The Waiting Game

The days are short and cold, and the nights are long and even colder. What’s a gardener to do? We pace the floor, stoke the fire and peek out the frost-rimmed windows, hoping beyond hope to glimpse a patch of green grass or a flash of a bluebird’s crimson breast.

But mainly we dream. We dream of sweat-darkened hatbands, of green-stained tomato-tying fingers, of chins dripping with sweet watermelon juice. We go to sleep dreaming of endless rows of rampant green vines and of tomatoes with overactive pituitaries, until visions of VW-sized bean beetles jolt us awake.

During the blur of Summer, we hardly have a moment to savor, as a new challenge is always crouching to ambush. But in January, we have time to reflect on the Summers before and the one that will soon loom. We busy ourselves with planning for Spring sowing, from seed catalogs we eagerly await at the mailbox like so many Little Orphan Annie decoder rings. We thresh the last beans and field pea seeds to store away until last frost, and shell and grind corn for Winter meal. White oak and sweet gum is cut from the hiking trails to inoculate with mushroom spores. While we are drilling and plugging the logs, we can already imagine the little gnome villages of shiitakes, oysters and king stropharia that will construct themselves next Summer. We check the oil in the trusty tiller, count and recount our inventory of lonely bushel baskets and assure them that they will soon brim with moist lettuces, carrots and beets.

Drawing from the same optimism that coaxes a seedling from the ground, we know that since the first blast of Winter, the days are becoming a bit longer, and planting time is a bit closer. January to a gardener seems an eternity, but hope, as they say, is truly eternal. So in this month we strain at the starting block ready to sprint to the fields, seeds in hand and hope in our hearts.

– Jeff Ross, Garden Manager