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Violets and Prayer Seeds

© Leda Meredith

The wood anemones are blooming, the violets outside our kitchen door are in flower. It looks as if the irises we rescued from a trash heap last year are going to make it after all. Heirloom tomato and pepper seedlings, from seed swaps and home-saved seed, are surviving under the plant light, while the nights still dip down into the forties. On sunny mornings, I am out planting the cold-hardy seeds (carrots, radishes, beets, salsify, spinach, mustard, lettuce, arugala and others).

With my seeds, I plant prayers. Our apartment garden is too shaded to grow most of our vegetables and herbs. We grow these in the Greene Avenue Community Gardens of Brooklyn, NY. This is a "guerilla garden", one of many in New York City. Every year there is the possibility that it will be slated for development, despite it's fifteen year history as a community garden. Last year my husband and I marched to protest the proposed sale by the city of New York of many lots that are currently green spaces.

Gardeners are mostly a peaceful bunch. It takes a lot to get us out into the street with shouts and banners and all of our hopes and fears made political.

But the seasons and the weather don't care much about politics or real estate. The seeds need to be planted now if there are to be harvests later in the season. Our garden is a haven. It is also months of home-canned pasta sauce for lazy winter dinners, teas to chase the cold away, herbal tinctures to keep us hale while others cough and sniffle, raspberry cordial to delight a visiting relative, pickles to turn lunch into an appreciation of summer past, and garlic to cure and enliven everything...

So out I go to plant my seeds and prayers, but on the way back indoors I will have filled my basket with tonight's salad: violet flowers for color and leaves for tender delight, dandelion greens, chickweed, baby lettuce thinnings, a few small yarrow leaves, arugala, orpine and day lily tubers to add crisp texture, and a mix of the perennial herbs that are renewing their green. Oregano and lemon thyme, parsley and chives...I rub them between my hands and then hold my hands out for my husband to sniff. His smile is pure sunshine.

Spring Salad

Collect, wash, and pat dry:

Garden greens thinnings (lettuce, mustard, arugala, beet greens, radish greens, etc.)

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