{"id":3508777,"date":"2025-02-12T10:44:08","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T10:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3508777"},"modified":"2025-02-12T10:44:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T10:44:08","slug":"planting-seeds-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2025-02-12\/planting-seeds-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Planting Seeds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed. note: The short piece below is written as an introduction to a longer piece from Zia that will be forthcoming shortly. We are posting it separately because, as Zia’s husband says, “people need encouragement” in this time.<\/em><\/p>\n

For over two weeks now I have been struggling with writing an article about planting trees. But I got stuck. Even without reading the daily papers, I could not avoid the rage\/fear\/confusion about the current U.S. government\u2014those elected and not. My initial response was complete lethargy. Then a few days ago, at a small coffee bar in my village, on the omnipresent television screen was the sociopath-in-chief talking about taking over Gaza. (For what it’s worth, the caption was: \u201c\u2026\u00e8 ridiculo\u201d, which needs no translation.) I became angry. Not just with the political situation\u2026 angry with everyone who has ignored the environmental disaster-in-waiting for over fifty years. I came home, went into the garden, sat down on the earth and began to pound the soil with a hand hoe. And though I am an advocate of no-till and, with apologies to the billions of microorganisms I was injuring or perhaps destroying, I needed to be digging in the earth to find my balance. The soil was heavy and waterlogged from the amount of rain we have had but, amazingly, the energy I used to release my rage actually aerated the earth. I stood up, stepped back, and looked at that patch of ground. My anger had transformed the soil, the compacted water-saturated mud, into fine earth perfect for planting seeds. I grabbed a flat of fava bean seeds I was germinating, made holes in the soil with my fingers and stuck one bean seed in each hole. I watered them. The rage passed. I felt better. I felt productive. That was all I was capable of doing that entire afternoon… planting seeds. It was not lost on me that this was also a symbolic gesture. With the waxing moon, the cotyledons emerged within a few days. (Above) Triumph.<\/p>\n

And so, I plant. I keep pounding the ground, accompanied by several jars of saved seeds… I am lifted from my lethargy by the promise of arugula, endive, radicchio, lettuce, chicory… and resilience.<\/p>\n

I will continue planting seeds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And so, I plant. I keep pounding the ground, accompanied by several jars of saved seeds… I am lifted from my lethargy by the promise of arugula, endive, radicchio, lettuce, chicory… and resilience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3508793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79719,213531,79720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3508777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foodwater","category-food-water-featured","category-society"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3508777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3508777"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3508777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3508795,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3508777\/revisions\/3508795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3508793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3508777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3508777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3508777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}