Garden Maps

The seed catalogs started coming this weekend. Or maybe it was last weekend. We don’t check our mail very often around here. Either way, the arrival of the first Fedco catalog always makes me feel more New Years-ish than any ball drop or fireworks display. The new year shouldn’t sneak up on me, between all the hoopla around Christmas and then kids off of school and trying to un-decorate our house and then whatever New Year’s Eve shenanigans we get up to. But still, the last year doesn’t feel really over until I am sitting at a quiet kitchen table, kids back in school, half-full mug of tea, deciding what to plant next spring.

Because it’s not really next spring anymore, is it? It’s this spring now. Just a couple months away. Seeds are the perennial metaphor for hope and new beginnings and all that, but for me, seeds are also a metaphor for an ending. Because when I start thinking about ordering seeds, I am closing the book on last year’s garden, once and for all. You’d think the six inches of snow and ice storm would have done that, but no. For me, the garden starts and ends with a piece of paper, one that gets taken down when the seed catalogs some.

It’s my garden map. All the rectangles drawn carefully, lined up just right, so that between Forrest and I and the girls, everything gets planted where it goes. This is more important than you would think, simply because with all the gardeners in this yard, it can be easy to till up already planted ground or pull up seedlings that look like weeds. So the garden starts with a seed catalog and a piece of paper.

I think that gardening can be a loosey goosey type of hobby, and I’ll be the first to admit that by June, we’re pretty much shoving plants wherever they will fit, but there’s a peacefulness to planning it out first. A reflectiveness. Did the potatoes do well there last year? Did the basil get enough sun in that bed? Do we want more flowers or more herbs this time around?

The possibility of the future garden is enticing to me. I don’t yet know that the tomatoes won’t ripen before the first frost, or that the new type of lettuce will bolt too quickly to eat. For now, it’s all working perfectly. All of the wonderful lessons I learned from last year’s garden will be implemented. I definitely won’t get tired or bored, it won’t rain too much or too little, and of course we won’t get so sick of zucchini we’ll compost it before I can bear to make another fritter.

I like the imperfection of the real garden too. The weirdly shaped carrots and spindly tulips. But new years are for life before mistakes and oddities. For reflections and planning and pretty little rectangles on a perfect white piece of paper.

I don’t throw out last year’s garden map. I put it in with all of our other sentimental documents. But it’s certainly not a blank slate anymore. It’s got muddy fingerprints and crossed out sections where we made a mistake or rethought a plan. It’s been crumpled and stepped on. It has served its purpose well, and now it’s time to get added to the box of memories that document this life we’re living.

I like to think that my actual life is made up of a little bit of both. The pretty plans based on last year’s quiet contemplation, and the muddy, crumpled guide that gets the job done in the end. Which, upon reflection, might not be the worst thing in the world.