A new season
By Joe and Kamala’s first 100 days in office on April 30, I’ll have tomato, kale, basil, parsley and other herbs and greens started, along with at least some beets and fancy new cabbage seedlings. There will be overwintered spinach and carrots to be harvested in the garden, and the garlic will have had its cold slumber, putting up shoots under cover.
I might be eligible for, or who knows, already had a COVID vaccination. I will be sleeping better knowing that we re-entered the Paris Climate Agreement, rejoined the World Health Organization, lifted the Muslim travel ban, stopped construction on a border wall, restricted evictions and paused student loan repayment during the pandemic, and mandated masks on all federal property— all on the first day! I’ll have witnessed the most diverse cabinet in U.S. history get going on all the important and sorely neglected work of leading our country, critical leadership in foreign policy restored, and general movement toward a more just and equitable future.
Yes, I’m jumping ahead, imagining the good work to come from the Biden-Harris team in the White House. The reality is that January is a big planning month. I’ve been quietly tracking down seeds that I will need for my vegetable, herb and perennial gardens, and checking out new varietals available for the 2021 growing season. I started this process earlier than usual this time around, and now I’m hearing that there likely will be a seed shortage this year. I’m grateful to have gotten hold of much of what I need, and I’ll look for opportunities to share what I found with others.
Our inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris this week is like planting a new garden. Had Congress not amended the Constitution’s inauguration date in 1933 from the original March 4 to our current January 20 in order to shorten the long “lame duck” period of waiting for newly elected political leaders to take office, who knows what more mayhem we’d be facing this time around.
It’s a little early for me to get going, even with seed trays indoors, but I’m glad that Joe and Kamala are moving from planning to action. When I think about what they’ve set out to accomplish during their first hundred days, I’m excited and hopeful, though it sounds wildly ambitious. But then I think about growing, and realize that if I don’t have an ambitious plan for my garden—a plan that comes with priorities for this particular year ahead—nothing will ever change for the better. And I’m not talking just about what I can grow and “reap” in one season. Cultivating anything is a short- AND longterm process. This year’s growing plan includes specific native perennial plantings—augmenting existing meadows and wooded copses—with the goal of improving conditions for pollinators in a lasting way. Isn’t that what our political leadership is meant to do as well? Improve conditions for the greater good of us all in an ongoing way?
This year, I’m also hoping to avoid squash bugs, flea beetles and cabbage flies among my vegetables, expand my formal growing space by about 25 percent and add automatic irrigation. I’ve set the goal of growing an extra dozen bunches of greens each week to offer for sale locally, and giving any surplus vegetables as a donation to a local food pantry. I know I can achieve these things, but also realize it won’t necessarily be easy, that there will quite likely be delays, unanticipated problems. They’re not reasons to give up.
President Biden and Vice President Harris have an enormous leadership deficit to correct. They face their own kind of “pests”—in the form of Trump supporters who still believe untruths sown long before the most recent November election, or cultivating anything in the still rocky terrain of the Senate, as well as an unpredictable and partially rotting-on-the-vine Republican Party.
When I recall the power of Amanda Gorman’s, The Hill We Climb poem yesterday, I also recall a bit of this favorite, from Muriel Rukeyser. Both motivate me to bring the full promise of beginnings to this new season.
“…Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.
This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.”
—from Elegy in Joy [excerpt]
