Mar 5th, 2022 Saturday Rainy
After an exhausting week, I took a warm bath and slept through the whole morning. Soon after I woke up, the raindrops on the window glass, together with the brightened color of the sky, sent a message from nature: spring is FINALLY here!
It is still chilly outside, and very little green is visible in the garden yet, but it already feels different from the dreary winter days that we have had in the last few months. During the winter months, when the sun is shy and hiding, there is a gloominess in the air that drains my motivation and energy. During spring, even the cloudy and rainy days feel gentle and hopeful, for they nourish the soil and prepare for the magnificent display of colors soon to come.
Spring is not my favorite season – although my color palette is definitely springlike. If you go to my wardrobe and randomly pick out any shirt/dress, chances are that you could wear it to an Easter Day party and you would fit right in. I like spring, but it is also a very packed season full of excitement: my birthday, my husband’s birthday, my in-laws’ birthdays (both of them!), our wedding anniversary, graduation season, and usually a spring break trip that may not always happen during spring break time 😛
Spring is also the time to start gardening, a hobby that we have been indulged in since moving into this house. We started small – just a 8-foot-by-16-foot vegetable garden in a relatively sunny spot in our back yard, but the success of our first garden encouraged us to become more ambitious. Last year we had four different gardens that kept us busy all summer and rewarded us with a bountiful harvest of tomatoes, bell peppers, mizuna, squashes, ground cherries and lots of herbs. This year, we are trying different varieties of vegetables, and a two-season planting scheme (planting one crop in spring for an early summer harvest, then planting a different crop in late summer for a fall harvest) for the first time. As if answering the call of spring, the “Turkish sable” pepper seeds we started last Wednesday finally decided to raise their little heads overnight, and we smiled at the sight of these sparks of green in our seed starting tray, next to the impatient Napa cabbage sprouts longing for more sunlight (that is why they are flopping around).
Having grown up in the city, I sometimes feel very disconnected from nature. When I study in a well-lit classroom or work in an air-conditioned office surrounded by screens, I barely feel the change of seasons and I neglect many wonderful things that happen outside. Gardening brings back that connection, since I start paying more attention to weather – the sun, the wind, the temperature and the humidity. It is amazing how a tiny seed can, throughout a growing season, gather all the energy and nutrients by itself and become a healthy and productive plant, repaying us with the fresh and tasty fruits (or leaves) for the care we provided. The moment I enjoyed the sweetness of a ground cherry in the early fall, and reflected on how I witnessed the sprouting of that minuscule seed, the development of the first pair of true leaves, the blooming of cute white flowers, before the baby ground cherries took their shapes in the “paper lanterns”, I feel immensely grateful that I get to share this miraculous cycle of life with so many creatures on earth (and in our garden – yes, squirrels love the ground cherries too).
I guess, humans are not that far removed from nature, after all.