Would you continue to garden, even if your efforts amounted to diddly squat each year?

I know we’ve all had our fair share of disastrous seasons, but we chalk it up to just that – a bad season – and then we’re back at it again next year.

I’m thinking more along the lines of gardening without the payoff in produce. The crossover between vegetable gardeners and flower and ornamental gardeners is pretty big. Likewise, most of us who grow things outdoors tend to keep houseplants, too.

So, it’s not too far-fetched an idea.

The reason I ask is because it’s the time of year when I start each day with a cup of coffee while I stare at my seedlings. (Please tell me I’m not the only one who does this.) I just stand there silently in my pajamas, coffee in hand, looking at my domain of seed-starting mix flecked with green. I take a sip and notice what seeds have germinated while I was sleeping, which seedlings have dropped the seed husk or whose cotyledons have unfurled completely.

(No first true leaves yet. Maybe by next Sunday.)

It dawned on me this morning, halfway through my cup of coffee, that even if this were all there was to vegetable gardening, I would keep doing it every year. There is something wondrous about watching seeds emerge from the soil and, very quickly, I might add, turning into fully-fledged plants.

And if you’re lucky, with some (enjoyable) effort, those fully-fledged plants reward us with delicious, homegrown vegetables.

I’ll be the first to admit that the times we’re living in have made me cynical in many ways.

But the wonder of growing things never ceases to amaze me.

I was propagating some of my African violets from leaf cuttings recently when one of my teenage sons commented on how excited I get over poking leaves in the dirt. I grabbed him by the finger and said, “Of course it’s exciting! It’s practically magic! Imagine being able to cut your finger off, poke it in some dirt, mist it and put it under grow lights, and in a month or two, there would grow an exact clone of yourself!”

I can’t tell if I successfully shared the magic of gardening with him or just made him nervous each time I reached for my hand pruners.

What I’m trying to say, my friends, is that with all the craziness that’s going on in our world today, whether it’s your first year gardening or your fiftieth, I hope you never grow tired of the magic of growing things.