SLOW WALKING SPRING

I don’t know what’s wrong with me this year. 

Normally, by this time of May I am impatiently waiting for my garden to be tilled so that I can get some seeds in the ground.  That is if I haven’t taken it upon myself to get the tractor and tiller out and go do it myself.   While all the patient types talk about letting the soil warm up, or waiting for the last full moon before June or some other such nonsense, I’m always the one out there chomping at the bit, just dying to get dirt under my fingernails.

Oh, I know it’s been a chilly spring, but that’s never held me back before.  I love planting potatoes so much that some years I plant them twice – once to rot in the ground or freeze as soon as they stick their heads out, and another time a few weeks later when they are liable to grow and survive.  It keeps me busy.

By Mother’s Day in a normal year I am usually at a fever pitch to get seeds in the ground.  In my head I’ve come up with at least two dozen seeding plans and know full well that these plans will continue to evolve until I actually drop the seeds into the rows and cover them.  But this year there seems to be no hurry at all.  At the moment the tractor and tiller aren’t even here and I’m okay with that for a bit longer.  I don’t really want to plant seeds until the weatherman says we might get a rain to get them growing.  My weather app says that’s most likely to happen more than a week down the road and for some weird reason in 2019 I’m fine with that.

Maybe I’m just finally getting the hang of this being retired?  For most of my life I had to squeeze all my work into 24 hours per day when what I really needed was 30.  Now that my whole day is my own maybe I have managed to gear down?  Subconsciously I now accept that there will be enough time for everything? I don’t know.  It just seems bizarre that I don’t have a row of lettuce tucked in somewhere by now.

Oh wait.  I do.  I filled a planter with dirt and planted lettuce and radishes just to see how early possessing a greenhouse would provide me with a spring salad. 

But, other than that, my spring planting schedule is very relaxed.  At least once a day I wander my garden/orchard space.  My raspberries are coming like crazy, the saskatoons are leafing out, the rhubarb is up, and we’ll be eating asparagus by the end of the week.  Also, out on the big hill to the east there is plenty of room for the giant pumpkins, zucchini, and spaghetti squash, not to mention the cantaloupe and cucumbers – they need to be far apart so they don’t cross pollinate. 

Come to think of it, they need more space already – they are taking over the greenhouse.  I should go move them all outside for the day so they get ‘toughened up’ for their permanent transition to the real world.

This strange lackadaisical no-hurry-here attitude I’ve sprouted in 2019 is not an indication of a waning interest in gardening.  In fact, I have a whole new flowerbed all mapped out.  If I can get the rototiller fired up this afternoon I will ‘break ground’ today.  Heaven knows one whole side of the greenhouse is packed with perennials that will soon call it home.

And the next thing I’ll need to do is fill all my deck planters.  And plant all the gladioli that are soaking in the greenhouse. 

I’ve also decided where the tomatoes are going this year, but they’re not quite big enough for outside yet.

But, like I said, I just don’t feel the usual urgency to get out there and garden this year.  I can just take my time to get started this spring. 

It’s really weird.