With the start of school a few months ago, my daughter in Kindergarten and my son to preschool, I got swept up in a new routine, new communities, new anxieties….The garden waited. I mustered up enough time just to get the essentials done. Pull out the tired summer crops. Start cole crops. Dig in goat manure. Call on the garlic order that had not arrived. Plant peas. Things settled down just in the nick of time for the big push. Turning soil. Planting the garlic. Transplanting the cole crops. Sowing a second round of peas, carrots, and lettuce. Just in time.

Now that we are really settled into our new mornings, I was able to make a quick stop to water the community garden plot on the way to taking my daughter to school this morning. She asked as we made the short drive over, “What do you have growing now? What does it look like?” I replied, “Mostly dirt.” Yes, mostly dirt, but when I got there and looked closely I saw that the pea vines were just emerging from the soil, pushing off any last clumps of dirt. I spotted the thin, unmistakable first leaves of the carrots. I imagined the garlic cloves, buried deep in the damp soil, doing whatever it is they need to do to prepare to push their green stocks out of the ground, like giving birth.

So yes, at a sweeping glance, it does look like “mostly dirt.” But, on closer inspection, one can see the future.