Day 4: Sowing seeds

Don't worry, I'll hopefully have pictures up by tomorrow.

So today would not have the same significance if it weren't for yesterday's questions. I was confronted with what my dreams and expectations are for the next 3 to 4 months and what the actual needs are for the community I belong to. I realized (thanks to some friends) that I had these seemingly good desires for this season to be a chance for me to really explore and engage in a wide range of my strengths and passions all at the same time, with them taking up almost all of my focus. But as usual life has much more going on than just my world (especially in community). I had to stop and think about the fact that there is going to be a lot of areas where my help/service will be needed and it will have nothing to do with my strengths or passions, but will have to do with blessing the people around me who I'm covenanting to do life with.

So how does this relate to my garden? I realized once again that the garden was a mirror of my life. That those strengths and passions I have were my 6 packets of seeds. That my limits in time, responsibilities, and the needs of the people around me were all the different limitations that my garden faces as well, but have different names: timing, soil, space, sunlight, myself, etc. I wanted to plant them all and just have a super garden, but knew I couldn't handle it. So me that was what I needed to weigh up today... What to plant?

I'm not sure which one (life or the garden) has the power to change the other, so today I decided to start by choosing a path for my garden that hopefully will reflect in my life for the next few months. I chose to only plant a small amount of my seeds. Half what I really wanted (Tomatoes and Basil), and half what others had asked me to grow, but I really didn't care about (beetroot and squash). It's interesting knowing you're going to be putting around 3 months of hard work and care into plants that you know you won't even want when they're ripe, and will just be giving away. It was a great feeling though to plant them as a sign of my commitment to be serving others at a cost to myself. Who knows, maybe I'll grow to like beetroot by the end of all this.

So now it's time for the germination to begin, and in 6-10 days I'll be seeing green. I think I might have planted way too much squash, so I'll be having to eat and give away loads of that in December. Let me know if you want some for Christmas. That offer is only for people in Australia though. Unless you want to pay for the shipping.

Tomorrow I'll be back to weeding and plowing a new section, as well as starting a compost heap.

Oh, and I'm thinking of buying some Giant Sunflower seeds and planting them around town where I live, which would be awesome. I'll keep you posted on that as it unfolds.