Small, Good Thing (happy earth day)

It’s Earth Day, and I wanted to do something to commemorate it.

I couldn’t really think of anything to do, though, so I simply put on some workout clothes and hit the sidewalks, jogging down to the national mall where the trees and the grass are. After two days and three nights of rain, Earth really came through for me on its special day; it was sunny enough to make you squint.

This evening, I bought some organic vegetables and mushrooms from Whole Foods and made a spinach asparagus quiche. It was extra yummy. No big to-do, just a little nod toward the ground for producing such delicious and nutrient-rich food, when we let it do its thing.

In the spirit of Earth Day and spring, I also planted some vegetable seeds last Saturday. Carrots, radishes, beets and basil are beginning to sprout on my back deck, happily quenched by the weekend rain. I haven’t done any gardening, other than helping my mom and dad in our yard back home. But I’ve found that I love carefully figuring out when to plant which seeds, watering them every morning before I go to work, and planning how I can expand my small potted garden. Most of all, I love having a small hand in growing something.

I bought my seeds from an organization called Seed Savers Exchange. Their mission is to create a network of farmers and gardeners who save and share heirloom seeds, the kind that are passed down through families instead of spawned in laboratories.

“When people grow and save seeds, they join an ancient tradition as stewards, nurturing our diverse, fragile, genetic and cultural heritage,” the Seed Savers website explains. Saving seeds and exchanging them with others, farmer-to-farmer, protects the genetic diversity of our amazing living earth by helping to ensure that unique species don’t die out just because they aren’t planted by the major food production companies. Planting heirloom seeds could be the saving grace of our earth, if it ever catches on. Seeds that are harvested from healthy plants have the best resistance to diseases and pests that they’re ancestor seeds have been exposed to over the years, and are more likely to survive under harsh environmental conditions that their genetically modified counterparts.

But there’s an even stronger, deeper reason I love my container garden. It really is a miracle, the way I tucked a few dozen flee-sized seeds into soil last Saturday, put them in the sun, watered them and let the rain wash through them, and watched them poke up tiny sprouts before the week was up. With any luck, they’ll continue to grow, and I’ll get to be part of the network of people who grow some of their own food, keeping alive diverse species of vegetables that you can’t find at your local grocery store. (And hopefully eat some yummy vegetables while I’m at it!)

It’s easy, in our hectic world of smog and CO2 emissions, natural and human-caused disasters and daily news about global warming, to become an alarmist. It’s easy to get caught up in damage control, trying to use less gas, less water, less electricity, less packaging, less plastic, less paper. But sometimes it’s more life affirming to add to earth instead of subtract from it, to plant seeds, to make things grow.

Tags: container garden, earth, earth day, Food, garden, global warming, grow, heirloom vegetables, local, miracle, organic, quiche, recipe, seed savers, soil, vegetables, veggies