Seed Magic Part V: The Price of Admission

From the view on the porch, I watched the bunnies play. They slipped through the long grasses and the thicker patches now exposed to the sun in a way unfelt when the trees were full. I couldn’t remember the last time I posted a blog article in this series. I had to check. The answer was January of 2021. It had been a year and half. Still, on Father's Day, it seemed as appropriate as anything, and more intentional than some things. The alfalfa swatch down our east-west fence line now grew thick. Not all the oaks my dad had planted last year survived the winter, but many did. their roots broke the ground for other variations to soon follow. The practical was weaving its way through dreams. Though I did not have a Father's Day celebration today, I had sent an email I hoped could be one by next year.

A former colleague had stayed with me earlier in the week. She was the first guest who slept in the bunk beds I bought so that my nephews could identify one of the rooms in our house as their own. They had yet to visit, because of COVID. I made up the bed with faded floral sheets instead of the new ones I wanted to reflect their quickly changing interests. So, I had waited. We waited. The room had waited, until this week. My former colleague wasn’t the guest I wanted to use the room, but it was a step. It was a step like the ones my nephew had finally taken. These were steps that only a few days apart in video had quickened and gained confidence. We’re crawling. We had been crawling, but we needed to gain momentum, like my nephew.

My friend recently started her own business restoring land, primarily shorelines, and needed to get an early start at a nearby workshop. She explained some of her business growing pains. One comment had resonated with me. “It’s about the plan and the work.”

There were alternative ways to divide up the steps I had feared, and when needed, pay for both, as needed. I couldn’t explain why I had never considered this fact. I had a similar experience with Hebrew. In that case, my immediate family had not been able to support my language learning. In this case, my extended family was not available to contribute to the land’s next step. And, there were people who could get me started, at least for a fee.

I returned to the view outside the porch window. It was flat. It was on the corn year of its artificial cycle. In addition to the drooping leaves was the shadow of the irrigator gleaming sharp and tall. But, was another gray body that caught my eye. A bunny. Actually there were two. Instead of spending money on a vacation to travel to another's land, I could invest in the land around me. Like the words I gathered to me daily, the seeds too, once planted had the chance to be kept. Like the words, not all would take root, but it would be a start. I might have been waiting for a magic wand to change things and in the meantime, the rabbits, along with uncounted birds, had returned.

“They raise their young just under the tufts of grass. You can mow right over them and not even know it. I loved my bunnies I raised.” I heard my dad’s nostalgia in my head. Both the past and future were surrounded by imaginings.

I did not need to be the magician, nor the assistant to pull more rabbits from a hat. By paying the price of admission, I could marvel at the magic without learning, without seeing, all the strings.