Looking Into The Future

I had a leisurely morning in the roadside vegetable garden digging potatoes and carrots and seeding lettuce, radish, kale, cucumbers and sweet potato squash. When I delivered my harvest to the chef this evening she said I was overwhelming her and she was going to make a visit to the Open Door soup kitchen. See what happened when I evicted the sunflowers from the roadside vegetable garden.

I know the freezers are close to full with peppers and zucchini soup, probably some tomatoes too. I plan to start picking green beans soon.

I really need to relearn how to cook. My chef is not all that adventurous. She says after 56 years the thrill is gone.

I grow the food. I harvest the food. I wash the food. I eat the food. Then I wash the dishes and cleanup the kitchen after. I don't want to cook it too. This will have to do for now. I need that leisurely morning. I am at the point with work kind work where the next potential client that approaches me the answer really should be no.

I had a leisurely afternoon deep in the forest. I went to harvest seed of the plant that dare not speak its name. Last year the varmints got all the seed. This year I was going to beat them to it. Not. The varmints got to them first. I got about a dozen green seeds.

It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. I imagine most of them had already gone dormant, but I finally found a few seedling plants. All I wanted was the leaf to compare them to what I thought were seedlings of the plant that dare not speak its name where I have been seeding them within easy shotgun distance from the front porch. I decided to dig them instead, fearing if I broke off the leaf it might kill them. Better to transplant them.

Yes I do believe the seeds I have been planting are germinating. The process takes two years and nature is found of repeating the same form in numerous plants. They look identical. I also saw the turkeys had been through my seedling area doing a heavy scratch and peck. Damn varmints!

Well it will be another decade plus before I will need to supplement my meager gubmnit check by selling mountain medicinals at the roadside possum stand. It takes a decade for the plant that dare not speak its name to reach a harvestable size. And it's no wonder they are so rare. The germination rate in the wild must be pitiful. The varmints eat all the seeds. I saw a deer deep in the forest while I was back there. It was not happy and kept barking at me.

These little seedling are two, possibly three years old.

In another decade the plant and floral display should be so extravagant that the plain green leaves that look like so many other things of the plant that dare not speak its name will hopefully go unnoticed. They are not being planted in a part of the garden I plan to cultivate anyway. It's in a nice part of the forest where I may do a little tidying and want to put a tea house/shotgun firing platform/meditation pavilion.

I'm on the ten year plan. I must keep reminding myself of that. A plant that takes that long to grow from seed is a good reminder.