The Liberation of the Worms
A few days ago, I woke up at the same time as usual to notice a strange light emanating from the living space outside my bedroom. I am used to it being light when I wake up, although I’m awake very early, as in this region, at this time of year, the sun doesn’t truly ever set. It goes down below the horizon around 11pm, I believe, but doesn’t make it far enough down to darken the sky fully, so it feels more like an extended dusk. However, this morning, the light was different. It had been raining for a few days prior, so I was getting used to the gray, bleak light caused by the dense covering of rain clouds, but that morning the light seemed softer and strangely familiar. I looked out the window and there was a thick blanket of snow covering the ground, which was a mighty surprise considering the fact that it is June and the summer solstice is not far away. In the weather’s defense, my elevation is quite high (954m/3130 ft) and it had been fairly cold. A familiar feeling crept through me that morning, similar to the one I get at Christmastime, typically spent in the Canada mountains with family. This feeling lingered for some time until the temperature warmed up, the snow melted, and the mosquitoes reappeared from whatever snowy cave they escaped to during this time.
Fortunately, I had not transplanted any of the seedlings to the garden at this time, they were sitting safe and warm in my cabin. However, I was starting to feel like it was time to move them to their more permanent home, especially when I noticed that one of the worms amongst the seedlings was trying to escape out of the seed tray. I had to half-bury it amongst the dirt to coax it back into the soil, but realized that perhaps these worms, as well as the seedlings, needed a bit more space to stretch out their long bodies/roots. Putting the seedlings in the ground was a task that was causing me considerable anxiety because I knew that it would be a big job, as well as the fact that the swarms of mosquitoes are growing larger in size every day. I heard recently that one mama mosquito can have an average of two thousand babies! I have been meaning to look this up, but perhaps someone can tell me if mosquitoes have any positive benefit for the earth? My only thought is that they could be food for bats, birds, and spiders. Although the job was weighing on me a bit, I decided this morning that it was time. I pulled on my bug jacket and pants, grabbed the seedlings, and got to work.
It ended up being quite an enjoyable task. Although the bug jacket can be a little warm, it is wonderful protection from the mosquitoes and allowed me to have a fairly peaceful time moving the little seedlings. I put them in rows and around the beds I distributed seeds of the different flowers that I had been given. One thing that has been blowing my mind quite a bit since I started gardening is how different and beautiful all of these seeds are. Kale seeds are very simple, black, and around, but the Calendula flower seeds looked like tiny studded dry worms, and the Marvel of Peru flower seeds looked like tiny versions of a relic one might see in a Buddhist monastery. I didn’t look close enough but I like to imagine that the seeds have tiny quotes on them such as “may all beings be happy”. Once I was finished with the garden designing, I felt quite satisfied, albeit a little nervous. Though I don’t know how this actually feels, I feel like I have dropped my children off at their first day of school. I have been taking care of them for a month now and got quite attached.
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Furthermore, as the sun has started to shine more as well as having had significant amounts of rain, the plants are now starting to sprout out of the ground as well as show their leaves. One thing I am very interested in is going out and foraging for wild edible plants. I am slowly learning what is around me and what is possible to eat. The most successful I have been with this is with harvesting dandelion greens (if you get them when they are young, they are less bitter than when they are older) as well as fireweed, which are quite delicious. Foraging for edible mushrooms is something that I became fascinated with last year, though unfortunately it is not the right time of year for any of these to come up here, though I can see remnants of last year’s autumnal mushroom crop that were frozen over the winter.
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| Delicious fireweed picked from the forest |
I have been here about a month now, which is quite hard to believe. So far, it has been fairly quiet, with a low amount of fires in all of Alberta due to cold weather and rain but it seems like that is starting to change. Due to this lull in fiery activity, I have had a lot of time to be down in the cabin or exploring the nature around me. It has been very helpful to me to have this time to relax and be by myself, though that can also be difficult at times. Every day I seem to be learning more about how to really love myself and not push myself too hard, something which I have always had a tendency to do. It’s a nice thing, and I hope that this is something that many people have learnt to varying degrees during this quiet time of lockdowns and society shutdowns. I appreciate you reading this. It is a lovely way for me to connect with people that I don’t talk to often. As one of the little Buddhist relic seeds in my garden might say, “may you be happy, peaceful and free from any misery”.
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