Beneath the Straw Mulch

of the vegetable garden I found the columbine plant that I'd sowed from seed last winter. Will it bloom this year I wonder? It's been a long enough wait it seems already. It's almost a year since it produced its first true leaf below, and months and months longer still if I date all the way back to when I harvested the seed while working one afternoon in 2010 with Mike in the plant family collection at Brooklyn Botanic. It will be that much extra sweet I hope when I finally see it bloom.

It's hard for me to really fathom the kind of patience that it must take to be a plant breeder or to be a regular grower of perennials from seed, but I think I'm beginning to understand how the practice might be addicting and rewarding if you had a little space to dedicate to it.