eggplant seedlings popping up as I type.
This must be a type of spring fever. I habitually pull out my stash of seeds and pick through it, calculating germination times and sorting into piles of direct-sow crops and those which can be started in side and transplanted. I dream conversations about the relative merits of peat pots, newspaper pots, and the less gentle but reusable plastic seed trays.
My partner has lost his sense of the humor of this and now, instead of smiling indulgently over the computer at me, he makes derisive noises and dismissive comments.
Perhaps my garden-mania *is* taking attention away from my family.
If we eat the fruits of my labors will that replace the attention I have withheld from them? When I take my daughter into the garden with her own trowel and together we plant a bed of lettuce is that suitable, can it earn me forgiveness for the Saturday I spent spreading mulch? And do I uproot all the good of the lettuse planting when a tiny voice in my head reminds me she had too much fun with the trowel and the tiny lettuce seed are churned too deeply into that bed to ever germina
This must be a type of spring fever. I habitually pull out my stash of seeds and pick through it, calculating germination times and sorting into piles of direct-sow crops and those which can be started in side and transplanted. I dream conversations about the relative merits of peat pots, newspaper pots, and the less gentle but reusable plastic seed trays.
My partner has lost his sense of the humor of this and now, instead of smiling indulgently over the computer at me, he makes derisive noises and dismissive comments.
Perhaps my garden-mania *is* taking attention away from my family.
If we eat the fruits of my labors will that replace the attention I have withheld from them? When I take my daughter into the garden with her own trowel and together we plant a bed of lettuce is that suitable, can it earn me forgiveness for the Saturday I spent spreading mulch? And do I uproot all the good of the lettuse planting when a tiny voice in my head reminds me she had too much fun with the trowel and the tiny lettuce seed are churned too deeply into that bed to ever germina