SUNDAY FUNDAY, MARCH 19, 2023 GARDENING

 SUNDAY FUNDAY, MARCH 19, 2023 GARDENING

Do you know that today is the last full day of WINTER!!! Tomorrow, Monday, March 20, 2023, at 4:24 p.m. central daylight time, the rays from the sun are directly over the equator - and thus spring starts officially.  I do like the generic seasons where December, January, and February are the Winter months; March, April, and May are the spring months, June, July, and August are the summer months; and September, October, and November are the fall months.  

Or, you do some math.  Let’s say there are 91 days in a season (which would be 364 days in a year and we could throw in one extra day in summer).  Winter would begin 45 days before the winter solstice and end 91 days later.  Likewise, spring would begin 45 days before the spring equinox and end 46 days after the spring equinox.  

(Calendars are man-made, seasons (as currently defined) come from three events - winter solstice (where the sun’s rays are the farthest south possible); summer solstice (where the sun’s rays are the farthest north possible), and the two equinoxes - where the sun's rays are on the equator.)

SPRING JOKES

1. Why are waterbeds so bouncy? They’re filled with spring water.

2. Does February March? No, but April May!

3. Which month of the year is the shortest? May. It only has three letters.

4. What can you find in the middle of April and March but not at the beginning or end of either?  The letter R!

5. Why is Star Wars‘ Yoda such a good gardener? He has a green thumb.

6. What’s the difference between spring rolls and summer rolls? Seasoning.

7. What did the dirt say to the rain? You’d better cut it out, or my name will be mud!

8. What do you get when you push a bunch of Easter eggs down a hill? Spring rolls.

A SHORT SPRING STORY

“Hold it still,” my grandfather said.  I was at the end of a future row of green beans and holding a line.  Grandpa was carefully digging a straight trench about two inches deep with the corner of his hoe.  In a few minutes, he’d walk alongside the trench and drop in the seeds, then he would come back and cover the seeds.  The white twine string I was holding was over ten feet long.  That was basically ten feet of plants and a few inches to tie onto the popsicle sticks at the end of the row.  My grandfather was a stickler for clear straight rows.  

But, good help was hard to find, and at five years old I was my grandpa’s sidekick and his gardening assistant.  But the fly that buzzed by me, the bird on the fence post, and the leaves swaying on the mulberry tree were somehow (at least momentarily) more important than keeping the string taut and straight. 

My grandpa was my idol.  He had white hair and blue eyes and stood tall at six feet, three inches, and skinny as a rail.

We (using that term lightly) were starting to plant our garden on our one-acre lot.  He had borrowed an old rototiller from a friend and had turned over the ground from last year’s garden.  I mostly held the rake, so after he turned over the soil, I’d hand him the rake to smooth and straighten the dirt. Then he dug the trench and planted the seeds.  

He planted the bean seeds, but every so often, he’d drop in a radish seed.  He told me that the radishes would come up quicker than the beans and they would be in a straight line.  We’d pick the radishes long before we’d pick the beans.

He had a little of this and that in terms of seeds.  We had white icicle seeds - both long and short, red globe, purple, strong tasting, and mild radishes.  When we planted tomatoes, there were early girl, big boy, cherry (both red and yellow), purple heirloom, and husk tomatoes.  If he could have picked a career, I think he would have been a botanist.  He’d want to cross-pollinate the big boy tomatoes with the yellow cherries just to see what he would get (of course, he wouldn’t know until next year.). 

Grandpa had a little pocket spiral bound notebook in his pocket.  He carefully wrote down what seeds he planted, and kept track of the yields.  

He had been a teacher (I’m not sure what) once, but his real career was at the post office.  But, to me, he was grandpa.  He’d tussle my hair and tell me how much I helped him, and I beamed for a week.  “My grandpa loves me.”

I still garden.  My garden is on my patio deck outside my apartment.  I have kale, two kinds of Swiss Chard, spinach, and even some flowers.  I’m debating getting some little red-orange marigold seeds and some little yellow marigold seeds and as the plants set their flowers, I’d make sure the red-orange plants put their pollen on the yellow plants (and vice versa).

*****

Alas, that was my last year planting with Grandpa.  The next year I was in school.  Grandpa cut back on the size of the garden and experimented less.  And, I was learning my ABCs and how to add numbers.  Maybe I would have learned more about planting a garden with my Grandpa and keeping my own little pocket spiral-bound notebook. Formal education took up my time and I had less time with my idol.

In four more yards, Grandpa died - a massive heart attack for a man who loved me and who I loved.  

I’ve tried to be a grandparent like he was - a lover, not a hater.  

*****

Happy Spring

Happy Gardening

LOVE WINS

LOVE TRANSFORMS

KAREN ANNE WHITE, ©, MARCH 19, 2023