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.
I’m writing this while sitting at my floor desk on Wednesday night. I had several kinds of electrolyte drinks today and the slightly chemical aftertaste of synthetic lemon, lime, and berry lingers on my tongue. Today was the first really hot day in the greenhouse this season; when I got there in the morning, the thermometer was reading over a hundred degrees. Over the weekend it was overcast and cool, and I was worried about the greenhouse being too cold for the tomatoes and peppers. Today I immediately pivoted to worrying about it being too hot for the spring greens (bok choy, mustards, collards). In the absence of electricity, I did as much manual temperature regulation as I could: rolling up and clamping the plastic sides of the greenhouse, opening the doors to get a breeze going, moving the greens to shelves in a cooler area of the space. I was on the phone with my friend Janine for a while, and we were both craving honey butter chips.
Janine walked to Hmart in pursuit of chips while I put together an order on Weee. Eventually I had a small but inspiring array of items in my cart, including the Filipino crab paste I’ve been looking everywhere for. The thermometer was still reading close to a hundred. I was sweating a lot, buoyed by the promise of future salty snacks.
This past week I took public transit to the greenhouse site for the first time. Looking at the route on a map made me tired: a trolley to a train to a bus, an hour or more of travel. The first day I made this trip it was warm outside, and I listened to Aretha Franklin’s “Hello Sunshine” on repeat while the El went aboveground. It felt better than I expected, although the fatigue from sensory overstimulation, standing, and other things hit me the next day. I was reminded that my stamina for being on public transit has decreased since I moved to Philly and started biking or driving most places (or have I just become more aware of my body and brain’s limitations?). I experienced the feeling I sometimes do, where I remove my headphones in public and the noise of the world comes flooding in and I wonder how I deal with this level of sound on a routine basis, with nothing in my ears to shield me.
One of my favorite moments from the week was when I looked up from my chair by the seed trays and saw the white and orange cat stretched out quietly on the other side of the greenhouse. They were just chilling, and they’d never been chill around me before. It made me feel the passage of time, the ways I’ve been slowly building a relationship with this site and its inhabitants for the past two years. There’s a sense of belonging I get when other creatures let down their guard around me. I try to be worthy of their trust.
This week I continued listening to the audiobook for How to Hide an Empire. I listened to a lot of soca, which gave me a kind of frantic energy in the heat of the greenhouse (it was nice, and reminded me of being in Trinidad during carnival season). I started listening to this episode of the Death Panel podcast, about how the supposed precarity and insolvency of the social welfare system in the U.S. is mostly a lie.
Every year I worry that I’ve somehow forgotten how to grow a plant, or that the seeds will unanimously decide not to germinate. That’s not true this year, once again. The newest seeds to germinate are the most recent round of spring greens.
As much as it’s about birth and new life, spring nursery season always makes me think about death. Spring brings into sharp relief the compost and rot required to make life, the cover crop tilled into the soil to make way for planting, the inevitable seedlings that wilt or die. I feel closer to the whole life cycle when I’m working with plants during the warmer months. I’ve been ignoring a pungent smell by the water spigot, assuming it was a decomposing thing that would soon leave scentless bones behind. Today the farm manager confirmed my suspicions, telling me that she thinks a squirrel or raccoon died. As someone who has fears about death and decomposition, working on farm sites has led me to confront these parts of the life cycle, inviting me to be with them in uncomfortably close quarters. All around us, there are living things emerging from the earth and bodies returning to the earth, negotiating gravity with stems and roots, feet and spines, wondering when it’s safe to stretch out quietly in the presence of another, leaving a stench, making a fuss, reaching for water, bending towards light.
happy spring equinox! thank you for your share.