STORY TIME IN THE GARDEN
When I was little, there was a special way my grandmother got me to eat vegetables. My grandmother had a pretty extensive garden that I love exploring in. One spring, she decided she was going to teach me how to garden, so she took a bunch of vegetable seeds and carved a little plot out of her garden just for me. 1 by 1 she pressed a tiny seed into my tiny palm and she would show me on the package what the seed would eventually grow into: Carrots, Zucchini, Tomatoes, Peppers.
I had all of the questions because I didn’t understand how a tiny squash could be hiding inside of a tiny seed. And she said, “ These seeds are babies and the soil is their womb and this is where they are going to grow up.”
So, I planted them really delicately because they were babies. And for the first few days she would go ask me to check on them to see if they were growing but after day 3, i did it every single day on my own and never forgot because is was exciting!
She gave me the responsibility of watering the whole garden and so I got to watch everything slowly grow. She would get me to smell the plants as they slowly grew and the vegetables as they slowly matured.
When they were ready to be harvested I cried because I didn’t want to pick the babies. But she said, “ You grew them with love and now they want to give back by letting you enjoy their wonderful flavour. They want to fill you with there love.
One summer, at her dining room table, when we have finished eating, my grandfather didn't eat the beans on his plate and they were going to be thrown out I lost my shit! I grabbed his plate and screamed ,
“do you know how long it took my babies to grow?!? 2 whole months...from the seed!!!! Don't waste their love!!!”
And since then, I’ll only buy what I know I'll eat and I never throw food out because I understand how long and how much effort it takes for everything to grow. Cell by cell. Its impossible to be wasteful when your made part of the process because life is teaching you how to respect its process.
