Just when you think you have enough seeds...

Christopher, LJ, and MF tucking in seeds.

The whole world seemed to be swimming with seeds on Saturday. With help from our friends MF and LJ, Christopher and I mixed up four wheelbarrow loads of starter soil and planted 3,500 vegetable seeds.  An old friend from out of town arrived midway through the seeding frenzy, and pitched in to tuck in some pepper seeds.   As the day flew by and the seed packets kept on coming, I was beginning to feel that I had crossed some sort of threshold -- going beyond ordinary gardening passion into certifiable gardening madness.  I had clearly gone way beyond overboard with the seed catalogs.

It rained most of the day, and when the rain let up for a bit I walked down to the river with my old friend and her partner.  Our boots made sucking sounds as we mucked across the wet river valley, down past the pond and through bramble thickets to the banks of the Swannanoa River. The river was swollen and beautiful, and as is usually the case when there's been a big rain, trash was scattered along the water's edge, having washed down from somewhere upstream.   

I bent down to gather up the pieces of trash at my feet, and picked up a piece of plastic about the size of an index card.  I was about to tuck it in my pocket when I noticed words printed on the plastic: 

Cosmos flower seeds.  

Plant these seeds and watch them grow!  

The piece of plastic was actually a seed packet from a promotional event sponsored by a business association.  The packet was still ziplocked shut, and the seeds inside looked perfectly dry.  

Just when seeds were spilling out into every corner of my life, the river had brought me even more seeds!  

The gift of seeds from the river felt like a blessing on our day of planting.  I took it as a reassurance that the abundance of seeds in our lives was a powerful goodness.  I'll scatter the cosmos seeds in the garden later this Spring, and see if they turn out to be viable after a trip down the Swannanoa River from who-knows-where!  

Waiting for the first seedlings in the hoophouse to show their bright green heads, I am feeling deeply grateful for community, for growing things, and for unexpected gifts.

~~~~~

Mixing starter soil using the fabulous Sugar Creek Farm recipe ... the masks are to avoid breathing particulate minerals and dust.

Filling the cell packs.

Pepper seeds.

This is almost all of the flats full of seeds...I think we did another 7 or 8 trays after this shot.