Hi! Farm season is starting and I’ve been busy planting seeds in the greenhouse for Star Apple Nursery. This is a new series I’m trying out here, where I will send a weekly letter documenting my time in the plant nursery. These will be more diary-like than my usual newsletters, and will likely be written in one sitting with minimal editing. I’m hoping this can be a space where I can bring my writing and land-based practices in closer conversation with each other. I’m looking forward to sharing more of my casual thoughts and some of the ~ emotional weather ~ I’m moving through each week.
Monday to Monday (3/3-3/10)
On March 3 I woke up feeling tender and reflective, still processing some social events from the weekend that had been perfectly lovely but also activated some feelings of insecurity, anxiety, overwhelm—as they do sometimes! Post beginning-of-pandemic socializing is hard; many of us are trying our best.
I received a grant for the 2025 nursery season, which I’m so grateful for. It’s nice to feel a little more resourced for the first time in a while. I had a bike accident at the end of last August that left me with a lot of injuries, including a broken eye socket bone and an eye injury that’s given me persistent double vision. I’ll be having two eye surgeries this spring and summer, but until then I can’t drive or bike on the street. Before receiving the grant I wasn’t sure if or how I would navigate transportation to the greenhouse site this year. Thanks to the funds, I’m able to pay friends to help with driving and other greenhouse tasks.
Building up stamina while biking the seven miles from West Philly to the greenhouse site in Kensington was a project of endurance that unfolded over two summers. I felt myself getting stronger, faster, sharper. I started beating the Google Maps ETA by at least five minutes. Regularly biking a fourteen-mile round trip gave me a sense of ease and satisfaction in a physical form I have had a tumultuous relationship with. It helped me remember to eat and drink enough, it gave me confidence in my capacity to move through discomfort and bring myself where I needed to be.
Like so many things after my accident, relying on others for greenhouse transport has been a humbling reminder of interdependence. But I miss the rush of accomplishment I’d feel after navigating the Benjamin Franklin Parkway traffic circle, I miss biking the slight uphills on Spring Garden and coasting on the long flat stretch of Delaware Ave that followed. I miss the ache in my thigh muscles and I miss the parts of myself I found on those long sweaty rides. Every season I’m aware that I have changed as a person, that I’m approaching the work with a different perspective and a different body than the year before. This year the change feels especially poignant—I have to learn how to get around in new ways, and it wasn’t my choice.
At the beginning of the week I planted a bunch of nightshades, including Plate de Haiti tomatoes, Aunt Lou’s Underground Railroad tomatoes, and chocolate scotchbonnet peppers from Sistah Seeds. I realized I need to order more sweet peppers; I’m always offering so many spicy varieties and I forget that not everyone likes the heat. I also started some lemongrass from Kitazawa Seeds. Lemongrass can be tricky to germinate but it’s a personal favorite of mine.
I’ve been reacquainting myself with the particular kind of quiet that comes with working in the greenhouse. I’m not alone—there are the cats and the birds and the seedlings and the dogs passing by outside the fence and the wind blowing over the top of the greenhouse plastic. But there’s not much talking to be done. While seeding the tomatoes and peppers I listened to the audiobook of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr. It’s a fascinating history—in the section I was listening to, Immerwahr discusses how extractive colonial farming practices led the United States to expand its imperial reach into South America, in search of guano to fertilize depleted soil.
On Wednesday morning my friend Deja picked me up again to drive to the greenhouse. At home, I had been reading Carvell Wallace’s memoir Another Word for Love on Libby and continuing to work through some of my feelings from the weekend. You know how sometimes a little emotional spiral becomes a bigger spiral? By midweek I was asking myself questions like, Am I making the most of my opportunities for social connection and care? Do I actually believe—on a bodily level and not just theoretically—that I can be covered in a love that is expansive and nonjudgmental? I was going through it a little but I was grateful for the call to self-reflection.
There’s something about reading a book where the author writes about their trauma in ways that are deeply compassionate, wise, and matter-of-fact. Encountering media like that sometimes leads me to uncover my own long-repressed memories, or at least find new ways to narrativize and think about them. Thanks Carvell. Anyway, I’d been thinking about a moment I had as a younger person that plays a large part in how I relate to feelings of insecurity and comparison today. I was thinking about the reasons I was told I wasn’t good enough, and how that limited my understanding of what kinds of care were possible. I processed some of this with my beautiful Pisces friend on the drive (thanks Deja), fought with the sticky combination lock at the greenhouse site, and started work for the day.
The rest of the week, I continued to seed nightshades and herbs, sterilize seeding trays, and organize my area of the greenhouse. The greenhouse is unheated and I’ve been worried about low nighttime temperatures. I briefly considered covering some of the trays with cling wrap or another kind of plastic covering. By Monday, March 10, it was sweltering inside the greenhouse, and the weather forecast showed temperatures in the 60s for at least the next seven days. It was sunny enough that I started thinking about wearing sunscreen in the greenhouse, so I felt more confident in the germination conditions.
On March 10, I seeded Ethiopian kale and shiso while listening to the March forecast episode of The Astrology Podcast. The conclusion seems to be that March will be a tumultuous time in the skies, and probably for us here on earth. It’s almost eclipse season babyyyy.
The air tasted like spring and I was feeling romantic despite the podcast’s discussion of dire sociopolitical conditions and the ways historical patterns have corresponded to celestial ones. I texted some friends asking for recommendations of songs or poems that were sensual and horny. And here is where I will leave you: a body, wanting. Hands in the wet soil.
I loved reading this. We're starting seeds at the cooperative garden/farm I'm a part of in Brooklyn, feels like connective tissue. Thank you :)