First potting. Some people have been planting seedlings and potting up things for weeks now, but I seem to need to work up to it. Like a plant who knows by the length of each day's light when it should sprout, I seem to know by the lengthening days that it is finally time to go searching in the basement for the geraniums I pulled from their pots and stuck in an empty fifty pound sunflower seed bag last fall. If only I could recycle all of my bags this way. Actually, not long ago I saw a great shopping bag made from an just such a seed bag, the kind that is plastic coated on the inside. The outside was turned in so that the outer appearance was white, but on the inside you could still see the pictures of cardinals and read the words "black oil". But alas, my seed bags seem to find more mundane uses, like housing geraniums for the winters, and even more mundane, being filled with trash and stuck in the waste can. I need to learn to make better use of these sturdy bags.

The pots, stowed away in haste, are in need of a good cleaning. I give them a cursory one, the need to get to planting overriding good sense, as usual. And I wish I could say that I added all new soil to each pot, but I didn't. Each was still about one third full, and so I loosened that soil, added a teaspoon of slow-release fertilizer and then some new soil. Next I set the thirsty-looking geraniums in place, then filled with new soil and watered. The wind was gusting up to 40 mph during all of this, so that I managed to get potting soil in my eyes and hair--but at least I didn't have to sweep the deck when I was done. And how did the geraniums fare, you ask? Unlike seedlings that would have whipped themselves into a salad of their former selves in such a wind, the geraniums stood their new ground. If they only had noses, would have turned them up at this wind, having withstood at least five summers of wind and thunderstorms considerably more fierce than yesterday's blow. They stood serene, composed, and if not ecstatic then certainly pleased with themselves for having survived another winter in the dark. And don't we all?