Happy Friday Night Love and Light to you! Welcome to another winning week of awesome!
I was just telling my social media fam a brief story about a girl who found gardening and it changed everything. That girl is me. What had happened was, I stumbled upon the beginnings of a tomato on one of my tomato plants. See, this doesn’t sound like much, but when you understand how it came to be that I even have tomato plants at all, a bit of reflection is almost mandatory.I have never cared much for dirt. That’s not true. I have never cared much for the idea of all the backbreaking work I saw my mother doing in each and every one of her gardens. Gardening always reminded me of old ladies in hats, boredom and relentless dirt under one’s finger nails. I remember being a child and watching my mother pulling weeds and how she made me help her in the hottest of the hot heat of summer–and I hated it. I was always a girl on the move and who had that kind of time? Certainly not me. I had shit to do.
I won’t bore you with the sordid details of the many, many years that had to compound interest in order for me to get to the place I’ve found today. I will say it has been an arduous journey of self discovery, which I’m sure you’ll learn all about in my memoirs…
We can fast forward to 3 years ago, when I first got the inclination that I could plant the Stargazer Lilies I love so desperately, instead of waiting on a heart attack aka a courting fellow to buy me some, just because. So I planted some. It really was just something to do. Wal-mart (Gaaaaah!) was selling bulbs, I bought some cheap pots and some dollar store dirt and planted them jawns. I will add here that I had ZERO idea what I was doing. At some point, I realized I planted the things upside down in the pot and had to dig them up and turn them around and such. Unbeknownst to me at the time, that day was the beginning stages of a love affair. I began to care.
I took impeccable care of my flowers as I watched the many stages of their propagation. It was a beautiful unfoldment. Every step made me more giddy than the last and once my flowers did actually bloom, I cried real tears. I felt like I gave birth. I felt like I had a hand in God’s divine glory… and I did. I grew something. I gave something (other than my actual human child) LIFE. The blooming of my flowers that first year, was also around the time I was preparing for my “fire walk” by way of my very first Tough Mudder. I was going through so many changes and my Lilies became a huge part of my inspiration to finish that dang on Mudder. Which was, quite possibly, one of THEE hardest things I ever signed up to do in my life. It was worth it tho. Because I bloomed that day, just like my lilies…
So the next year, I was officially gangsta. I planted another batch of lilies (this time with Aubrei) and finished another Tough Mudder (like it was nothing) and all was right with the world.
My current burgeoning garden is a whole other story tho. I hadn’t planned it at all. It really began with a whole bunch of avocado seeds I couldn’t throw out because they were sprouted when I cut the avocados open. So I planted them and they grew. Right now I have almost a dozen avocado saplings growing because I couldn’t bare to throw out the seeds that wanted to live. Every single one I put in soil (haphazardly even) is acting like it wants to be a tree. Yes. In Pennsylvania. (Note: I stopped buying avocados for months because every time I opened one, the seed would be sprouting. I thought it was just a fluke or dumb luck of the season. Just this week I bought 2 avocados of varying degrees of ripeness. Both were sprouting when I opened them. Yes, I planted them. An intervention is forthcoming… or there will be an avocado orchard in the Philly Tri-state.)
So then came my tomatoes. Nope, no interest in growing tomatoes. None. I like to eat them. My mom has grown them and I enjoy them. But one random day this winter, I cut open a tomato and it was filled to the brim with green headed seedlings. True to form, I couldn’t throw them away, so I planted them and kept them on the window sill in my bedroom. Of the dozen or so I planted, 3 survived. Just yesterday, I met my very first baby tomato…
The same thing happened with some lemon seeds I had laying around from a lemon I had used for something. They sprouted all random like. Now I have 5 burgeoning lemon saplings…
I also have a few pineapples on the ready. If you look closely at the center, you’ll see where the new pineapple plant is sprouting forth…
I actually planted these peas from seed, but these plants are just gorgeously aggressive. They want to bear fruit so badly, plus they’re kindly to the sickly lavender plant I’m hoping to bring back to life (I didn’t kill it, mind you).
Then there’s my mint. I hadn’t planned to grow mint, but when I bought a bunch of cuttings at the market, to keep them fresher longer, I put them in water like a bouquet. Wouldn’t you know they started sprouting roots?! Each one that did, I put in dirt. Look at them now…
You already know that I’ve got an apple tree in a cup happening already. Plus I have some spinach and Swiss Chard on the come up. I think I also have a mango sapling doing its thing, although, she is shy around all those avocados.
What is my point in sharing all of this you ask? I mean, besides to tell you that I’m auditioning for my forthcoming random plants farm? Well. It’s certainly not to impress you. People have been gardening (and farming) since the beginning of time. To save us some platitudes, I’ll tell you the same thing I told my social media fam:
The most beautiful thing about my garden is that most of my plants came to me, already sprouted–essentially telling me they were choosing LIFE and I was to be their Earth mother. I’ve sung to them, cared for them and in my excitement to see them grow, encouraged their growth. This tomato exists now because instead of throwing those sprouts away (when they made the tomato I wanted to eat inedible) I saw the same LIFE in them that they wanted. I saw their potential. I saw their possibility. And in their possibilities, I also saw my own.
This is what gardening is essentially. Its a metaphor for LIFE itself. It’s seeing the possibilities in life and ourselves. Not but 3 years ago, I could give a care about gardening. But then I planted Stargazer Lilies. Watching the process of their growth, changed everything. And here I am, a Guerrilla Gardener of everything from pineapples and avocados, apples and lemons, spinach and peas and yes, tomatoes. All because I believed in and was willing to explore the possibilities of LIFE. I’ve discovered that we are all Guerrilla Gardeners and Life is our plot. If we want wondrous results and a lush life, we have to plant the kinds of seeds that yearn to grow. Your crop it vital.
Your crop is vital. What seeds are you planting in your life? Are they life giving? Are they giving you life? Or are they depleting you of the very possibilities you’re here to unfold? The answer is closer than you think. Plant good seeds. #YO
So. That’s what I learned this week. I do hope it helps something. Thank you for reading this (!!!) Remember always to #RuleYoSelf with L.O.V.E. Have a Happy Awesome Weekend!
Love you madly!
-e-