Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Nursery Time

After a month of unusually cold, white weather, a warm spell speaks Spring.  Of course, it's a tease.  Fortunately, the nights remain cold enough not to coax the flora into premature rebirth.  As my posting yesterday ("Where the Rubber Hits the Road") suggested, animals may be stupid but plants are not.

Have you ever met an unkind plant?  Virginia steps up to the microphone, "Poison ivy?"  My view on that is a repeat of something I posted a few days ago ("Taking Responsibility") -- if you're too lazy or stupid to recognize and avoid, or wash off, poisons, don't blame the plant.

"What about weeds?" Virginia asks.  Yes, sometimes uninvited plants greatly aggravate me, but even they aren't mean or unkind.  They're simply complicatedly inconvenient, which by definition is what a weed is.

"Bananas," my sister might suggest.  I love bananas, but she wants to form an online Society of Banana Haters, people who think even the smell of a banana is hazardous to their health.  My friend, Mike, used to have a similar problem with celery, although he seems to have aged into tolerance.  One of the SBH mottos would be "Bananas are mean."  I won't touch this one.  How can you argue with such an extremely skewed perspective?

The point is, Spring-like weather portends a kinder world.  My first 2010 seed packets arrived yesterday and I'm itching to get this year's garden growing.  The warm sunshine has melted most of our white blanket and uncovered my November planting of garlic.  It's time to start the earlies on windowsills -- things like broccoli, cauliflower and onions -- so in March they can keep the garlic company.  A couple months after that, my gardens will be overflowing with friendly plants, co-existing in a way animals (humans, anyway) apparently cannot.

"I thought you said plants don't need human help," says Virginia.

"I may have gotten carried away," I say.  "Some of them do better with a little help from friends."

"Otherwise, they get crowded out, just like animals," says Virginia.

"Good point," I surrender.  "They both have their good points.  Why must it always be 'us vs. them'?"

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