An Encouraging Downpayment on Spring

Yesterday it began.  

 

Some vegetables have a longer growing season than our climate routinely allots.  Hence, those seeds need a head start in the greenhouse.  The times vary by variety, but the longest of them in our garden portfolio is 12 weeks.  Twelve weeks, in other words, before we intend to move those juvenile plants out into the rows and soil, their seeds need to be nestled into soil blocks in trays and nurtured and evoked in the greenhouse.  We think of it as a “down payment on spring.”  There will be subsequent additions to those protective shelves.  Ten weeks out will come the next round, then eight, six and four.  The “destination date”, of course, is hardly certain.  Weather doesn’t always follow the calendar and the example of past years; that, and of course, the climate is changing.  Transplanting day – a date beyond the last danger of frost and the soil has warmed – is a mercurial target.  Based on the historical evidence at hand, however, we make a best guess and back up through the weeks accordingly.

 

All the way to yesterday. 

 

Mixing rainwater stored from autumn into a seed-starting soil mix and forming it into dozens of soil blocks, we secreted seeds in one and then another – four varieties of leeks, three varieties of tomatoes, two varieties of peppers, and broccoli.  The heat mats were prepared in the greenhouse to keep the soil warm, and the space heater plugged in to warm the air.  Later today, and everyday hereafter, we will insure that the soil is moist, and that growing conditions are maintained. And we will wait.  And watch.  And anticipate.

 

Later in the day I put a primer coat on the new beehives we had acquired.  More brush strokes will be required over the coming days, but they, too, are taking shape.  In anticipation – of placement; of spring; of the arrival of the actual bees.  By the time that happens, baby chicks will be ensconced in the barn, anticipating their own accession to the chicken yard and the flock within.  

 

Life italicized, we lean forward toward the newness of what will emerge.

 

It has been a cold winter – in more ways than the weather.  Cold, both literally and metaphorically.  We have huddled together and hunkered down; we have crowded close to even the tiniest flame in search of both warmth and light, and we have struggled to endure and process the paralysis of the bitterness without losing hope that reality would change for the better and more habitable.  It has been, we can say together, a long wait – and we are waiting still.

 

Decades ago, I was cast in a community th
eater production of the musical, Annie.  I’m sure there have been more polished and professional productions, but we were proud of what happened on stage.  That, and I still hum, on occasion, the iconic song of confidence that little orphan girl belted out:

The sun will come out
Tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There'll be sun!

 

I know it’s a little cheesy.  Every now and then, though, I need a simple and straight-forward reminder of that truth.  

 

The last couple of days the temperature has risen to 50-degrees.  There are certainly times of the year when that temperature feels frigid, but given that only 10 days ago it was -23, 50 feels, by contrast, almost tropical.  And the snow is melting.  Gradually, but steadily.  And beneath it, revealed by the receding white, quite miraculously – as if to say, “thank you for waiting” – is green.  

 

All of which is to say that the sun will, indeed, come up – today, in fact, as well as tomorrow.  

Despondent Cold and the Hope for Something Better

 It's cold of course.  It's that time of year - especially in this part of the country.  Even by Iowa standards, however, it is bitter.  Even 0-degrees has been as scarce as a unicorn in recent days, with snow upon snow to match it.  The windchill was -32 this morning when I emerged from our warm cocoon to release the chickens and fill the feeders.  Neither they nor I met the opportunity with much enthusiasm.  

In response to my recent social media complaining (or was it bragging?  Sometimes they are hard to tell apart) a friend in a more temperate state asked if there is really all that much difference between 0, -13, -15?  The answer, of course, is both subjective and scientific.  My own "feels like" response is that I can't really tell that much difference.  Initially, at least - which leads to the more objective truths.  The scientific realities are, it turns out, quite sobering.  The threat of physical harm escalates dramatically as the temperatures fall.  The frostbite that will likely take 3 hours to occur on a 0-degree day takes only 12 minutes at -15 with a small amount of wind.  Exposed skin pays a heavy price, and even double-gloved hands are soon useless - hams attached to the wrists.  Prolonged exposure is the enemy.

I know this at the commodity level.  Even checking for eggs multiple times throughout the day, I still find them frozen and cracked.  Laid in warmth, they quickly harden and burst.  The loss to breakfast is wrenching, which is bad enough.

But this phenomenon has me worried beyond the chicken yard, and my brief forays outside.  The cultural temperatures have been just as bitter in recent months and even years - to what I fear will be similarly deleterious effect.  Much that has nourished us in the past has cracked, and though I am neither sociologist nor political scientist, I can't help but believe that prolonged exposure to this arctic relational environment will prove dangerous, disfiguring and even disabling.  How long does it take?  How much exposure before the effects are irreversible and the collective skin that binds us as a collective - that holds this odd but integrated collection of cultural bones and sinew and swirling blood cells together within its circumferencing sheath - disintegrates altogether?  

I suppose it depends upon one's particular thermometer, and whether American civilization is merely freezing, or has plummeted to -15 plus wind.  It feels to me ominously like the latter.

There is, of course, one hopeful possibility that encourages me.  Certain seeds - deep rooting prairie seeds and wildflowers come to mind - require the cold in order to germinate.  Their seed coat is so tough that winter is required, through a process of "stratification", to break the dormancy holding their promise safely inside.

Perhaps, then, more is cracking open in these bitter days than just the eggs.  Maybe deep beneath all that is dying among us are the seeds of new colors and stems that we can't yet imagine, that are even now being stratified and released by the paralyzing malignancy of our cultural frostbite.

Perhaps.  May it be so.  We can only hope that something offsetting and good might yet come of all this debilitating cold.