From a tiny seed
There's something magical about seeds. So much potential in one little self-contained package.
Last week I did up my first little seed pots for the new garden. It was such a pleasure opening up my little bin of hoarded seeds. Selecting seeds harvested last Fall from my last garden. That sense of continuity, a link to gardens past. There's something comforting about that. I've carried seeds from every move we've made since I started gardening. I chose sunflower, dill, curly parsley, and of course the calendula a friend and I use in our soap making.
I buy these little peat pots - made of organic material that biodegrades so you can plant the seedling, pot and all. I wanted to do up a lot at once, so I cast about the neglected old potting shed - full of 'junk' - for some kind of tray to set them on. Something to organise them, keep them from falling over in the wind, and enable me to transport them all at once.
This is the shed in question, more or less as we found it when we moved in:
I found a thing so perfect, I assume it was put to the same use by the previous owner of the potting shed. It is an old, cheap, cracked, siverwear organiser. The kind that's all mesh on the bottom. The sections are a perfect fit for my pots, and the mesh bottom means I can leave the entire tray of seedlings outside without worrying about them getting flooded when it rains. I was very pleased with my find. Gardeners are resourceful that way.
I filled up the siverwear organiser/ seed tray with things that would do well outside this time of year. Then put some pots of sunflowers and watermelon in old plastic mushroom containers and set them in the sunroom window. Yesterday I found they had started to sprout.
I love this part, sprouting new seedlings. Of course I find myself thinking that of every part of it, as I progress through the seasons of gardening. But seeds make such a tempting metaphor - such hope, such potential in these beautiful little objects, that start as just a tiny speck in your hand. I started gardening the Summer after becoming a mother. That would make it about seven years now. The part where a plant makes itself - this beautiful form unfolding day to day - from just a seed and water and dirt and sunlight - is still awe-inspiring to me. It feels like a form of magic. I've studied biology, I know the details of genes and cell division and photosynthesis. And this doesn't make it any less magical to me. In fact, it just inhances my sense of wonder.
Last week I did up my first little seed pots for the new garden. It was such a pleasure opening up my little bin of hoarded seeds. Selecting seeds harvested last Fall from my last garden. That sense of continuity, a link to gardens past. There's something comforting about that. I've carried seeds from every move we've made since I started gardening. I chose sunflower, dill, curly parsley, and of course the calendula a friend and I use in our soap making.
I buy these little peat pots - made of organic material that biodegrades so you can plant the seedling, pot and all. I wanted to do up a lot at once, so I cast about the neglected old potting shed - full of 'junk' - for some kind of tray to set them on. Something to organise them, keep them from falling over in the wind, and enable me to transport them all at once.
This is the shed in question, more or less as we found it when we moved in:
I found a thing so perfect, I assume it was put to the same use by the previous owner of the potting shed. It is an old, cheap, cracked, siverwear organiser. The kind that's all mesh on the bottom. The sections are a perfect fit for my pots, and the mesh bottom means I can leave the entire tray of seedlings outside without worrying about them getting flooded when it rains. I was very pleased with my find. Gardeners are resourceful that way.
I filled up the siverwear organiser/ seed tray with things that would do well outside this time of year. Then put some pots of sunflowers and watermelon in old plastic mushroom containers and set them in the sunroom window. Yesterday I found they had started to sprout.
I love this part, sprouting new seedlings. Of course I find myself thinking that of every part of it, as I progress through the seasons of gardening. But seeds make such a tempting metaphor - such hope, such potential in these beautiful little objects, that start as just a tiny speck in your hand. I started gardening the Summer after becoming a mother. That would make it about seven years now. The part where a plant makes itself - this beautiful form unfolding day to day - from just a seed and water and dirt and sunlight - is still awe-inspiring to me. It feels like a form of magic. I've studied biology, I know the details of genes and cell division and photosynthesis. And this doesn't make it any less magical to me. In fact, it just inhances my sense of wonder.
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