Published: 12/31/2020 10:54:23 AM
The sound of a seed packet ripping open. The smell of freshly turned earth. The feel of grass beneath my feet. The sight of little green shoots popping out of the ground. The sense of long hours of sunshine. The taste of that first freshly picked tomato. These are the cherished memories that keep us going through the winter.
My seed catalogues had not yet started to arrive, it is snowing as I write this column, and I am feeling some deprivation.
If you have been reading this column regularly you know I spend a lot of time with books on botany, plants, and gardening. Usually, reading on this topic is more pronounced in the winter – and this year is no exception. My expanding book collection has started to include “native” versus “imported” and I have been thinking about how all the plants we consider “native” originally got here from all those other places on the globe from where they theoretically started.