Sprouting Satisfaction

Kimber (slightly) overcomes her laziness.

I have never been a fan of hard work. I look for the easy way out, no matter what I'm doing, and I always do just enough to scrape by. Which is why I was surprised last January when the desire to garden came over me. I found myself panting at the window, waiting for spring to come so I could weed and mulch, till and plant. I only waited till February before I was laying cardboard down (to smother the weeds) and looking for a cheap source of mulch to cover it with. By March I had bought more seeds than I could possibly plant, and in April I was hauling dirt and scrounging in dumpsters for suitable gardening pots (upcycling, you know).

And then I did nothing in May. It snowed off and on, but I didn't even bother to start seedlings indoors. Every so often I would go out to my dedicated gardening area and survey the work I had done months ago, but that was about it. By the time June arrived I barely wanted to turn on the sprinklers, much less actually do real work.

At this point I must digress to explain that this is typical behavior for me. Once in a blue moon I dream up a grand project for myself which I imagine will improve the quality of my life, make me a better, healthier, happier person, and enhance my satisfaction of everything. I'm very ambitious, until I have to do the work necessary to make such things happen. Then I decide that I'm really happy exactly how I am, don't really need to change anything, and wouldn't reap that many benefits anyway.

So I was all ready to let the gardening project slide, until I realized that I had already spent over a hundred dollars on seed, gardening tools, and gas to haul mulch around. I figured seed potatoes didn't have a satisfactory return policy, so over the past few days I've been grudgingly committing a little time every day to sow dreams I'd already given up on. All I needed to do to appease my guilt was put the seeds in dirt and water them a little. If they didn't come up, which I was sure they wouldn't, then at least I tried, and my money wasn't wasted, so much as mis-invested.

I finished planted everything yesterday, and felt a huge wave of relief that all I would have to do is splash a little water on things for a month or so until I was sure that everything was dead and beyond hope. And then I found a seedling.

Today, at dusk, I found one, tiny, adorable little sprout of green poking itself up through the dirt. Despite the fact that I had planted most of my seeds in cardboard boxes, in the cheapest dirt I could find, on a half-way mulched, fenced in, old dog pen, that one little seed had sprouted anyway.

I'm still unenthusiastic about work of all kinds, and I continue to plan to do all my gardening work just before the sun sets to that I have an excuse to quit when darkness falls, but that one little seedling has changed my outlook just a little bit. I won't be surprised if none of my plants survive long enough to produce anything edible, but I am a happier person for having coaxed that one little plant out of the dirt and towards the sun.