Poppy, please do something!

The hope of planting seeds and waiting for them to grow

What a garden *should* look like.

The kids and I pushed seeds into the soil not long ago. The youngest is managing the squash and pumpkin bed, the oldest rules the corn bed. They take this responsibility more seriously now that they are getting older. They’ll run out to the garden every morning and afternoon, rulers and journals in hand, ready to measure their plants and record their findings. Daily, faithfully, they watch the soil and wait.

I am watching, too.

The younger kid left me a note one morning to “water the pumpkins, but don’t drown them,” and I chuckled at the notion that he has the same sense of love for those tiny seeds that I carry around with me all the time. And also he doubts that I know what I’m doing.

But by the end of the week he wrote another note in his journal for me. “Seeds still not up. Checking daily. Poppy, please DO SOMETHING.”

It’s funny and laughable that he thinks I can do anything at all to encourage those seeds to emerge, but I share his desperate need to see them growing. And once they do, just like him, I will fawn over them, protect them from harsh elements, fend off the bugs and the weeds and the hungry critters, and celebrate each tiny leaf that sprouts. The wind will blow over the tiny stems of corn, little grasses waving like flags, and suddenly they will sprout strong tassels, and the kids will delight in shaking the pollen from them. We will blink through the fast-paced summer activities. The automatic sprinkler system will tend to each plant when we go camping and play on the beach, and all at once they will go from a seedling smaller than a finger to a sprawling collection of plants tangled together with spiraling tendrils and spiny leaf-stalks and hidden gems in orange and yellow and grey-green and stripes.

We will look back and forget our fears that those seeds might not grow.

But today, I walk the garden paths and stare down at the undisturbed soil. No green shoots peek up. No leaves unfurl. I’ve been known to dip a few fingers below the surface to see if a chunky bean or cuke seed has germinated at all, if there are roots, if one will emerge soon.¹

There is a tension in the trust it requires to place a seed in the soil, water it, and wait. It’s more than patience, it’s the fear of investing hope.

My hope is growing in that dirt somewhere, and there’s a chance a hungry vole will steal it before it has the opportunity to set root. A bird might peck it from the soil. A racoon might step too heavily, might dig too deep, disturbing growth before that tiny plant can recover from such trauma.

“Poppy, please DO SOMETHING.”

Spring is fickle enough without adding emotions. Average temperature and rainfall are meaningless. Now is what matters when you’re planning a garden to feed your family. I know that I can drive to the grocery store and buy what we need to survive, but there is some primal force within me that compels me to grow things from the land to feed and sustain us.

It is the finest act of productivity.

And that’s a problem a lot of us face. We were raised to believe that productivity is the mark of a life well-lived, that our value is in that productivity, in our marketability, in our performance.

When the overnight temperatures rise to the low 50’s (or close enough by averages this far north), and the rainfall is even but not heavy, the soil can be easily tilled by hand or light machine. A long pole or the handle of a hoe pressed into the soil creates measured rows for seeds to drop into, and the light soil compaction improves the capillary action of water within the highest soil levels as the seed germinates.

I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I still know that failure happens. Last year was a disaster for the corn. Germination was poor, the weather was too cold early in the season, it never warmed up until it was too late, and what little corn did grow never reached full size.

I am measuring my garden by its productivity, and that means the losses will hit harder, and I will ultimately fail when conditions are not at their best. What does that say about me? What does it say about how I value this garden space that is the most valuable place I spend my time?

I value its productivity, its marketability, and its performance.

But I also sit between those beds and rows, and I listen to bird song. Frogs chirps and croak from the cover of dense leaves. Worms and caterpillars wriggle above and below the soil, ladybugs lay eggs in the hazelnut trees, and dragonflies rest on the recently watered berry bushes and canes. I dig my bare toes in the potato beds when we harvest them at the end of summer. I hum as I weed and prune. Countless hours are spent between the apple trees and the pea vines. My garden is not just utility. It is messy with weeds. Some spots don’t get watered properly. Aphids overtook part of my Winesap apple tree last year and it only barely survived. The fig tree has yet to produce fruit early enough to get it fully ripened before the first frost hits.

What can I do to encourage those seeds to sprout and grow? Nothing. Nothing I have not already done. Maybe they won’t grow at all. Maybe I will fail. There are no tricks for this. There are best practices, there are creative ideas, there are all manner of tools and devices, and all of them require us to wait for the seed coat to split and for the monocot or dicot to send up a shoot and down a root.

My job isn’t based in productivity. I just facilitate things. I connect them. The soil needs the right minerals, the seeds need the right storage techniques. Timing of light and heat and water are crucial. Planting seeds at the right depth matters. Managing pests makes a big difference.

All I can really do is connect.

Connect my body to the soil. Connect my movements to the seasons. Connect my children to these same tasks. Connect the way in which we care for our environment to how we care for our bodies and the bodies of the other organisms who need that space, too. And if I can forget about productivity for a moment, I’ll see that the connection I’ve created with my garden feeds back through me.

Just an average harvest on an average day. Because who doesn’t need that many cucumbers?

I am planting my hope in the soil, and it will be warmed by the sun, watered by rain, eaten, eroded, sheltered, harvested, submerged under weeds, yanked out by the roots, split and grafted. It may never emerge. It may feed into the food web of my local ecosystem or rot into mycelium threads under too-deep mulch. But it will also feed my family. It will bear the heavy footfalls of my children running through the garden rows. Some years it will give back so heartily that we will heap armloads of zucchinis and raspberries into the unexpecting hands of every friend and neighbor we can find. We will freeze it and can it and regret that we included it into that one cookie recipe where we thought it would work and it didn’t. And by the time autumn finally comes, I will sit back and sigh in relief at things ending and putting themselves to rest under a thick layer of frost. My hope will sleep in a deep torpor.

Until then, I watch the soil with eagerness. I am doing something. I am waiting.

Your trans friend,

Robin

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1. I am exactly like my father who will skip to the last page of any book to see if the hero lives. He doesn’t enjoy books where the main character dies, and I, too, avoid that kind of pain and failure at all costs.