Order vs. Growth
What’s more important, the straight row, or the act of planting that one small seed that grows and produces fruit whether it’s in line with the others who were planted nearby or not? I mean, it’s easier to keep an orderly garden tidy, by weeding row by row, plant by plant. But is that the model life gives us? I think of the young people who reside here at Crossnore and of the ways their lives and families have been strewn like hand broadcast seeds and of how they continue to grow and to thrive. And I wonder if a little disorder is really the key to resilience.
An Invitation to Plant
I was in the garden with a child just yesterday. I had invited her to come and plant sugar snap peas alongside the trellises in the raised beds. Together we gathered our tools and went to work.
“So first we are going to prepare the soil by turning it just so. Loosening the soil makes it easier for the new plants to push their way out.” I demonstrated with my rake, indicating that we were going to plant the seeds “here and here and here, in a nice straight row along the trellis.”
Unexpected Planting Methods
She grasped the handheld rake and began running it over the whole bed around and around with no sense of the order I imagined she might imitate. “Ok that’s a great way to work large scale,” I thought, and when she had finished, I returned to my order and rows. I showed her the way I would drop the seeds oh so carefully, two inches apart to give each seedling the best chance to survive, and then I poured some seeds into her outstretched hands, “now you do it.”
Letting Go of Control
The first few seeds were carefully placed. But then she chose another path and began to drop her seeds randomly throughout the bed. As I “tucked each seed in its blanket of soil,” methodically covering the neat row I planted, she began to run her hands over the soil across the whole bed, moving it across and around most of the seeds laying on the surface. I thought about her young life and all she has experienced and whether it was my job to require her to plant in a way that was clearly counter to her way in the world. And in a single moment I relinquished my idea of what this bed should be, in this time, with this child. I gave her the hose and sprayer to water the seeds into the ground and just watched as she soaked some areas and left others dry.
A New Vision for Growth
Gardening with young people can be about setting order and demonstrating patterns and establishing ways to grow that produce the biggest harvest possible. But I think it can also be about the act of faith, the embodied hope a seed planted represents. In this season, I am choosing to see how the seeds she planted come up, to envision a harvest that embodies more than food we can eat. Together we created a space for growing. Together we began to grow in relationship and with intention. And when the plants flower and the sweet peas grow, together we will harvest and reap the Love from those small seeds blooming where they fell.
