Often times when I walk across the street to get the mail in the cold air with deep snow covering the ground I tote back seed and garden catalogs addressed to my wife. I don’t have a green thumb, but she does, is included on several mailing lists, and now shows signs of itching to get out and start digging. Just the other day our thermometer registered 20 below, and she was rummaging around to find her little starter flats. She had seen to it a couple of weeks ago that I buy potting soil at Menard’s, and her seeds were already on hand. With a planter rack placed by the sunny patio door, we now watch the tiny seeds sprout into skinny little tendrils. I’m reminded of an Indian snake charmer who blows melodies on his flute to entice a cobra to slowly uncoil and rise from its basket. There are probably two dozen little compartments in that starter flat and each is properly identified with a little name tag, namely geranium - hot pink, geranium - red, spinach, and lettuce. Now, mind you, this is only the beginning of her seed germination efforts. Before she is done that rack will groan with the weight of as many flats as can be reasonably squeezed onto its crowded shelves.
Long ago when I was the little boy I remember watching with fascination Dad’s placing of grain seeds into a damp, rolled cloth and setting the bundle in the southern window of our house. I learned an early lesson at that time about percentages; he counted the number of seeds he placed in the roll and after a few days could see how many of them had sprouted compared to the duds and came up the the percentage of germination, a figure that is still important for a farmer to know. It’s been a long time since I’ve inspected the tag on a bag of seed grain, but the last I saw that number is listed.
I know Mary’s dreaming about making the yard come alive with her plants and flowers which in turn draw lots of bees, birds, butterflies, etc. We watched a great program on public tv last night that focused on the migration of the Monarch butterfly. They are a remarkable creature. In the fall they migrate 2,000 miles from Canada to a small spot in Mexico, and nobody knows how they do it. Their targeted spot has been set aside as a reserve by the Mexican government, but, of course, thieves come and go with their illegal cutting down of the trees the butterflies depend on. It so happened the night before my old college friend Jens called from Nebraska. We hadn’t visited for a few years so we reminisced about quite a little. One event came back regarding a summer school session we attended: he was enrolled in an entomology course and needed to collect bugs to identify and display. We had the perfect solution. He drove along a country road and I held a net out the passenger window over the tall grass on the shoulder. Occasionally we would stop and inspect our catch and usually caught up quite a collection, butterflies included. To lubricate this scenario we several times took an empty gallon jug into a little hide-away bar where the bartender filled it with tap beer for a dollar and away we’d go. Those were the days we talk about.
With all past things aside, this summer we again look forward to our little property coming alive with growing things and beating wings.
