Gardening, Knitting, and Patience

I knit pretty much anywhere and everywhere. I've knit through school board meetings and classes and seminars and road construction and wedding receptions and conference calls and many, many dinners out and parties and social events. I knit because it calms me down. I knit because it gives me something to do while I wait. I knit because I enjoy it and the good feelings of the knitting fit the good feelings of the social event. I knit because the baby I'm knitting for is having a growth spurt AS I KNIT. I knit for lots of reasons. But I don't knit because I AM a patient person. I knit in spite of being an impatient person.

Today Gaye and I went to Lowe's and bought a few potting and seeding supplies for me so I can start my hot pepper plants. I have written on my gardening calendar for today "start pepper seedlings." Technically, this means both sweet peppers and hot peppers, but I don't get as excited about the sweet peppers. I should, given the grocery store prices, but I didn't have as successful a year with them last year, so I'm still kind of hesitant to get too excited about them.

Anyway, we also got the lumber and screws we needed to start putting together the raised beds we're starting in Gaye's back yard this spring. She gets two veggie gardens and a BIG bird and butterfly garden for her backyard. Her yard is huge and open and sunny and right now is nothing but grass. So we're adding some things to it. She doesn't much care as long as we can make the front yard look green and lush and have lots of pretty things growing there. So my job is to make the front yard look that way and then in exchange, I get to plant corn for Chris and melons for Max and strawberries for Max, and flowers for the butterflies, and tomatoes and hot peppers and probably everything else for me.

We got back to her place and I started assembling boxes. This went quickly and smoothly until the battery in the drill died. We tried charging it for awhile while we took a break, but it didn't charge fast enough and the last box will have to be done Monday afternoon.

So I took the twinks home (Chris and Max had gone to a movie) and they played outside, because they could, while I installed new locks in the front door and main bathroom (long story: short version--they needed them). Then I started gathering items for starting the seeds and realized I was missing one key ingredient: the seeds.

I'd ordered them about ten days ago, but they haven't arrived yet. I went through my old seeds and found a couple packages from last summer that might still be viable this year, but mostly I'm just going to have to wait.

So I'm back to knitting tonight.

I will say this. Every spring I am impatient for more spring. Every spring I start the seeds too soon. This year I have tried very hard not to. Last year I started them on March 2. This year it looks like I'll be running about three weeks later on the peppers and hopefully another week after that before I start tomatoes. And I think that'll end up timing things just about right.

I'm off to finish a baby sweater so I can give it to the Mom at church tomorrow. That'll hopefully make up for the things that were started today but not finished.