How Will My Garden Grow?

 It is about one-third of the way through March and my mind wanders to the spring to come and the growing season. I look forward to my garden but never know exactly when to get it started, as last year I had a basement full of seedlings by now and watched many of them die before I could plant them. Plantricide was not my goal.

As usual, in good faith, I bought a lot of seeds for the season and noted that the sign said that the last frost is supposedly May 10th. This means I can get the colder weather seedlings like lettuce, radishes, and peas going, but really preparing the soil is a better use of my time until then. Ah! But there is a rub. The soil in my yard is like clay and mud soup until May. Usually, I am laying down straw in the areas that my dog is wandering through so that the mud isn't dragged throughout the house. So, once again, I'll put that off for as long as I can and deal with vacuuming up the straw in the meanwhile.

A new variable has been added to my planting scheme this year. We had an arborist cut back the trees so we will presumably have more light coming down on the garden. This, I think, will make for a better harvest, later on, presuming the deer do not lay waste to the garden as they did last year. It also means planning for some new and better-lit garden spaces which may or may not net more produce and flowers.

In my heart and soul, I am as excited as ever to be doing this, because it is kind of like waiting to bring a child into the world, that is if you ultimately consume said child. But it is the planning, the preparing, the tending to and caring for that a childless person like myself does look forward to. It is also a reminder that some folks are not intended to raise children, let alone plants.