[Seasons: Spring XXI]
The first thing I plant in spring are salad greens, which requires four passes with my seeder in each 30 inch wide bed. I prep the bed, seed, and wait. Rain is regular enough in spring that I don’t need to irrigate. I literally plant and wait.
Seven days.
Ten days.
Sometimes fourteen days before I see the emergence of tiny sprouts.
Spring growth is not robust at first. Those first crocuses, the early buds on the apricot tree, and my salad greens are not in a hurry. Early spring growth is reticent, as if to test the weather to see if it’s bluffing. And when it commits, it remains fragile, cautiously emerging in microscopic increments.
When we expect summer growth in the spring, we put out-of-season demands on a process that is intended to be slow and tender. And I’m not only talking about salad greens. One of the gifts of spring is its insistence that we all be patient in the spring-growth of our lives. Most future strength begins with a little apprehension and lot of tenderness. One day after another, millimeter by millimeter, small sprouts break the surface of a formerly frozen ground. If it’s rushed, it’ll surely die.
Be patient. Celebrate the tiny progress. Spring is here.
