Dear Carrot Friends it is time to order your free carrot seeds.

Over the last few weeks, as I looked at my garden and spring has arrived after a hard winter here in Hull, I have been disheartened by the lack of work I did in the garden this past fall and winter. For the first time in over twenty-five years, I did not gather seaweed and lay it on top of the soil. I can see the impact of this inaction when I look at patches of bare soil and at the street around the garden where I see eroded soil from the garden.

I am disappointed that in my retrenchment and grief after we elected Donald Trump, I did not care for the soil as well as I usually do. While I have practiced the advised gardening methods to develop and maintain healthy soil and grow food for the past 28 years in Hull I did not do it this year. There are still plenty of living roots in undisturbed soil and most of the garden is covered by mulch from other years and not all was bad but I was not the steward of the land I usually am and work to be.

In my reaction to living in a country where a little over half of the voters choose a government which among many plans vowed to roll back actions intended to mitigate climate change, I retreated and did less when I wish I had done more. Now that it is the end of March instead of having lots of food growing under cold frames and beginning to eat food I have grown, I will need to wait to eat food I have grown this year. I have to acknowledge that and move on and begin again. In the cycle of the garden, spring is when we begin again.

Speaking about beginning again I am a huge fan of Sharon Salzberg the Buddhist meditation teacher. One of her central teachings is the idea of beginning again. She writes, “The invitation to begin again (and again and again) that meditation affords is an invitation for the practice of self-compassion — to heal through letting go rather than harming ourselves with cycles of self-doubt, judgment, and criticism. Beginning again is a powerful form of resilience training.” In this passage, she explicitly advises us on how to respond to our wandering minds within the practice of meditation, but she often brings this same concept to all of life. As she says when we begin again we strengthen our resilience and we need resilience right now.

Spring is a beginning again.

We are beginning again when we plant a garden, no matter the season. Please order your free carrot seeds here and begin again being a member of a community of growers of our own food.

While I hope I do not respond to dangerous events by again doing less and neglecting the soil in the garden, one winter of poor gardening does not undo 28 years of good practices. When I did put seeds in the ground a few weeks ago, the soil was beautiful and healthy. Rome was not built in a day, nor is it destroyed in a day.

Hope you have a great year, and if there is any way you can grow any of your own food, please do.