A start with sowing

I am still catching up on some of the autumn and winter tasks delayed because of the successive eye surgeries in the second half of last year. And the recent wet weather has not helped either. We are beginning to enter the more time-dependent jobs of spring, such as seed sowing. This does not really get underway for me until the beginning of March. One exception is aubergines which tend to need a longer growing season and I like to get them sowed in February. The seedlings need a bit of looking after until it is safe enough to transfer them to the unheated greenhouse, usually at the end of April, although a look out for late frosts is still needed.  Aubergines usually do well for me and last year in particular we had a bumper crop.

There is a sketch by Van Gogh called The Sower which I rather like. Van Gogh painted and drew quite a few versions of The Sower. The one here is a copy of a painting he admired by Jean-Francois Millet who was a French artist noted for his images of rural and peasant life. 

The Sower after Millet, Van Gogh.
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. 

Yesterday a photograph came my way online, posted by a rural history website of a farm worker broadcast sowing a field. It was undated but possibly 1930s, certainly pre-mechanisation. It struck me how much it resembled the Van Gogh image.

Very different from my carefully placed aubergine seeds, three to a 3" pot.