PLANTING SEEDS OF JOY

Just as we thought Spring was about to arrive, winter returned. Today it's overcast here in southwest Ohio. The temperature is in the mid-twenty's and Spouse said he saw snowflakes this morning during his run to the Ace hardware store where there was a 20% off sale today - anything one could pack into a grocery size sack would be given the discount. For a moment, I considered going with him to find some new seed packets for planting. I thought that might put me in a good Springy mood. Then I remembered I still have the packets I purchased last year. An avid gardener, I am not.

I used to like planting things - pumpkins, gourds, broccoli, tomatoes, sunflowers, and anything else the grandkids could think of, when they were able to be here planting too. They used to live just around the corner and would often come to play. They seemed to love digging in the dirt and it was always fun listening to Grandson instruct his sister on how to dig without harming any worms. Since they both wanted to plant things, we did, but the most fun was had harvesting our little "crops".

One year, in my gardening ignorance, I bought twelve cherry tomato plants. I didn't know I had that many, of course. They were potted in groups of two. Being a novice at gardening, I had no idea when I bought six pots, there were actually twelve plants. But we planted all of them and had literally hundreds of little cherry tomatoes. The kids had such fun picking them, though neither would eat a single one. We did nearly the same thing with broccoli. That time I was harvesting broccoli until early November. The grandkids even planted corn one year, to the dismay of our neighbor who was a "real" gardener, not an imposter like me. He said, "Y'all planted them seeds too close together", and I'm sure we did. The only thing we really cared about was the fun we had doing it. The seeds did yield some ears of corn, but the deer ate most of them. Our neighbor thought that was awful, but we were very happy knowing that we fed the wildlife.

A few years ago, the grandkids moved to another town and outgrew our little gardening adventures. They now have band practices, concerts, soccer games, sleepovers, and all sorts of other things that keep them very busy. I know that's exactly as it should be, but I do miss our gardening times. I don't know if they ever realized I was not much of a gardener or that I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing. My motto was, if they wanted to plant it, we did.

I think I might just have to go buy a few new seed packets anyway and plant a small patch of something - for old times' sake. I always loved how fast our sunflowers grew.....