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| Some of what our garden has gifted us |
There's a common expression 'you reap what you sow'. While technically, it's the same as the title of this post - Harvest what you plant - it's connotation is much darker. Almost threateningly so.
I've had enough of cautionary tales.
What I'm looking for now is something to reach for, not something to run away from.
I want more possibilities, not fewer.
We have a large garden here at StarField Farm. Multiple gardens, actually. We have the large plot at the bottom of the driveway, the recently established miniature orchard, a side garden, a terraced garden, and the kitchen garden. We grow all kinds of fruit and vegetables - I like to say from asparagus to zucchini (though we didn't plant any summer squash this year. We get enough from neighbors. And yes, folks here do leave bags of zucchini on front porches). Yesterday, I harvested about half of the 60+ potatoes we planted in early spring.
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| pinto potatoes from a freshly pulled vine |
Yes, that's a lot of potatoes. And tomatoes. And beans. And kale. And peppers. And...
We planted all of this food during still chilly days last spring. You could say gardening is an act of faith and you wouldn't be wrong. So many things need to go exactly right to harvest a crop. The correct amount of sunshine, rain, warmth, nutrient rich soil. And even then, there are pests and animals who can decimate a garden before you get a single floret of broccoli.
This year, squirrels ate every last peach from three carefully tended trees. Hundreds and hundreds of peaches gone.
Here's the thing: when you plant something - a seed, a sapling, an idea - you don't know what will come of it. You hope that there will be juicy peaches in late August, but it's a long time between February pruning and peach pies. So much can happen, mostly out of our control.
But every year, we tend the garden. Feed the soil. Nurture the seedlings. Prune the trees.
Writing stories isn't all that different. It starts underground in the fertile subconscious. The words need to be tended, weeded, protected. Sometimes the garden of ideas is orderly, other times it grows wild like a pumpkin patch. Not every story makes it to harvest and some offer amazing bounty. If gardening is an act of faith, so is creativity.
My garden feeds and sustains my body.
My writing feeds and sustains my soul.
And that is a harvest worth working toward.
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