It's true. We even have an oak tree on the property to prove it - which sometimes drops acorns which theoretically will make more oaks.
But they do it so SLOWLY!
My husband sighs every time I bring home one of those trees that is basically a stick in a nursery pot. "I want to enjoy the garden in MY lifetime," he says, shaking his head. But often that little stick is all I can afford. Or, if the stick is some form of Japanese maple - my absolute weakness! - then it may be the only size I can even find for sale, after hunting through every nursery in town and a few pounds of mail order catalogs.
We look at these baby trees every spring and it seems as though they have been standing still. Nevertheless, when I drag out pictures from previous seasons, we can see clearly that they have grown. Just not as fast as we two aging baby boomers might prefer. They are real trees only in my imagination.
However, I keep planting tiny sticks of trees and little tiny pots of perennials that are supposed to get 6 feet tall. I am content with this, as my husband is not. The difference is that I am a gardener. My husband is, as he describes himself, an admirer of flowers and digger of big holes. When that hole is filled, he wants results.
I can already imagine what that tiny plant will be next year, and a decade from now. And so I can wait with some degree of aplomb. I can even take advantage of the plant's tiny-ness to plant things around it that will be crowded out in time, but which keep the poor things company in the interim. (Any excuse to plant!) He, on the other hand, sighs again and goes back to mowing the lawn, which grows fast enough to suit even him.
We gardeners know all too well the feeling that comes when we have spent hours digging deep holes and dropping bulbs into them. We put aside our trowels, step back and see - a patch of bare dirt. To the observer, it looks like large work for scant pay. But in our minds, we see spring and fields of golden daffodils.
Our minds' eyes fill in the blanks when we plant seeds so small that they could masquerade as dust. Having patience doesn't stop us from rushing out every morning and evening looking for a speck of green - but it helps us wake expectantly, morning after morning. It also allows us to delight in every step in that tiny seed's journey to maturity. To my husband it's not even interesting until the flowers pop out - the third year, when it is finally big enough to look like a real plant to him. But I am fascinated by the way that seed pushes through the earth, often still wearing its seed cap, sends forth leaves that are all but unrecognizable, then a second set that unmistakably proclaims its identity. I am enchanted by the way it then thickens and spreads until that impossibly tiny seed becomes - in what is a remarkably short time, if you recall its minute origins - a full fledged and beautiful plant.
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