What Needs Tending

When the world is noisy and frenetic and buzzing, it's good to know there's an escape. A quiet place where time is slower, where things are simpler, meaningful, treasured. I'll take my pause and dip into these slow, rich moments. Give me a sun-lit morning with water-flecked plants and lengths of willow left from the recent fence-building project, and I feel my soul at peace. (Don't know about the willow fence? You might want to sign up for the newsletter. Wink.) Let me prepare for planting, marking names like Early Girl on pale new wood, each stem of willow for telling what and where, lest I forget.

And I wonder, maybe we were oringinally meant to tend our food because we needed the tending. We needed to care for something that would care for us. We needed the quiet, the green, the water, the soil, the gentle sun. We needed to watch something that received our effort and grew right before our eyes. We needed to taste the work of our hands before we'd forgotten why we'd set our hands to work.

It doesn't take a whole garden; a single basil leaf can change your day. One whiff of a tomato plant can settle what needs settling. A slender green onion can brighten the morning's eggs. How exquisite. How beautifully simple. Divine, actually.

Loves, even if you all you have is a windowsill or a doorstep, find a clay pot, fill it with soil, tuck in a flowering plant, an herb, a vegetable. Tend what needs tending.