Spring is here and maybe some would argue this, but it feels like summer. The trees are budding, the plants are popping and the birds are singing. Inside many houses grow tiny little plants that people started with the dream of planting outside.
My dad only got into this idea of starting seeds in the last few years with a grow lamp and his little green house. When I thought of any seeds I had tried to start indoors, I pictured the spindly little seedlings craning and reaching for light in my window sills and knowing that the minute I planted them outside a little breeze would probably snap them off.
Dad figured out, however, that the key is a grow lamp, down as close as can be tolerated so that the plants need not grow quickly and thinly to reach up for the nourishing light. With the light so close at hand they develop strong, resilient stocks and lush leaves right from the start. The trick here, though, is diligence – you must keep raising the lamp so that the hard stocky stems have room to grow, room to reach, space to become the potential that is hidden in their seed.
I recently read a great article about mentoring and sponsoring others. I am pretty sure that they just did not think of the metaphor here, but it is a perfect one. We need help close at hand until we don’t need that help any longer, but then we, again and again, need a new challenge or goal to reach for – that is life and that is gardening.
Thanks for all you do in spring and all the year through!
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