Emerging Leaves of Spinach and Self

The spinach is maturing.  Savoyed leaf, winter hardy.  Since sowing the seeds several weeks ago I have daily sprinkled the soil with reserved rain water, checked to insure the heater was moderating the winter cold, and, I'll admit it, spoken encouragingly to the nascent sprouts.  While the arugula and the mustard were quick to break the surface, the spinach had its own sense of timing.  Eventually, however, the planter boasted two dense rows of green.  My critical side might observe that it certainly hasn't looked like spinach -- more like bermuda grass if the truth be told -- but I have tried to be optimistic and patient.  I hardly know one seed from another, but I trust the package and its mail-order purveyor.  So, I have watched and watered and waited.

And then yesterday I noticed a change:  rounded leaves amidst the blades.  I can't yet discern whether the latter are morphing into the former, or if these new manifestations are simply emerging into an environment made habitable by the old.  Perhaps the answer is still growing and will be made plain in the days ahead.  Perhaps not.  What I do know, however, is that the emergent growth is teaching me more than I first recognized -- the importance not only of patience (hard enough for my particular temperament) but also of paying attention; looking slowly, carefully and observantly at the nuances of movement and change and color and turgidity.  I am learning how easy it is skim along at the "macro" level, unaware of the micro-movements of life teeming more slowly and just below the surface of interest and awareness.

It's a lesson I should have already learned, living as I do in a "fly-over state", ignored by the really busy, really important, really preoccupied people of the coasts, living their lives at 30,000 feet.  Perhaps the spinach is also teaching me that the priority in life is to thrive, grow, leaf and green, whether or not anybody happens to notice.