WHY MY HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

I love to garden. I can't help it. It's genetic. I haven't gone the 23&Me route, but if I did I am sure I would find I am more than 55% pure gardener. As I was growing up, my father always had a vegetable garden. It's why my family always ate well. We didn't know it was "clean food". We just knew that it was tasty and cheaper than buying it in the store.

My mother grew flowering bushes, perennials, and annuals. Even at the age of 87 she is still out in her yard every day the weather allows. So, I'm not stretching the truth when I say my love for gardening is genetic.

Maybe my love of gardening is why my hope seems to spring eternal. It may ebb and flow with the seasons, but it never dies. It constantly renews. Just like my garden.

Here in Central Ohio, the garden season is just getting under way. Every day I am itching to get my hands dirty, to smell the slightly animal-like odor of my Zoo Brew enriched soil and the constrasting sweetness of the lilac in bloom by the garage door. Here, the growing season begins in Spring with the first flush of color from the crocus, daffodils, squill, and other early blooming bulbs. Finally the tulips and iris join the procession of blooms. Then it's finally time to plant.

My beds lay before me, a blank canvass to write a new story each season.

Of course there will be challenges. There will be pests and disease. But like a game of cat and mouse, the crafty gardener is always trying to outwit their pest-y nemesis. I look at my squash seedlings and my hope is eternal. There will be bountiful squash. There will be enough for the freezer. I'll have squash sauteed with a little butter and a cubic ton of black pepper. There will be squash patties, squash bread, and squash casserole. That's my hope.

The alternative is squash vine borers. These little bastards are the larva of a moth from hell. You don't even know they are there until the damage is done. The sons of bitches hatch from eggs laid by the mother moth at the base of the stem. They hatch and bore into the stem. There they eat the vines from the inside out. One day you have a beautiful, healthy squash plant and the next the leaves are dying and the stems have piles of orange crud on them.

But it is Spring and my hope is eternal. I surrounded my squash seedlings with plastic cups to prevent the moth from laying her eggs at the base of the stem.

The tomato seeds are sprouting and I have visions of salsa, spaghetti sauce, tomato jam and enchillada sauce dancing in my head.

Planting season always finds me hopeful. As the Spring turns to Summer, my crops thrive or fail. But I have hope in Fall for cool weather plants like cabbage or rappini (my personal favorite vegetable).

I plant my zinnia and sunflower seeds and dream of flower stalks dancing in the wind. As the four o'clock seeds start to sprout I hope for warm, humid evenings and the night air filled with their heady scent.

As Winter arrives, we enjoy Summer's bounty from shelves well stocked with jars and jars. And jars. Each dab of sweet but slightly hot tomato jam brings a bit of Summer into the house during the long, dark and gloomy Winter days. Each bite tastes like hope to me.

Faith that Spring will return.

It's what gives me hope.

What gives you hope?