This time of year I start my seeds for the garden. I have done some version of this almost every year of my adult life. When I was first in my own apartment, I tried versions of container gardens, and then when I was in my first home I planned elaborate floral displays and vegetable harvests that delighted as much as they disappointed. Some of the years back then I completely abandoned the idea and others went all in. I had very different reasons for gardening (or not) then, although to those versions of me, they were each very compelling. Then, moving to my beautiful mountain homestead, the gardens have been a wise and ruthless teacher. You cannot get behind on managing those weeds and bramble for even a moment, lest you find yourself completely overrun… completely lost. Or so it seems.
Today, I am noticing the miracle that is this life. How, from a place of thorny, poisonous ruin, you can decide to clear away the mess and begin again. From the smallest of beginnings, something new can grow. New things sprout from the unlikeliest of places. Last fall, I collected many, many hosta seed pods, and emptied them when dry in preparation for a project I cooked up in the brainpan last fall. I cleared several bramble and poison ivy covered hillsides on my lands, and I am planning to cover them with hosta and fern, with the occasional flowering, fruiting bush for the wildlife. I have propagated hosta before, but in the dozens. This year, I am aiming for hundreds, if not a thousand. This morning the tiny sprouts appeared, nothing short of a miracle when you know what a hosta seed looks like. It is a little black papery oval. You would think it a rotting leaf corner or a dead bug wing had you not collected and dried the many, many pods in which they grow. Even as I planted one in each starter pot, tenderly placing it and covering it with peat, I doubted each one. “How can this even be possible?”, I think each and every time I plant a seed, and each and every time, I am thrilled anew as it unfurls like a little groot to greet life with me on planet earth, here in this holler.
This year’s garden has again transformed from a doubt into a possibility. And what is a garden but the finest, sweetest metaphor for life. Breath. The inhale has begun. I don’t have to do anything but stand in awe as life breathes itself. That, and maintain diligence in managing the weeds.
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. Ralph Waldo Emerson
