The Best Laid Plans

Things don't always work out the way you plan, both in life and in the garden. This is something I've been thinking about lately as the stack of seed catalogues grows thick on my desk. Last year at this time I had ordered kale, mustard and sunflower seeds; thrilled by the possibilities of the coming season. With kale, I would have a crop in winter! Ah, leafy greens sauteed with bacon or roughly chopped for soup! I would make my own mustard! Big happy sunflowers would be thriving in August when everything else droops and looks like they had too good of a time at a midsummer party. This was the plan.

Well, it turns out that kale and any member of the cabbage family is not a good idea to eat while breastfeeding. The new digestive system of a baby just doesn't deal well with even the diluted version. In fact most yummy things; milk products, citrus fruit or juice, tomato and anything with a strong flavor can make breastfed babies unhappy. So the kale seeds are waiting quietly in the freezer for another year.

The mustard crop grew beautifully and by July there was a great waving mass of seed pods ripening. I was having trouble telling if it was time to harvest since some pods still had a greenish tinge. One day as I surfed around the Internet looking for mustard recipes I heard a great commotion of birds in the back yard. When I went to check the mustard crop again, there was no crop! The birds decided the seeds were ready and had a little feast.

And the sunflowers? The two that made it from the dozen planted were wonderful, though a little small. A pair of yellow suns rising out of the green, weedy mess of my half tended garden as I fumbled around with our new baby boy. Of course, the birds ate all the seeds.

Serendipity is other side of garden planning, the happier sister of disappointment. I think the nice little surprises that nature gives us are what keeps gardeners out there digging in the dirt. There was parsley that I didn't plant poking out of Christmas snow this past year and that is something that can't be beat.