More amazing than a UFO sighting: sprouts!

By Penny Stine
Friday, March 12, 2010

Right now, it’s easy to tell the gardeners from those who don’t like perpetually dirty fingernails in the summertime. Fellow gardeners share my excitement over the spinach that poked its first two leaves out of the ground in my garden sometime before March 6. Everyone else just looks at me like I need get in touch with reality, especially since I was chirping about the joy of spring while it was snowing earlier in the week.

However, among the gardeners at work, word quickly spread that I’d had a sighting. Late in the day, a sales rep who was actually out making calls and doing her job, (which caused her to miss my earlier announcement) called me for confirmation. Kind of like one UFO buff calling an other to exclaim over mysterious saucers spotted low in the horizon.

What made her call equally exciting was her news that things were sprouting in her garden, too. I had spinach; she had carrots and lettuce. Wow, this was so much more than saucers in the sky, this was a real, live encounter of the terrestrial kind.

I also planted peas and cabbage last November when I planted spinach, but so far, they’ve yet to sprout. Like always, I didn’t bother marking where I’d planted anything, certain that this time I’d remember. Of course I don’t, and judging by where the spinach is sprouting, I wonder now if I was tipsy when I scattered the seeds. Perhaps the cat re-scattered them. The important news, however, is not that anything is growing where I think it ought to, but rather that anything is growing at all.

I don’t care how many times the rain turned to snow this past week, or even that co-workers were singing, “I’m dreaming of a white St. Patrick’s Day.” Spring is well on its way. Crocuses are blooming, tulips and daffodils are up, and all is right with the world.

It’s not that winter doesn’t have its own charm; it’s just that winter ought to last about two weeks. Three weeks, tops. Winter can last much longer in other places, like the top of Grand Mesa or the Arctic Circle, so those aficionados who enjoy it can go visit it.

I managed to get one last ski day in at the end of February before I noticed anything growing in my garden or flowerbeds. The skiing was great, my shoulder didn’t protest and I know Powderhorn has received even more snow since then. Unfortunately, I won’t be up to visit it now that green things are alive and well in my yard. Why go get cold when I can stay home and get dirty?

When I went out to work in my yard for the first time last weekend, I armed myself with gardening gloves, a small pair of pruning shears and a big trimmer. The gloves didn’t last. Soon, they were abandoned in favor of getting my fingers in the dirt. I told myself it was because wearing gloves made it too difficult to distinguish between the grass I was trying to pull and the strawberries I wanted to protect, but honestly, it was because it had been too long since I’d last played in the dirt.

Unfortunately, my soft, lily-white hands showed it. By the end of the day, they were scratched and bleeding in several places. That could be a deterrent to some people, but for gardening maniacs, it’s a badge of honor.

The sad truth is, no matter how much I love sniffing basil in July or picking tomatoes in August, my garden will never be as wonderful as it is right now.

Right now, (with the exception of a few tiny spinach sprouts and the peas and cabbage still waiting for a signal from God) my garden is all in my head. I’m envisioning it lush and beautiful, with flowers interspersed among the vegetables. Everything is producing at a high level; there are no bugs eating my broccoli, no blossom end rot ruining my tomatoes, no weeds growing anywhere, requiring me to spend hours on my hands and knees pulling them. Right now, my garden is perfect.

The strawberries we’ll manage to find won’t be nearly as big as the ones in my imagination. The bugs will infest some of them and the birds will also claim their share. In spite of my best attempts, the grass will creep in and try to intimidate those poor little berry plants.

My real garden will have a lot more weeds and will take a lot more sweat-filled hours to produce much of anything. I’m guessing that I’ll be disappointed with the yield from at least one of my tomato varieties.

On the other hand, my perfect fantasy garden has no taste, and when my grandson asked if we could pick strawberries last week, I had to tell him there weren’t any out there yet.

Perhaps imperfect reality is better than perfect fantasy, after all.