This Imperfect Plot

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March 12th, 2012

My garden and my blog have a lot in common these days. Both have been dormant and inactive all winter, showing only the occasional sign of life—a post about Christmas trees here, some winter kale leaves there.

And my mind has a lot in common with my compost pile. I’m always adding to it—kitchen scraps of pop culture, grass clippings from the internet, armloads of leaves from my family tree—and slowly the process of composting and composing continues.

Let this blog post be the first of many for the season. Let this short essay be the potting mix in the seed tray. Let this little story be the newspaper pots all filled up and ready to plant. Let today’s post be the first of the onion shoots poking through soil.

Yes, I feel it. I am waking from my hibernation—as a writer and a gardener.

Two months ago I posted a list of my gardening goals for the year. My first two goals are intrinsically connected. The first was to grow only what I start from seed myself. Ambitious? Yes. Impossible? No. My second goal was to grow only High Mowing Organic Seeds. When I wrote to High Mowing, they graciously agreed to supply my seeds this year.  So you can imagine how happy I was when the big envelope from Vermont showed up in my mailbox.

Last week my daughter and I started our onions, ‘Siskiyou Sweet Walla Walla‘ and ‘Dakota Tears,’ and this morning we saw the first little green shoots. This week, we’ll start even more.

And yesterday, I was lucky enough to spend some time in the garden. I’m trying out a Sun Joe electric tiller and was able to get a nice patch of garden ready to plant. That little machine has some kick to it. In a few weeks, I’ll be posting a review of the tiller and giving one away to some lucky reader. Stay tuned.

And so this imperfect plot continues….