Greetings from the days of long shadows...

Greetings from the days of long shadows...

With Winter Solstice behind us and the New Year ahead, I am reflecting on the past while drifting towards a vision and plan for the coming year.  Yes there will be seeds and plants and flowers and beauty.  And what else? I love this dreaming and incubating time of year. Starting the day gently in the dark with a cup of coffee and a poem, the ideas flow and swirl in my head and on the page. I feel excited for new collaborations, ideas, and the fertile ground of community. Also the steadfastness of familiar plants, harvests, and seasonal rhythms to come.

This year has been devastating, brutal, and violent.  In Gaza, the streets of Chicago, LA, all across the country, across the world.  We have seen the worst of what greed and fear and humans can be and do to each other.  We have marched and chanted and resisted.

And in the midst of the pain, I felt many moments of joy, awe, and profound connection with people who are committed and dedicated to life.  My youngest son returning from three months away filled my heart with the tenderest love.  Soaking the most beautiful hot springs I’ve ever seen instantly filled me with ecstatic joy and love for this miraculous earth. Caring for the earth and the plants and the seeds in the best, most humble and earnest way possible is an incredible blessing in my life.  

It's an Everything Everywhere All at Once kind of time.

I am trying to tap into people and ideas that bring me hope. Robin Wall Kimmerer is one of these people for me. I recently listened to the latest episode of the The Nature Of podcast by Willow Defenbaugh with Robin Wall Kimmerer as the guest.

Kimmerer's wise words in this interview are staying with me. To paraphrase a moral at the end of a story she shares in the interview with Defenbaugh-- Robin Wall Kimmerer tells about a conversation with a student and the wisdom the student passes on... she says:

This is the best possible time to be alive- it is a gift to be alive in a time of uncertainty.  When the world is unstable, it matters where you stand. 

Absolutely.  I feel the strength, the invitation, and the righteous energy in these words. 

I will follow Robin Wall Kimmerer anywhere and am so excited she is launching a new movement called Plant Baby Plant. Raise a Garden, Raise a Rukus?  Yes please!!  Read all about it in the link, watch the video on the homepage and join me in standing up to greed, separation and hate by joining with the plant world to regenerate ecological diversity, community, and a future for all.

"This is more than gardening...this is creative resistance." Robin Wall Kimmerer.

The plans for my creative resistance are unfolding but are sure to include more food and more diversity. Specifically, more food harvested from seed crops for community food programs on Vashon. This past year I was able to donate pounds of red roasting peppers to the food bank in late October at a time when food was being used as a political weapon. I realized that I don't need every seed from every plant I grow. In the coming year, I want to share the harvest in a more intentional and supportive way.

I am also planning a greater emphasis on growing seed crops for genetic and ecological diversity. More grexes, more intentional cross pollination projects, more seed harvests with a focus on genetic diversity over uniformity.

I started my seed journey with the Wild Dreams Kale- an intentional cross of many kales varieties to, over time, yield something a little different than I have ever grown. I do not select this seed crop for uniformity- the same color, or leaf shape, or size. I follow the plants' lead and harvest seed from a diversity of plants-the most beautiful, the strongest, the most vibrant, the ones that self sow around the farm- rather than the plants that all look similar.

After the kale came others like the Maxima Mashup Squash a few years ago, and even a zinnia mash up. Flowers need diversity too. Then last year the watermelon project moved forward and brought so much joy, community, and solidarity, as well as many questions to carry forward in the coming years as I work towards breeding a diverse- meaning varies sizes, shapes, and even colors- and tasty watermelon community that will grow and ripen in the Northwest.