When my youngest was little, he wanted to plant every seed he got out of every piece of fruit he’d eat. If he ate an apple, he’d want to plant apple trees. Pears, oranges, lemons, whatever. Sometimes he’d even find a random, very dead stick and put it in the ground, and he’d water it hoping for it to grow.
He gets it honest. His grandmother is a UGA Master Gardener, and I’m pretty sure she is part Hobbit. She loves dark, rich soil and any plants she can grow in it. She doesn’t have a lot of space for a garden, but she turns her yard into a beautiful space with flowers, herbs, vegetables, and berries.
Every year I grow a few tomatoes and peppers in pots. This year I got really ambitious and started plants from seeds. Now I have a whole garden’s worth of tomatoes and peppers!
And watching those little seedlings come up is ridiculously exciting. Then watching them get bigger and bigger. I just love it. I can’t wait until they get those first blooms and you know the fruit is coming.
I also decided I wanted to have a few elderberries, but I wasn’t sure I could have them in this planting zone. But looking on Etsy, I found a grower in Florida that would send some stem cuttings, and I decided to give them a try. And they sent me sticks. Literally, they were sticks.
But I stuck them in some good soil, and watered them like crazy. It felt a little silly, honestly, and I thought back to my sweet baby boy putting those sticks in the ground and hoping for them to grow. But guess what?! They did grow.
And they grew,
and grew.
And I recently repotted one, and when I pulled it from the pot, the roots were everywhere!
I felt like Tom Hanks in the movie castaway when he said, “I have made fire!!”
I told the little plant with great surprise and profound joy, “You were a stick!!!”
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