P is for Planting

It is an act of hope for another day, another season, another year, another chance at getting it right. A belief and understanding that the days will lengthen, hope that Persephone will be allowed to return home to her mother, that green shoots will emerge and that a harvest will result. That fat ears of corn, fresh greens and perfectly ripened tomatoes will grace your garden. That you will take real pleasure and a misappropriated sense of power in seeing white and red clover sown by your hand, cover the land. That the maple trees planted last fall will yield shade in a short ten years on some summer day.

That work of preparing the soil, saving the seed, putting up fences and taking them down, sowing cover crops, tilling them into the dirt is all done so that one fine August evening you can sit down with your family.  Sit down at a table with platters of tomatoes and basil, roasted ears of corn, potato salad and grilled pork chops from a pig fattened on sweet clover and overripe squash.

Because that act of planting is for the harvest.

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Reading this weekend: The Wet and The Dry by Lawrence Osborne, it is a kind of travel book exploring the cultural landscapes of the Muslim world through the light of a gin and tonic.