The Briar Philospher - Whispers of Spring

It is always about this time of the year when I start feeling Spring whispering around me.  The light angle has shifted back toward a warmer season, and I can start to feel that soon the days will bring new growth out of the sleep of winter. It’s about this time my fingers start itching to get into the dirt and set new things to grow.  I have always been a planter of things.  As a child, our lives depended on the things that we could plant and reap.  We didn’t have much in the way of material wealth, but we did have dirt and seeds and sun and rain and the know-how to make those things come together in a way that would nourish the body.  They also nourished my spirit.  

The earliest spring task was always preparing the seedbed for tobacco and garden plants.  We grew them all in one very long bed, tobacco taking up the majority, and about a third dedicated to tomatoes and peppers, cabbage and broccoli, and anything else that needed an early start.  The labor involved in the process was pretty intense, but I never shied away from hard work.  It makes my body happy to be alive. The bed would be reused from year to year, but always had to be prepared and conditioned.  Tons of brush were cut from the nearby woods.  It was early enough that the sap usually wouldn’t be up, so the wood would be dry even if what was cut wasn’t dead.  This would all be piled up on the seedbed and burned.  The ash added important nutrients to the soil, and the heat helped break up the compaction and make it easier to work.  I loved to watch the fire.  It had to be watched and carefully controlled.  The days were still very chilly, so the fire felt good.  Everything would be raked and readied after the fire died and the ground cooled.  Then the tiny seeds would be sown and the bed covered with canvas to protect the tiny plants from the frost once they broke through the ground. The canvas was water-permeable so the rains would get through and water the new life sprouting in the soil.  We held the canvas up off the ground by supporting it throughout the bed with old pop bottles, the old glass 16-ounce variety.  I would visit the bed frequently on my walks (I was also always a walker) and try to peer through the canvas to see if the little plants had cleared the ground.  It wouldn’t be long until they were pushing up the canvas, and the work of planting would begin after the danger of frost had passed. 

The magic of the process always captured me.  To think of all the information necessary to make a cabbage being stored in such a tiny seed was, and is, just amazing to me.  Our gardens were always large, as they had to support a passel of younguns, and I loved to walk through them even when there wasn’t hoeing and weeding to be done just to watch the wonder of it. 

I don’t have huge gardens or seed beds anymore, though I do usually put out a lettuce bed early in the spring.  I tend to buy my plants locally instead of starting them myself these days, though that may change in the future.  Still, when the whisper of Spring starts to stir and the morning light promises the season will soon turn toward planting, my fingers start to itch for the feel of dirt between them, and my nose starts wishing for the perfume of fertile soil touched by Spring rain.  My mind reaches back to those early days and forward to days to come, and the memory and hope combined are a kind of Spring tonic for my soul.  This year, that need feels stronger than ever, probably because the need to feel connected with the past and hope for the future is stronger than ever, given what we’ve come through since last Spring.  For me, to plant is a prayer of continuance that ties me back, roots me in the present, and allows me to reach toward the future.  I hope this Spring brings that hope of continuance to all of you, whether you plant a thing in the ground or not. May we plant thoughts and ideas, and hope and dreams of a better tomorrow. 

To any of you who were worried about the knot in my arm mentioned in last week’s column, I’ll be having an MRI this Wednesday and a follow-up with a surgeon the following day. I’ll let you know next week what they find.