When To Dream

For many years, I would begin to dream of what my growing space would look like months in advance. I would plan out the garden beds or the plots and imagine what the crops would look like through the upcoming seasons. It was a time full of anticipation. After years of growing though, some of those dreams have dwindled. I no longer find it as inspiring to plan for the upcoming year. As I mentioned in the past post, there's more awareness of what can go wrong just as much as there is hope for what can go right. Amidst that struggle, it can be hard to dream.

But, there is one thing that awakens dreams for me each year and that is to walk on the land. There is a grounding experience that can only take place when I am standing outside. There is hope in the trees, there is hope in the blades of grass, there is hope in the birds, there is even hope in the cold wind. It is then that I feel responsible for acting on, if not my own hope, but the hope of the ecosystem around me. If I don't dream for myself, I have to dream for them. As a steward of the land, it is my responsibility to bring my creative energy to this space in this time. That is where dreams become essential to moving forward.

Dreaming of what to grow in the upcoming season doesn't take a lot of resources. There have been times where I relied on free seeds from seed libraries and soil gathered from the ground mixed with manure scrapped from farmer friends and recycled containers for pots. The gathering of those resources all came from dreams that I had before the growing season began and it was those dreams that put everything into motion. Dreams of what I can do with whatever I have puts a glint in my eye. Dreams are what give me a reason to do what I do. And even though I have come up with a lot of failures from acting on those dreams, I have had a couple of successes that gave my dreams the credit they deserved. Like the dream I had of being able to pluck fresh cherry tomatoes and eat them right away on a nice summer evening.

Sometimes, in the middle of the process, I will lose sight of my dreams. During my first year on the farm, one of my biggest dreams was to see butterflies return to the land. I was so caught up in the details of what needed to be done that I hadn't noticed that my dream had come true until my neighbor came out and said "I haven't seen butterflies out here like this in over forty years". This last year, I almost missed my dream of seeing hummingbirds because I was moving around too much to notice their tiny little bodies flitting from one zinnia to the next. A lot of my dreams don't include material success, but for some reason, I get so caught up in that success that I forget the dreams that had put all of this into motion. I forget what inspired me to do any of this.

There is an anticipatory hum outside when spring starts to show its first signs. I think that does have something to do with the dreams we growers start having this time of year—especially those of us who live in places with long winters. I found myself thinking of worms in the soil the minute I heard a robin chirping this morning. That eventually led to me thinking about getting the soil ready in the next few weeks. Somehow I started to dream about pepper seeds and tomato seeds along with sweet peas. That robin said a lot to me and now I've got all kinds of dreams putting me into motion.

So even though I'm not as excited as I have been in years past, there are hopeful signs around me. And that is what I need to get started. I wish everyone good dreams of a wonderful season ahead that will bring us all our own version of joy in our growing spaces.