River of Stones: Day 20
Plant. Plant some seeds. Plant a garden. Plant an idea. Plant myself. Plant. Plan. Land.
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Alfalfa sprouts overnight. An acorn takes a lifetime to be realized to its full potential. Seeds can be cataloged and stored, filed away for later. Seeds can be collected from one harvest and carried forward into the future for use another season, another year. Some seeds can be stored for future generations, a stockpile for a day when many seeds are lost, an heirloom variety, an inheritance.
I have seeds to plant. I don’t wish to be a farmer. I just want a garden. Not a flowerbed beside the sidewalk to the front door, although I have claimed these postage stamps of dirt for 20 years. I use what I have and I make due. But I can grow flowers and herbs in the flower beds, and maybe ornamental grasses, but not food. I want a garden. I will forgo a 20×40 ft swimming pool to have a 20×20 ft garden. Like my sisters, I love the smell of fresh turned dirt, the moist loam crumbling through my fingers. Is it the ancestral remnants of Mississippi sharecroppers in our blood? Is it the tenacity and autonomy of self-reliance? Is is a pact, a promise, to the Earth to share in the creative process, in creation. To mother children, to mother the land. Rear children and tend the land.
I want a garden. I want fresh cut flowers from shrubs not plants. I want fresh picked spring greens for salads. I want a warm, engorged tomato, sliced and dripping for an open faced “Croque Monsieur” or swiss and Black Forrest ham with spicy mustard. I want fuzzy loquats picked in late spring, so I can spit the glossy pits. I want sand pears to peel that leave my fingers tanned so I can grind them and make my Granny’s pear conserve.
I want to plant myself and plant.