Each and every seed is brought to life the same way at the beginning of our Spring season, but we never truly know what the season will hold for those individual seeds. They are nurtured and nestled and nudged along until time for them to be transplanted into the soil anywhere from 7 to 60 days old depending on the product. From there, it’s all up to Mother Nature and a Sovereign God.
Much like first-time parents with a newborn baby, there are so many hopes and dreams and plans we have for these seeds. Like those same parents, we don’t always control the outcome despite our best efforts to protect them and raise them up. And just like any good parent, our minds tend to play games of “what if” each season.
So many life-threatening situations could happen along the course of the season: be it late freezes, strong winds, or flooding carrying with them bloom drop, scarring and scuffing, or entire crop devastation. Be it whitefly infestation, downy mildew, or phytophthora carrying with them endless spray bills and unanticipated rejections. Be it low yields or poor pollination carrying with them a failure to make a return on our investment. We never know just what a season holds in store for our “babies”.
This Spring, Georgia had a late freeze that damaged crops all across the state. We didn’t go without a hit, but we weren’t hit as hard as some. And yet, despite our hit, it appears that our obsessive protection and nurturing paid off and the pepper, which was seemingly frozen solid in the cold, snapped back and got a second chance at life. Much of the zucchini wasn’t quite so lucky. Fortunately, we were early enough in the season to replant with minimal damage done.
A few days after the freeze, we saw signs of new life coming back.
Three weeks after the freeze, pepper is back in full stride.
With one “what-if” out of the way, we face a hopeful Spring season as we do every year: eager for all the possibilities the season might hold, yet slightly anxious (if we’re honest) as to all that could go wrong. Like a mother with her newborn, so we are with our “babies” each Spring. This season always brings with it a round of “what-ifs” but they’re ones we face with resilience and optimism each and every year.