There are seed trays on every countertop space, the floor is covered in random bits of spilled soil, and the house generally looks like a small-grade tornado blew through it in recent history. Alas…
It is the season for seed starting.
Every year, I have these visions of myself being super on top of everything—starting a project, going through each step of the project, completing the project, and cleaning up after the project. But sadly, with four children and many many interruptions, this rarely happens. Instead of feeling energized and purposeful, I find myself just slowly plodding along, simply doing the next right thing (P.S. Thanks, Frozen!).
It’s currently nine weeks (almost eight) ’til my last frost date, and I’m starting to feel behind.
I still haven’t started my Week 10 seeds, I’m pretty slow on bumping the ones that should be bumped up, and I have one particular tray filled with snapdragons that pierce me with their sad little eyes, saying, “Why don’t you bump us up? We’re so pitiful!” (Though they do not actually say this, the tray that I did bump up is right beside them, so I can see the negligence in action regularly.)
I tell you all this in hopes that if you’re also feeling behind and ready to throw in the towel that you don’t!
This is the side of seed starting no one talks about—the overwhelm, the missing the specific items to do a specific task, the realization that you don’t have enough shelves or grow lights (yet again), and, in my case, the discovery that the same fuse that powers the majority of your grow lights also powers your furnace… I blew it one day and wondered to myself, how did the house get so cold?
But thankfully, in my little corner of the internet, there are no perfect gardeners. We are all gardeners who are just trying the best we can and keeping faith that we will still have a successful, beautiful garden, even if we make a couple of mistakes along the way.
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