Reasons to Hope

It's nice to have a boost. Whether it comes in the form of a cold frame that does as it should, a call from my supportive parents, an interested inquiry from my older daughter/inspiration, or an unexpected and generous monetary contribution from my Master Gardener aunt in Florida, every time I have a moment of doubt, someone or something puts in encouragement. Encouragement is an amazing force!
     The material support of my aunt has primarily gone to the huge, invisible expense of going commercial: farmers' market fees, insurance, possibly the licensure to extend my offerings to jams and other processed food items. It is certainly true that the moment you declare independence, everyone with their rubber stamp in one hand and their collection tray in the other turns to you with avid and severe attention.
     But it didn't seem right to squander all her generosity on prosaic necessities. That's how I rationalized getting some foliage plants and a few seedlings (12, to be exact) that actually look like something. Here, in my older and scrufty home cold fame, is one those selections: Matthiola, or "stocks" (not sure why - Stocks of what? Should I tell my aunt I have bought stocks with her money?). This variety, which I have raised in the past, is "Old Fashioned Mix." They don't get tall like the kind sold in the florist trade, but make a perfectly great and quite respectable table-height bouquet in shades of purple, pink, vanilla-yellow and white, all with a cinnamon-clove sweetness not at all like their muskier relative Sweet Alyssum or their farty-smelling cousins kale and cabbage. I walk by this area, just outside the sink/potting up area my Patient Spouse built for me, and am reminded that the season will warm, things will sprout past their two-leaf infancy, and I will, one day this summer, be picking flowers and herbs here at First-Flower Farm. Even if it takes a lot of encouragement and help from my friends. Bloom!