I used to have a black thumb. I could kill any plant. Many of my mom’s plants where a victim of this black thumb.
Then in the late 1990’s I signed up to be a Garden Guide at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and was required to take 6 months of training that were equivalent to college level botany.For me that really helped. It also reconnected me to an event in my childhood.
We were in class learning about soil and how to not call it dirt. I got my hands in it, and remembered being a little girl in 1st grade planting in the schools garden program and how I loved it. I loved the feel of the soil and the smell of the soil.
I laughed as I remembered the high school test to determine what we would be happiest doing. My test results said I should work on a farm! I had been outraged at the test results. I wanted to major in Math, in geometry. I wanted to map the world and every object in it. But yeah, soil, felt so, so good.
I loved numbers, I loved soil and I was about to learn to love plants. There was a scene in the movie POWDER , (I own it on laser disc), where the trees in the entire forest are described as being one single plant, living and breathing. That scene stayed with me. The connectedness of life astounded me. It was a reminder of how things really are that has been forgotten.
But I’m a city gal! born and raised in Manhattan. Central Park was my only source of green. And then I went to Convocation in 1993 and visited Lake Shrine and Mother Center and Encinitas. I came back every single year for 14 years in a row. The trips got longer from 1 week to 3 weeks at a time. La Joya was a treat on one of the years as was Hidden Valley in Escondido.
The Coastal Vacations Travel membership, which I got so I could work from home, had been appealing because being out in nature, traveling out of NYC was indeed what I wanted to do. I had gone to Puerto Rico a few times by then and I loved it there. My mom had been spending the entire winter there, only returning to NYC in the spring. What a great way to live!
But I am still in NYC, and I have no outdoor garden space. But I do love soil and plants and I have a love affair with seeds.
I eat it, I like it , I plant it.
Yeah that is pretty much how I have been. My window sill is a testament to that.
The Avocado, Mango, Date Palm, Lemon, Lychee, Clementine were all started from seed. And yes I know it will be 5 plus years to get fruit, but I would have had fruit already if the ones from 2009 had not died in the frost in the Poconos.
Lenny makes compost, and I plant seeds. It’s a great combination.
Evelyn Rosa 