Starting Anew from Seed
/The Boston Herald
It's seasonal. The snow melts, the sun shines, the ground softens, and it happens. It's as predictable as hay fever. One day I'm going about my business living my life like a normal human being; and then, the first of the garden catalogs arrives in the mail and I get obsessed. It's a kind of spell, I know, but while it lasts, I feel like Snow White, kissed awake from a long, deadly slumber, gratefully and gloriously alive.
Dozens of catalogs arrive in the mail throughout the year, and I hardly glance at them. I know a Thanksgiving turkey will never look like a centerfold Thanksgiving turkey. I know that when you order a beautiful, hand-made silk dress for $19.99, it's going to look more hand made than beautiful. I know I could buy all the lacy teddies in the Victoria's Secret catalog and never come close to looking like any of the models.
Yet here I am poring over seed catalogs, studying them, as if they were the word of God.
Perhaps they are.
'Little flower - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.'- Alfred Lord Tennyson
The colors come straight from heaven lavender, moonbeam, scarlet, powder blue, peach blossom. The names are celestial Keys of Heaven, Lady Mantle, Cloth of Gold, Yellow Archangel. The promises are certainly God-like: Order without risk. Satisfaction fully guaranteed. And one is 'nearer God's home in a garden than anywhere else on Earth.' I place an order every year. I send away for the special wildflower sack with more than a half a million colorful wildflower seeds, and though only a few actually grow up to be flowers, I don't care. I plant Hardy Gloxinia and though they are seldom hardy in my garden because my dog digs them up to bury her bones, I don't care. I try again the next year. I believe in the possibility of a beautiful garden. I believe in the promise that the garden books proffer.
It's either sorcery or faith, I can't quite figure out which. But whatever it is, it feels like salvation right about now. Coreopsis, poppies, black-eyed susan, cornflowers, Blue Chip Campanula, Pink Canterbury Bells.
I even love saying the names.
I used to wonder, when I was young and less awed by the miracle of life, why my mother would spend countless spring nights planting flowers and pulling weeds. She worked all day, came home, cooked dinner, washed the dishes, did the laundry. Why did she then take on more work?'We don't need a garden. We have trees and grass,' I used to say.
I didn't need a garden and neither did my father, but my mother did. It restored something in her. She would come back inside after digging and watering and be less tired than when she began. I never understood this. I never understood why she so loved the roses that covered the trellis, why she planted bachelor buttons by the back door, why she fussed over the leafy things that crawled through the rock garden. Her gardens never looked like the pictures on the packages of seeds. Her flowers were never elegant or lavish. Our dog, Buttons, or slugs or Japanese beetles often destroyed hours of work. I pointed these things out to her many times, but she didn't seem to care. It didn't matter that her gardens fell short of the ideal. She loved what they were. She loved the idea of life bursting from places that appeared lifeless. She loved nurturing this life. In early spring, she would stand in the hardware store and study the pictures on packages of seeds and say the names out loud before she made her selection.
I do the same today, with garden catalogs.
Molly Sanderson Viola is a black flower with a yellow center that grows best in the shade and blooms in the spring. I didn't even know there was a black flower. Trollius are 'new' my Spring Hill catalog says, though what this means I don't know. Is it new to the world? Did some botanist create it? The whole thing is new, every year. Life being renewed. The earth being reborn.
