So I find gardening an agonizing process. Vegetables grow so slow. Recently I've taken up my garden-season habit of walking the greenhouse and our planted beds every lunchtime, partly to water (the greenhouse, not our direct seeded plants, which are spring-showered on enough right now) and partly to stare. Have the onion seedlings grown any since yesterday? Where are all the Copras, and why are the Wallas growing so much better? Are there any more cabbage sprouts? Are the fall shallots taller? Have any direct-seeded peas sprouted?
Most days, the answer is no. To all those questions. And I bite my lip and squat down in the dirt and squint, wishing for laser vision to see what's happening beneath the soil. I want to stick my finger a few inches deep and see--and maybe in the case of one tulip bulb, I do. Just to make sure. Still growing?
Some days, the answer is yes. Like the other day, in the morning I saw four snap pea shoots in the greenhouse. In the afternoon, I saw one new slender green thing shrugging potting soil off its back, head still curled under. Now, today, it's standing straight and tall.
Today I think I saw the first snap peas poking out from along the fence line, where we direct seeded them. It's hard to tell. They could be weeds. But they looked different than anything else around, and they were all in a row, about two inches apart.
So I congratulated them and went back inside. There is nothing else I can do. Garden peas are not like the cheese mat that can arrive on my doorstep in two days via Amazon Prime. In May or June, we will be drowning in peas, maybe hundreds of pods of them, thousands if you count the shell peas, but for now they are all in my head.
Meanwhile, I'll be out there again tomorrow, imagining them--and soaking up their lesson of patience.
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