This sunday I planted a few pots with potting soil and some seeds. I planted green onion, forget-me-nots, cilantro, and lavender. This is the first time I’ve done this, so needless to say I spent a lot of time on burpee.com and other web sites, along with calling up my Mum, for some tips on growing. I want to see those little seedlings shoot up RIGHT AWAY through that soil!!! But I know that’s not exactly possible right away…so I’ll have to work on my patience juuuust a tad.

I found it fitting that when I came into work today and flipped through The Food Projects’ Spring 2010 newsletter, the poem, ‘With Time, I Grow’ was included. It made me think about the metaphors we can make to planting season and watching seeds grow, just like we can watch ourselves grow. In fact, a couple of weekends ago when I went to a retreat at Kripalu, our instructor, writer and life coach, Laura Berman Fortgang, told me I’m in a growth stage right now. I’m at the point in life, she said, where I’m cultivating the sun and the rain water and the nutrients for the soil, and I have to be patient with that. I think  this little potted plant experiment of mine is going to be just the right activity for practicing my patience. Because, let’s be honest, I want to big a BIG BRIGHT BEAUTIFUL BLOOMING flower RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE…and we all know it doesn’t always work that way….So that’s where the trust and the patience and the smaller celebrations come in.

‘With Time, I Grow’

Composition by Omar Omar, Elizabeth Baxter, Matthew Burckardt and Eva Macdonald: Boston D.I.R.T. Crew

There I was

Growing like a seed.

Then weeds appeared

Roots took over, underground.

Smooth breezes began to blow

In anger, filling me with insecurity.

Who am I, who will I be?

Through seasons: birth, death

The cycle of winter’s chill

And summer’s scorch.

I change, I adapt

Underground is no longer

Where I want to be

There is a whole world

Waiting for me.