Almost spring again

And a fire pulses in the wood stove and today’s blue sky masked the chill in the air and though I planted my peas two days ago and a floating row cover whose edges are held down with smooth Lake Superior rocks and leftover bricks keeps birds and squirrels from pecking and pawing them, and started a whole flat of holy basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum), hoping to have more for my favorite Thai dish which calls for a large colander of it but my soil has so much clay in it and this basil with fine hairs on its leaves never gets as big as I hope it will when I’m thinking about my garden in the winter, this coming week still calls for cold rain and sleet and maybe it’ll snow but the flats are in a bay window indoors wrapped in a big translucent bag getting all warm and humid on the inside and science and life systems are all a go and the long slow germination of holy basil is similar to parsley, of which I sowed a half flat at the same time, but come August the flat leafed parsley is an herb that can stand by itself in so many dishes – maybe a grilled mackerel stuffed with onions tomatoes and parsley, wrapped in foil and when it opens I think of Turkey and now I just hope the soil warms and remains moist for those first pushes of green through the long darkness of a seed underground – a seed, packed with knowledge and enough nutrients to get it into the light, overcoming dormancy, and the lightest feather-like wisps of tendrils so delicate they waver in even the stillest dawn quiet hush when only a bead of dew weighs upon this urge into light into the sky and around the rough galvanized wire stapled to the wood lattices stretched down the garden row next to the longer row of yet to be planted beans, long tall beans that taste like summer and sing in the hot wok when they’re chopped small and flash fried dry, an edge of char to overcome the raw push of life today needs to be nourished and nurtured and held warm and close against the still looming chance of snow and cold and a below ground darkness that admits no warmth, no hope for that long awaited perennial movement of the earth on its course, steadfast perhaps as our universe expands, grows, pushes us in new directions as we wonder what these coming weeks will bring as waves of illness and fear lap at our feet and now it is time or still it is time to graze with our fingers so lightly on the skin of the ones we love so deeply and feel the same urge that draws us into the light, into spring again