Can't Believe It's Time

My kitchen table is piled about three layers deep with garden plans, garden notes, seed packets, and reference materials. No way I could make room for a real sit-down meal on the table this noon so Roy settled for a smoothie (which he took up to his desk as he's knee-deep in doing our taxes) and I ate a sandwich on a paper plate standing at the counter.

I simply can't believe it's time to start seedlings inside. I have seeds that should be under the lights already, but, ei-karumba, is it difficult to get into the whole process having just come through the Snow Dump of the Century and looking at the oodles of snow on the ground outside. How can I possibly even imagine the prospect of transplanting little seedlings when it looks like it does outside right now? (You say I need a dose of good, old-fashioned faith?)

Last year I got a little too smarty-pants and started seeds super-early having convinced myself we were going to have an early spring. And besides, I could always put the plants out and cover with a cold frame, couldn't I? Of course, we had one of the coldest, wettest, latest spring seasons on record and I worried over gangly, root bound, sickly colored, too-tall-to-stand-up-anymore seedlings for weeks before being able to actually transplant them outside, cold frame or no. So this year, I've decided to error on the side of starting plants a little late rather than a little early.

All the same, time is going by and up here our growing season can be so short, we always have to give consideration to the fact that if put in late some plants won't mature for harvesting before a possible early fall frost cuts the season unusually short. (I got no pumpkins or squash last year . . . sigh.) So where does that leave me? Danged if I do, and danged if I don't.

Okay, I confess, I have gotten a little excited looking through all the seeds and making the 2009 Garden Plan on paper. And once I do actually get out the starting trays and plop those little seeds into dirt or starting medium, almost the first thing I will do every morning is check on how everybody's coming along. Maybe that's what I need to take my mind off the ten feet of snow still on the ground. (Slight exaggeration . . . although the geese discovered that the snow in their pen is now so high they can walk over the fencing at one spot and have a whole new world to explore. My poor husband. I threw such a fit yesterday when I went to get in the car and stepped in fresh goose poop that he shoveled snow away from the inside perimeter of their pen so they are now totally bamboozled as to what happened to their escape route.)

Back to the kitchen table and garden plans. Spring will come. I just know it will. And I've just about talked myself into the fact that it really is time to start some seedlings . . . tomorrow. First thing.