Well, maybe not walked, more like crawled. And not exactly a field, more like a grassy park area next to picnic tables. There was a field adjacent, a baseball field belonging to an elementary school. Gold though, there was plenty of gold. We caught peak dandelion. Within less than half an hour, we had filled our bowl with some of the largest dandelion flowers we had ever seen. Our hands and knees were yellow with pollen. I thanked the dandelions for their generosity, and home we went.

Then I spent most of the rest of the day picking the flower petals off. My fingers were sore and stained dark yellow, but I was happy. James made three pints of dandelion jelly and put two of them in the freezer. The other one we’ve been eating–so delicious!

There were lots of petals leftover, so James added some to our Sunday morning sourdough waffles. The rest are frozen in the freezer and might be made into more jelly or baked into muffins and other treats.

This weekend the samaras are helicoptering off Silver Maple in my front garden. Last year there were so many all I had to do was sit on my front porch and pick them up. This year there aren’t as many and the majority have already been eaten by squirrels. So I spent a lot of time walking through the yard hunched over with my ass in the air (hi neighbors!) for only a small bowl. I will gather more as I can to try and fill the bowl before I start shelling them.

While it was nice enough last weekend to pick dandelion flowers, it was not nice enough to plant any seeds or indoor starts. It was chilly and night low temperatures were around 40F. Which means this weekend is plant all the things weekend.

Friday I transplanted the tomatoes I started indoors. There are four of them. And, for my indoor/outdoor experiment, I planted four seeds to see if direct sown tomatoes will grow stronger and just as fast as those started indoors. I must say I am skeptical, especially since two of the transplants already have flowers on them. But, I am curious to see what happens. While planting the tomatoes, I seeded carrots in the same bed.

I also transplanted a couple habanero peppers I started indoors, a bunch of French marigolds, a ground cherry, and a luffa.

Saturday was thundery in the morning, hot and humid in the afternoon, so we waited until early evening when most of the sun was out of the garden to plant some seeds: Iroquois skunk pole beans, Marina pumpkin, scarlet runner beans, Dickinson pumpkin, and Hopi black dye sunflowers.

Today we planted seeds for cantaloupe, yellow crookneck squash, zucchini, bush beans, fortex pole beans, black-eyed peas, nasturtium, zinnias, calendula, amaranth, more sunflowers (spreading them around is my strategy to keep the squirrels from finding them all), Kentucky wonder pole beans, and black beans (actually planted ones from out cupboard, an experiment to see how well they sprout).

The whole garden is planted. Now it’s water, weed, and wait.

Seed Savers Exchange hosted four sessions on seed rematriation starting back at the end of January and I finally just made the time to watch the first session. Wow! One of the panelists, Dr. Rebecca Webster, citizen of the Oneida Nation, said something that went deep into my heart. In speaking about why seed rematriation is so important, she said that the seeds are their relatives and the Oneida people and their seed relatives had been separated and dispersed. Bringing the seeds home is reuniting family members.

And I thought, how beautiful and wonderful it is to have seed relatives, and how beautiful and wonderful that the Oneida people can welcome them home. I desperately want to live in a world that acknowledges seeds as relations instead of commodities. The relationship, the reciprocity in recognizing that beings other than humans are relatives, seeds as relatives. I see them too often as commodities, something I need to buy. And then I stick them in the ground and hope for the best. I don’t think of seeds or the plants they grow into as relations. I think of the seeds as things. The plants I see as alive and acknowledge a mutual dependence–they need me to care for them and I need them to eat–but that is as far as it goes. I would like to change this relationship.

I cannot claim any seeds as relatives, this would be cultural appropriation of the worst kind. I can, however, change my relationship with seeds (and plants) and work towards a friendship. And maybe, someday, they can be aunties (in my family unrelated good friends who are female sometimes got to be auntie). It’s going to take a lot of work on my part. Slowing down and paying attention is the place to start I think.

I already failed at it today. I watched the video yesterday and determined to do better, but did I? Nope. When we went out to plant seeds this afternoon I didn’t stop and think and acknowledge them. I just barreled out into the garden and stuck them in the ground. No thank you, no well wishes, just cover with soil and move on to the next seed.

I am not a good friend. This is going to be hard.

I have three more Seed Savers Exchange sessions on seed rematriation to watch. Hopefully it will begin to sink in a little by the last one. And in case you are wondering, yes, I have read the novel The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson and yes, it is about seed rematriation, though it is not given a name in the book. It is a good story, both heartbreaking and hopeful.

Car-Free Update

So we got an offer on our car last week and it is almost as much as we paid for it five years ago! If you want to sell your car and not buy another one, now is the time. There is a shortage of cars apparently. We sold the car to AllCars. Friday we filled out the paperwork and had it notarized. We have to overnight the paperwork but because of the weekend and the holiday this won’t happen until Tuesday, so they will get it Wednesday. Then they send us a check. When the check clears the bank, they come pick up the car. We are hoping it is all done by the end of the week. We can hardly wait.

We went grocery shopping on our bikes for the second time this morning. It was smoother than the first time. I expect next time it will be even better and pretty soon we won’t have to think about it. We did have to go later than we had planned due to a thunderstorm, but that’s all part of the adventure. We just shifted around the order of the day, no big deal. And now that I have gotten more practice riding Esme (e-cargo bike), I am more comfortable and balanced. I even managed to roll her down and up the porch ramp. Woo hoo!

Reading

• Monkeypox fears. This article made me think a bit about why monkeypox is getting so much attention when the cases are so few and not easily transmissible. It’s about money.
• Your Money is Your Carbon by Bill McKibben. If you have a 401(k) or equivalent, where is your money invested? If you use a bank, where does your bank invest your money? And businesses and corporations, what is their money doing?
• A great article from the Guradian about why the future cannot be nuclear.
• Inflamed by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel. This is a fantastic book about health, colonialism, and the intersection of the two. Dare I say everyone should read it?

Listening

• Hot Take podcast Down Uterus, Down Girl! with Rebecca Solnit Abortion, climate change, and patriarchy.
• Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett (audiobook)

Watching

• Star Trek: New Worlds. I’m liking it pretty well. Captain Pike is good, Spock is good. The young Uhura is wonderful. And I love the ship pilot/navigator Erica Ortegas played by Melissa Navia–she’s smart, snarky, good at her job and she knows it and owns it.