Spring              Waning Seed Moon

The bee hives have a new coat of white sealer, a soothing color for them.  The raised bed on which I painted them has some tulips pushing up and the bed across from it have the garlic.  They’ve begun to wake up in force now so we’ll have the pleasure of garlic grown this year from garlic we grew last year.

We had chard for lunch today.  I thought about it a moment.  I took one chard seed and put it in a small rockwool cube late last fall or early winter.  It got water and light from the fluorescent bulb until it sprouted.  After the first tiny roots began to appear outside the confines of the small cube, it went into the clay growing medium, small balls of clay that absorb nutrient solution.

The seedling grew in the nutrient solution for several weeks as the roots spread out.  The nutrient solution comes in a bottle, concentrated and goes 3 tablespoons to two gallons of water.  What those roots and the chard plant leaves have to work with then is that nutrient solution and the light from a full spectrum second sun that glows above the plastic beds in which the liquid circulates.

The wonder in this is the transformation of that small seed, not bigger than the head of a pin, into food with only the inputs of light and some concentrated chemicals diluted in water.  I’m not sure why  you need water into wine when you can turn water into food, better for you anyhow.

Over the next month the outside work begins to grow and take up more time.  In our raised beds and the orchard this same miracle happens, changed only by the addition of soil.  Seeds into food.  Which in turn create more seeds so you can grow more food.  A green miracle.