A Foretaste of Anxiety

Already I am feeling anxious, excited, panicked...
...and behind.

It is a familiar feeling by now, surfacing each year about this time since moving to the farmstead three years ago.  It's February -- close enough to spring (or perhaps eager enough for spring by this time in the winter) to viscerally anticipate the new year's gardening adventure, but still too much in the grip of single digit temperatures to do much about it beyond worry.

There is, of course, preparatory work to do, and some of it has already been accomplished.  Seed catalogs have long since been scoured and marked.  Orders were placed weeks ago, and the boxes with their enticing little packets are piled in a jumble downstairs.  That's no small thing.  And the bags of potting soil and compost have been unloaded and stacked neatly in the barn.

But still there is all the conceptual work languishing for attention -- what will go where and how many of each.  All those seeds must be organized into groups, and the layout designed with the online garden planner.  There are rotational issues to consider -- not just "what goes where" but "what went where last year" and therefore needs to go somewhere else this time around.

 And, of, course, there is some manual work to do in the meantime.  This year we plan to try "soil blocking" -- making little blocks of potting soil in which the seeds are started in the greenhouse, rather than using those annoying seeding cell trays. There are all kinds of promised benefits to the plan -- expense, root formation, transplanting ease to name a few -- but before any of them can be realized those little blocks must actually be made.  We invested in the fabricating tool which will make 12 at a time, but there are dozens and dozens to be made and never having made them before I am sure there will be a learning curve.

And then the seeds must find their way into those eventually made blocks and be tended in the greenhouse.  But before that can happen considerable cleaning must be accomplished.  The greenhouse is a mess!  Reclaiming and reconfiguring it for a nourishing and habitable space will be a day's cold and dirty work.

And then the garden prep, itself.  One of these days I will learn to leave the garden in November in a state of readiness for April and May -- clearing out the spent stems and piling away the clutter. But I clearly haven't learned that lesson yet. By the time winter is approaching I am as spent as the vines -- weary, distracted with other things, and ready to store away the tools.  Consequently the rows that await me now are a cluttered jumble of garden ghosts -- a cadaverous echo of last year's vigor that will have to be hoed and raked and cleared and piled before any new life can be imagined.

It will all work out.  It's February, after all, and still 13-degrees with negative temps again in the forecast.  We will get the seeds organized tonight, and the planning, blocking and de-cluttering will get tackled in the coming days and weeks.  But trusting that doesn't leave me any less anxious.

It's just a down payment on the anxious,worrisome and hopeful hand-wringing that accompanies the garden all through the season.

A foretaste of the feast to come.