Day One in the Greenhouse

The driveway is easily passable having been cleared in anticipation of delivery trucks. The parking lot is muddy gravel and dirty snow. I pull in and look at the  huge lot filled with an enormous amount of empty.  It is bleak and would be disheartening if this was my first season here but I know that the milky plastic covered greenhouses are teaming with the promise of things to come.   

I slide open the giant door to "the big house" and it screeches it's need for greasing. The air is moist and welcoming, fragrant with the smell of dirt. I greet Pam with  a warm hug and admire the work she has done for the last few weeks. She is a veteran and her dexterous fingers can take the tiniest slip of a seedling and up-pot it without effort.  I am in awe of that gift. Laurie has it as well and will join us soon. I do not have it but I have other gifts to bring to this team effort. 

  This is my fourth season at the Botanical Garden and I have longed for this moment of return.  I take the time to soak in the magic that is a growing season. Two thirds of the greenhouse is still empty, waiting for warmer temperatures, but  the middle is filled with rows and rows of flats.  Order reigns.  Tall orange labels defining the group and the shorter, yellow or blue ones with plant names both tower above the green leaves that just barely crest the pots and will soon become fabulous foliage and beautiful blossoms. I breathe it in. 

I wander up to the oldest greenhouse on the property. It is a big, red barn that needs paint and the entrance is off putting at best. My eyes see It is as a junkyard of this and that covered in dust and dirt. The bossman sees it as a catologued trove of treasures at the ready. I think that it makes you wonder if you should even enter but only until you peek around the corner and see the tropical paradise that is the year round holding space.  Tiny buds bursting with color and orange blossoms as big as my fist catch my eye. Pans with perfect rows of almost imperceptible promise are lined up. They were planted by the bear  of a man with hands like mitts who owns this haven. I find it unimaginable that he can do this delicate work and yet he does. 

Season after season he and his team have  planted seeds, watered them, nurtured each plant -thousands and thousands of them, maybe millions. 

They have  started in bleak midwinter  and worked, doggedly, believing in the miracle of renewal because they have seen it before.  I believe too, and so I put on my garden gloves and begin to help.