Little Red Grows Up - Why I Find Gardening So Amazing

For many years, gardening was just an after-thought for me. Something everyone did every May: you plant some petunias, some impatiens. You plant some tomatoes and peppers. Maybe some cucumbers, if you're feeling ambitious with a trellis. Things get watered now and then; fertilized maybe once. You feel oddly proud when you get a dozen fruits, even though it was more luck than anything.

It wasn't until I started growing things indoors from seed that it — "It" — really kicked in. "It" - you know what I'm talkin' 'bout, or you wouldn't have made it this far down in this blog. It. The click of the lightbulb - the "Oh, that's what gardening's all about."

I think "It" must come from the same area in your brain where your feelings about, and the compulsion to care for, your children, and family, and friends, and pets reside. That need to nurture, and the amazement that comes from the result of that nurturing.

Whoa. That's more philosophical than I usually get. But, that's the conclusion I must draw, because something compels me to drag myself upstairs to my finished attic at the end of a long day of work to check the moisture levels and growth progress of my seedlings (juicy, drippy, succulent tomatoes ... and that heady scent of tomato leaves on your skin ... seem very far away in the dreary twilight of a late March evening, so I know it's not that. It must be something more primal).

Seeing your efforts come to such vivid life makes it all worthwhile. Observe this season's basil starts. The very, very first seedling to emerge this year was a Red Rubin basil. Shocking, it was, because he sprouted a mere two days after sowing, and basil is notorious for having a spotty germination record. He was so cute, so insistent on thriving, that I decided to photograph Little Red's progress through the season. The first picture was taken on February 18th; the most recent, April 4th.