Plants! Seeds! Seasons!

For the past seven years I haven’t done much planting of seeds and gardening. It has felt too hard. This year, as Chop is 7 and Bogs is 3.5, it felt more possible to be here for the garden than it has before. It’s also a way of being here for the kids to be here for the garden because I want this wisdom to be in their bodies before they leave our house. It’s the most fundamental wisdom a person could have. How to support plants to sustain our lives and theirs. (Photos taken by Auntie Kev, who was also present.)

It all felt like such big magic, how old they were and how they could wait and press the seeds into the soil, carefully put the soil in the trays, etc. After we planted them, Chop made an altar, which he said was for the plants. I said should we say a prayer for the plants and Chop rang the meditation bell on repeat, as if it was a drum, while Bogs said, “I hope you have a good life plants, and thank you for letting us eat you.”

I couldn’t have created a more beautiful ceremony if I had orchestrated it! But the thing I did was make time for it. Not even that much time, probably half an hour. And I bought some seeds and a bit of soil. And these plants will mark our time over the summer, growing along with us. This was a moment of making space for a thing that is important to me, and seeing what happens after that. What happened was my kids being their magic selves.