A Deep River Year
January 29, 2014
The past few weeks have been a harsh January cold spell, but the days are getting a bit longer and the seed catalogs have been enticing me with their usual bounty of optimism.   Someone once said that January is the best month for beans, because it’s the time we dream of next year’s garden.  And we imagine that garden in the pictures of the catalogs, free of sweat and bugs and dry spells that will inevitably discourage us come July.   I love to look at the front section of all those catalogs, which are full of the best new varieties of vegetables and flowers for the coming year.   This year’s crop of offerings includes such wonders as a heart-shaped, rose-colored tomato; a golden snow pea;  and a cute little climbing cucumber.   How can I resist ordering a new pink rose called “Jump for Joy” that smells like apples?

And now my seed orders have begun to arrive.  Of course, it’s still too early for me to sow them.   Sometime late next month I will begin to plant, starting my seeds in small boxes of potting soil which I will gently water, wrap in plastic, and place on top of the furnace until they germinate.   Then the flats will go under lights on a table in the basement, and passers-by peeking in the cellar windows will wonder what it is that’s growing tall and green down there. 

But, for now, I shake the packets and look at the pictures in the catalogs and dream of the heady scent of great purple lilacs and the taste of the first peas snapped from the vines in the sweet days when apple blossoms fly and the earth smells rich and wet and good.   And I remember that all of the best things in our lives start as seeds waiting to sprout and grow.   Sometimes they don’t seem to amount to much--our little loves, our little efforts to be good and true and honorable.    But it’s a good thing to hold on to them anyway, especially in January.

Seeds

In my hands
I hold hope.
In these bitter days
The wind laughs,
Stings, until eyes water,
And fingers, numb,
Reach for an envelope
Bearing promise.
Here are Matt’s Wild Cherry Tomatoes,
Orange Sun Peppers,
And Carnival Hollyhocks.
And someday, soon,
I will spill dirt into trays,
And sprinkle these seeds
Into the fertile darkness
And watch for green.
It is enough, now, to wait,
To dream of purple and red
Where all is white, barren,
To know that every good thing—
Courage, wonder, glory, love, —
Has its January
Where there are only seeds
In our trembling hands.

--Timothy Haut, Jan. 29, 2014