Seed Packet Signaling

The End Of A Gardening Sabbatical

I have a lot of garden seeds. In fact, I am a little fanatical about collecting them. I am sure that most whom read my blog can guess my affinity for the agricultural arts, but this year's seed delivery holds a special significance for me.

Last year I lost three family members in a six month period. One of them was only twenty years old. I know that death comes for us all, and I am not overly afraid of that fact, for it is the unavoidable task that we must all complete. The thing that was hard to bear was the pain of my loved ones. It was surrounded by this oppressive grief bubble that I made the decision to take a year off from gardening. This was like cutting off my left leg and then running a marathon, for it felt like something was missing, but my family and friends needed me more.

Instead of tending the fruitful rows of my half acre garden of happiness, I instead tended the broken hearts of people that I care about. I know I was grieving too, but I felt that I needed to be used as a conduit for grief and healing. I kept one family member busy, and was there whenever she needed to do something to keep her mind off of the fact that she had just lost her son to a senseless accident. Instead of the normal yearly ritual of hilling my potatoes I sat and listened to my Grandma relate stories collected from fifty plus years of marriage. Each day brought about different plants that needed watering and weeds that needed to be plucked, just not the physical kind.

I tended a different kind of garden last year, and in the process I received a soothing to my own grief. It is never wasted effort to give up something that you love doing, even temporarily, in order to help another.

This year's seed order that is sitting on my kitchen table symbolizes a return from the land of grief and loss to the physical land of renewal, growth, and harvest. The pain of loss will always be there, but I will bear it covered in soil!

In closing, this Kat hopes that you are all having an amazing evening, no matter where you are. I'll leave you with a bit of art. We had a Valentine's Day art party at the library today, and learned about Jim Dine. The kids talked me into painting hearts inspired by his art with them, here is my 10 minute masterpiece!

We hit the tempura paint and conversation hearts hard!

And as always, all of the pictures in this post were taken on the author's pink glitter paint smudged iPhone.