Garden 5
It's now three weeks since I planted the vegie seeds, and - get this - not one seedling has appeared. Not one. I'm not joking. The grand total of seeds germinating has been zero. Nought! Not one! None!
It's just unbelievable. The seeds were only four years old and they were stored in their original packets, in a box, in the house, in the dark. What's going on? I have no idea.
My first reaction is to take the whole thing personally, like some sort of cosmic confirmation that anything I try will only fail anyway, so there's no point trying. That's a comforting thought for a while, of course, and obviously also quite constructive and fun, but - damn it - the thrill just doesn't last...
Logically/rationally/more-sensibly-speaking, the reproductive abilities of vegetable seeds probably don't have a hell of a lot to do with me personally, so I think the best explanation for non-appearance of seedlings must lie elsewhere. Maybe it's just one of those things. Those goddamn annoying things. Not a tragedy, just a setback.** It just means I'll have to buy new seeds and start again. Again. Grrr.
The tomatoes, meanwhile (springing up from a buried whole tomato, remember?) are powering along, safely protected from rabbits or cutworms in their little Norco Milk fort.
**From a good idea in an interesting article in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald:
It's just unbelievable. The seeds were only four years old and they were stored in their original packets, in a box, in the house, in the dark. What's going on? I have no idea.
My first reaction is to take the whole thing personally, like some sort of cosmic confirmation that anything I try will only fail anyway, so there's no point trying. That's a comforting thought for a while, of course, and obviously also quite constructive and fun, but - damn it - the thrill just doesn't last...
Logically/rationally/more-sensibly-speaking, the reproductive abilities of vegetable seeds probably don't have a hell of a lot to do with me personally, so I think the best explanation for non-appearance of seedlings must lie elsewhere. Maybe it's just one of those things. Those goddamn annoying things. Not a tragedy, just a setback.** It just means I'll have to buy new seeds and start again. Again. Grrr.
The tomatoes, meanwhile (springing up from a buried whole tomato, remember?) are powering along, safely protected from rabbits or cutworms in their little Norco Milk fort.
**From a good idea in an interesting article in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald:
Standing in my local supermarket recently - somewhere between rice that takes 90 seconds to revive and entire meals that can be served in less than five minutes - I found myself thinking somewhat wistfully about the great unsung virtue of patience and what a vast difference it makes to us and to everyone around us when we are prepared to value and cultivate it. Some lucky and lovely people are naturally patient. (And some cultures value patience and make it easier to learn by openly disapproving of any failures.) Those people are usually also good-humoured and tolerant, as well as being clear about the difference between a setback and a tragedy.- Stephanie Dowrick, "The waiting game," Good Weekend magazine, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 2006, p. 51.
posted by D at 1:00 pm
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