This first crop of the garden has military precision. Each sentry in it is straight and serious. Aligned in planes and parallels, they send the message that here, sir, lies a garden, and make no mistake about it.
It is, of course, a crop of sticks that mark the rows where the seeds will soon sprout and play havoc with that initial show of order.
Volunteers will appear, vines will meander and weeds will interfere as the garden grows in the next three months. Before you know it, the crop of sticks is completely superfluous to the glory of the garden.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
The radishes are always first to appear, with shamrock-like leaves and red-thread stems hot to bring flavour to the salad. The beans are eager too, emerging shoulder first and then raising their heads to the sun before starting to show spade-like foliage.
Tiny lettuce, sown thick because of the small seed, looks like tears shed by garden gnomes, sparkles of green that wander within the narrow confines of a row.
The peas emerge with leaves folded upon each other, like sleepers who later stretch their plump arms in the sun.
The carrots are impossibly frail wisps, all too ready to be beaten down by aggressive raindrops or washed away by the merest suggestion of flowing water.
And the beets, oh, the beets with their wee whirlygig shapes struggling from the soil. What a joke of Mother Nature that such a frail emergent transforms into such a bulky, red and robust vegetable.
The spinach begins with two spear-like leaves, a warrior ready to withstand early frost. Wielding small javelins of their own come the onions, minimalist in foliage, mighty in flavour.
Both are quite unlike the potatoes, which foreshadow their eruption with a bit of bumpy soil disturbance, and then erupt with several leaves at once, as though to make a big show early in the season before the real work takes place underground.
Every corn leaf brings a friend with it, and every delicate sprig of asparagus hints at the complementary delicate taste of the coming crop.
Meanwhile, in that ugly spot near a building or fence, the sweet peas reach out praying hands, seeking the divine strength to climb and provide beautiful, fragrant cover.
A field that looked black yesterday suddenly looks fuzzy as the barley crop emerges. And a gardener with clean hands yesterday has dirt under the fingernails for months to come.
