Something amazing yet subtle happened last week. Here in Vermont and across similar northern latitudes, the daylight stretched over 10 hours.
Plants need at least 10 hours of daylight to grow, and in our many years of winter greenhouse growing, this shift marked the true turn toward spring. When there’s enough light for plants to slowly start growing again, I feel my own body energize and stretch in the lengthening days, too.
Last week I saw a video of
reading a section of his book Keep Going called “Plant Your Garden.” In it, he shares a story of Leonard and Virginia Woolf during World War II:The months leading up to World War II were some of the most terrible months in the life of Leonard and Virginia Woolf as they helplessly and hopelessly watched events unfold. Leonard said one of the most horrible things was listening to Hitler’s rants on the radio. The savage and insane ravings of a vindictive underdog who suddenly saw himself to be all powerful.
One afternoon he was planting purple irises in the orchard under an apple tree. ‘Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window,’ he said. Hitler was making another speech. But Leonard had had enough.
‘I shan’t come!’ He shouted back to Virginia. ‘I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.’
He was right. In his memoir Downhill All The Way, Leonard Woolf noted that 21 years after Hitler committed suicide in the bunker, a few of those purple flowers still bloomed in the orchard under the apple tree.
I don’t know for sure what kinds of flowers I’m planting with my days on this planet, but I intend to find out and so should you.
Whatever it is that you plant—whether its flowers or vegetables or fruit or herbs—the rhythm and practice of sowing seeds and nurturing life is a cycle that outlasts hate.
Right now, the light is growing longer and wider each day.
We can sow seeds that will feed each other, that will create beauty. Seeds that, whether they are annuals that reseed or perennials that root deep, will come back over and over again.
I often think of words as seeds that set stories and possibilities into being.
With my days on this planet, I’m sowing peace and connection in both seeds and words.
In March, I’ll be participating in the Central Vermont Refugee Action Network’s March Arts Marathon. This is a fundraiser to support asylum seekers and refugee families in Vermont with housing, living expenses, and legal fees.
For six days every week in March, I’ll send a poem to everyone who donates to the fundraiser.
You can join the poetry party and support asylum seekers and refugees by donating here. No amount is too small! Together we can weave an ever-stronger network of community support.
Will you join me? Will you, too, find out what grows from the seeds of your actions?
I believe creativity is as essential as food, and that we need both to keep us nourished as we grow a world where all are fed, loved, and free.
Being in community with others who are growing toward these goals is one of the best ways I know to bolster my spirit and fill my resolve. I’ll be at the NOFA-VT Winter Conference this weekend to do just that! Let me know if you’ll be there, too!
Thank you for reading, sharing, and supporting this work.
I’ll leave you with this post from February 2024, where I share a poem, wisdom from a fellow farmer, and some of my favorite vegetable varieties:
Alive in the Possibility of Seeds
To Make A MealWe began this meal with seed catalogs and tea, dreaming nourishment Spring came: rain and mud You bent in the greenhouse, you a moving prayer Summer: crops vining blooming, ripening. Roots hold to soil as we weed This is what they don’t tell you: how much you’ll pull out— how much space growth needs. Wheelbarrows of weeds! So onions ca…
Thanks so much for this.