PLANT EVERYTHING DAY
February 29th, 2008 adminTomorrow is the best day of the entire year. I think this because I’m a gardener. For non-gardeners (gardn’ters?) tomorrow is Some Dumb Saturday-go to Costco, play soccer, see that Will Ferrell movie, whatever it is you people do.
Here’s what I look forward to instead:
- –rising before the alarm rings, feeling how I did the morning of my seventh birthday, when I thought I was going to get something turquoise and sparkly. (And did.)
- –bolting coffee.
- –dressing in Carhart overalls with the sleeveless Werkstadt motorcycle repair shirt and aged hightops.
- –spackling my face with Sex Wax sunscreen and affixing a do-rag to my head.
- –going into the garden shed I (nearly) built myself and loading up a wheelbarrow with drywall buckets, yankee screwdriver, all the handtools, all the hoseclamps, the seeds, the Sharpie for labeling plant labels made out of plastic knives, a 2-quart water bottle full of ice and, at last, the pot-bound TOMATO SEEDLINGS that must go out, even though it might frost. So, also putting into the wheelbarrow anything that might protect a tomato from a frost, up to and including old blankets, chicken wire, shade cloth, cardboard boxes, aforementioned drywall buckets.
- –spending hours and hours and hours planting everything-seeds, plants, shrubs, divided perennials, potential weeds, everything.
- –as the sun goes down, enjoying the first gin-and-tonic of summer. On March first.
Any gardening reference work will tell you that planting should be done at intervals-the old plant-lettuce-in-successive-two-week-sowings method. I’m sure this is all sensible and makes for a long and manageable harvest. But to hell with it, I say, every year. Because I get to this point and all of a sudden I just can’t wait another second. I want to be watering, feeding, pruning, harvesting-IN THE GAME.
And in one day, I’ve discovered, I can completely change my landscape. Tonight, as I type this, I am a garden writer. 24 hours from now I will have turned back into a farmer.
As usual, it’s already been pretty brutal for my seedlings. Fully one half the tomato starts never made it through the boot camp of the fluorescent light hung over the bathtub. The other fifty percent have heart-I can just feel it, though some of these brave cadets won’t survive until harvest time, either. There will be stink bugs. There will be weeks when the temperature soars past 105 degrees. A time will come when I lose interest in the whole thing and suddenly want to stop distributing fresh water and go immerse myself in salt.
But that will be a lesser time than this, and right now I am constructed entirely of hope. Maybe I can persuade one of my daughters to make me a sandwich at high noon tomorrow? If so, the last detail will have fallen into place, and the day will be perfect, and good Lord, when else would I even dare to think such a thing?
Happy Plant Everything Day, if and when you have one.
