The Hungry Mouse

The air was dry and cool when I arrived this morning. The worms, disturbed by my weeding and planting of seeds, were slow to recoil and find cover: It must be winter. The three sages that I planted last week were shriveled and gray. I did not pull them up, but cut them back and watered them, because I have found sages to be remarkably stout of heart.

I found the packages of winter seeds that I had left a few weeks ago, and noticed that someone had carefully chewed a hole through the package of beet seeds. I imagined a house mouse with a midnight-snack attack for something sinfully red and starchy, and being a clever mouse, choosing the beets specifically to satisfy that hankering, but how those lumpy seeds that look like little meteors must have been sadly disappointing to her, and how she must have been so upset that she lost her appetite and went back to bed without tasting any of the other seeds. Because really, who hasn't been there?

The spinach went in the ground today, as did the Echinacea and more Swiss Chard, because for some reason only two or three of the first planting ever came up. I pulled back the thick layer of broken-down leaves to make places for these tiny seeds, and was surprised by how moist and temperate the earth beneath that mulch was. It seemed like such a safe and wonderful place for a seed to be.

I watered just before I left, a ritual that I look forward to both because it brings to a close hours deliciously spent and because it makes me feel necessary to these plants in this space. And as I watered I thought of the seeds I had just planted. Some would sleep for months longer and others awoke as soon as they felt the soil around them. I thought of the earth where they slept, and where I slept, and how often I think of the two as different when really, it is both our beds.