It was grey the other day. Not a rainy day, but grey and a little chilly. My friend Kristen’s words kept going through my head. “It said to plant when you could work the soil and I could work the soil”. My kind of planting philosophy, and if Kristen could plant onions, I could plant onions. And whatever else might strike my fancy as maybe possible.

I started out in rubber boots but soon enough I took them off and bare feet won the day despite the chill. My boots were just getting covered in mud and heavy anyway. The impracticality of footwear in a garden. I started with onions. A little net bag I got last year. Turned out lots of them had turned to dust over the winter; my house got pretty dry. I planted what seemed viable and crossed my fingers. That’s how it rolls in my garden; we plant and cross our fingers. I thought that would be it for onions but when I checked out my seed collection I found two packages of red onion seeds. In they went too. I like my garden plots to be interesting – rarely do you find things growing in straight lines. I made the onion plot look like an onion. Layers of circles, small to big, big to small. Depends on one’s perspective.

After onions came kale and spinach. Both do fine in cooler weather, as long as they can get enough warmth to germinate. I sketched out a roughly leaf shape and, with the kids’ help, planted it half in kale, half in spinach. Roughly.

The final one, on the grey planting day, was leeks. I’ve tried leeks most years and rarely are they as successful as I’d like. I’m stubborn though so I keep trying. Leek and potato soup is a favourite of my kids’ dad and cooking food entirely from my garden is a favourite of mine. So far, over the past few years, I’ve gotten enough each year for one pot of soup, maybe two. Better than no pots of soup. I actually planted the leeks in a line; it’s even relatively straight. While I like my garden plots to be different, I don’t like being predictable, so if my whole garden is looking like circles, I’ll throw in a straight line just to keep it interesting.

It’s been about three weeks now and so far the bulb onions are doing fine, but no action on the ones from seed. This is my first year doing onions from seed so I’m not even sure what they’ll look like initially. A garden is all about patience though and it’s still early days. The kale and spinach are starting to come up nicely. Kids aren’t always great at even seed distribution so I imagine there will be some transplanting in the future and quite a few kale sacrificed to even out the spacing. I’ve also found leeks poking up through the soil so I’m calling this first planting adventure a success.

It was probably too early to plant, technically, but that’s one of the things I love best about gardening. It’s the ultimate art of the possible. Things grow, and they grow in their own way in their own time. A seed planted years ago could suddenly come forward, bursting through the soil shouting “Here I am! I’m ready now!”. Taking days or taking years to germinate isn’t the important part. It’s getting yourself out there and taking the chance that now is the time. Time to make your way, forge a path, open up in the world and stake your claim to your space, your autonomy. If one tiny seed that gets lost in the soil can do it, so can we. The important part is the growth.