Greenhouse Effect

March is a splendid month in Colorado. The thick blankets of snow soak into the parched earth where life is beginning to awaken from its winter slumber. The natives are restless. We are birds flapping our wings against the cage door waiting for release into the temperate air.  

I attended a gardening class at the Denver Botanical Gardens a couple Saturdays ago. I am hoping to start small, maybe an herb garden and a raised bed or two. Lately I have been weirded out about all the garbage Americans consume. I like the idea of provenance:  knowing where something came from. There is value in knowing that the salsa I am eating came from my own garden. Our grandparents ate organically because food was organic back then. I don’t remember stories of “my Great Aunt Norma and her lactose intolerance” or “my Great-Grandmother Vincenza's aversion to gluten.” Back then people were fruitful, and they multiplied. Lately I have started to wonder if my own genetics have been modified.

Gardening is the great analogy of life: you plant a seed in rich soil and, with time and consistent nourishment, the seed sprouts, grows, bears fruit and the cycle of life begins again. We learned about phototropism, plants that visibly grow toward the light. Unlike full and rounded Elms or rosebushes, these plants have  arched spines and offshoots that are desperately outstretched toward the sun. I, too, am phototropic, desperately reaching and seeking the omnipresent Light. 

I love walking into nurseries. The tingly smell of fertilizer mixes with the earthy geraniums. Water features are lined up against the back wall, burbling zen-like,  competing with the steady whir of industrial fans. I used to think that these fans were meant to precisely mimic and regulate the climate of the very organism it was fanning. But we learned that those fans aid in a vital process called “strengthening.” The brisk air blows directly onto the fragile pansy and johnny-jump-ups so their stems will survive the transplant--so they can stand tall against the inevitable winds of life.  

Sometimes I don’t think I can take too much more wind. I retract and slink away into my cave. But if I expand my lens to see the bigger picture, I understand that maybe this wind is strengthening us. It is, in fact, equipping us to better weather this storm. 

My provenance is this: I am my mother and father’s daughter. I began as a seed and was germinated in the womb. I have received tremendous nourishment and am being strengthened by the winds of time. I grow and I seek the Light in hopes that one day, I, too, can bear fruit.