Mrs MacGregor it isn’t

Thinking about patience and ways to exercise it always invites the universe to offer you ways to do so.

My sister and I have an experiment brewing – just how much of our food supply can we grow ourselves? We talk about it, we walk around our yards, waving our hands and envisioning different arrangements, different systems. We read books by John Jeavons, we price irrigation contractors, and rooftop growing beds. Where to put even more beehives? How much broccoli does your family want? Do we really have to move that shed? Why isn’t there more sun in this corner? Can I double the garden if I change a path into a walkway only?

And then I look at my garden area, and I sigh. Two years now, it’s lain fallow except for the hardy perennials and free-seeding annuals. I remember gardens when I had enough tomatoes to can all we needed, gardens with what felt like an endless parade of bounty, and I wonder where they went. When I look at the kale gone to seed, it's hard to believe that this will once again work as a garden.


So, with Eric’s concrete belief in the form of seed flats, I started planting today for the fall. My seed box used to be well-organized.

There has to be a good system for seed saving. Little bottles with corks? A notebook? We’ll start this experiment with messy seeds and see how it goes.

The patience part came when I realized how many years I’ve been pouring seeds into little hands and trying to get them to direct the seeds into some limited area.


Planting flats is like working meditation for me, calming, centering, but not with so many eager helpers.


Then it’s a different kind of meditation, one in which I repeat, “Give me patience, give me quiet. Appreciate they’re interested. Don’t mind that she’s just eaten a handful of carrot seeds – oh, ye gods, give me patience, breathe, breathe.”


Every parent probably knows the kind of “pleasant” talk which is really designed to push the kids into doing something else: “Want help with that, sweetie?” It’s not helpful, it’s controlling, and it’s probably better to say, “I cannot stand watching you do this for another nanosecond – aaagh, give me that right this instant” instead.


And yet, somehow, they're sown -- not as neatly as I would have done, but done nonetheless. Given the wonderful collusion between seeds and gardener -- we both want the same thing, after all -- there will be food in my yard again. I may even try growing some compost crops, just for yucks.

I'll try to remember the crop I'm really growing, though.