without winter

A friend from here tells me that planting day is March 1st.  

Actually, I think we used to be friends. 

Because here's what my tomato, pepper, and eggplant seedlings look like today:

Precious, but not ready to be planted on March 1st, which is this week.  I mean, some of them are still wearing their seed coats on the ends of their first little baby leaves.  They were only planted weekend-before-last, which was late already for the mid-March planting date I thought was correct for here.  

And here are my summer garden raised beds:

You can see how wonderful they're going to be, once they've got irrigation run beneath them and gopher wire put on top of that and then they're filled with mushroom compost and fill dirt.  (You can also see the corner of my awesome mint-green 40' shipping container.  Because where I live, having a shipping container on your property puts you squarely in the in-crowd.)  But the garden beds, as wonderful as they will certainly be, are not going to be finished in time for planting this week.  

Now, I wouldn't worry so much about the beginning of March being the deadline for planting if it weren't for the six to eight weeks before that that the tomato, pepper, eggplant, etc. seeds are supposed to be planted in the house for transplanting out on March 1.  Count backward eight weeks from this week, across February, across January, and you land smack in the week after New Year's Day.  During that week, nay, during that entire month, I'm clutching my heaving bosom, hand to my forehead, trying to catch my breath from the holidays.  Now I'm told that before I've properly got my Christmas decorations packed away, I've got to wrap my mind around this summer's garden?

In our part of Georgia, planting day was a respectable April 15.  Before that date, our efforts at planting would only land us back in the garden every night, trying to save our babies with dropcloths and tarps.  Counting backward from that date gives you a decent piece of blank winter between Christmas and planting, enough time to plan a garden, to long for a garden.  The spinach is all that's left from the winter garden by then, and you're so sick of spinach that tomatoes and cucumbers begin to creep into your dreams.  When planting day finally comes, it's a release of gardening tension that's cathartic, that's...traditional. 

This March 1st planting date, this gardening year that never ends, well, it's indecent.  Where is the longing?  Where is the need?  Where are the tomato-laced dreams?  If you can't dream them between kissing everyone at the New Year's party and sleeping late the next morning, your time is up.  

Maybe it's just this year that we're so behind.  We haven't done a summer garden on this place yet, so maybe the scrambling to get it all done is just because our garden lacks the infrastructure it needs to go forward.  Maybe in years to come we'll have gotten used to the early planting, and maybe we'll look forward to it.  Maybe we'll feel sorry for all of you who are still sitting in armchairs near the fire with seed catalogs and visions of sugar snaps dancing in your heads.  Right now we're scratching our heads, feeling like we've missed something.

Because spring is undeniably out there, rioting:

(August Pride peach)

And so I have to go now, and try to catch my breath, and grab a shovel, and get back to work.  Because without warning, without winter, we're going to have spring.  Enjoy the fire for me, would you?

~MB~