Act of Faith, Exercise in Patience

2:40 in the afternoon on a beautiful very early spring day. It's actually a false spring -- we're still in for some cooler weather, and the Weather Channel on my desktop says rain all next week.

The weather can do what it will, at this point -- we have a greenhouse full of young carrots, kale, peas, kohlrabi, spinach... More are settled into the cold frames -- some transplants, some just up, and some still working hard to send their tiny roots down and their little cotyledons up. Before I got all of this set up, I would have been impatient for Spring -- itching to get my hands in the earth and some seedlings into the ground.

It's always an act of faith, planting seeds. Those tiny things could be dirt, for as much as you can see. I'm always intrigued by the fact that seeds virtually never resemble (even faintly) the plants they will become. Yet hidden within those tiny bits is almost unbelievable potential. What a masterful design -- exquisitely practical, and each utterly unique -- another witness to the creative Genius at work in the calling into being of all things.

And if planting is an act of faith, waiting for them to emerge, once planted, is an exercise in patience. We do all we can, to provide conditions that will give them the best chance to be all they were meant to be. And how lovely, when finally we see the tender green shoots, poking tenuously through the rich, dark earth!