The magic of gardening

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a witch. That was going to be my job when I grew up. I had a leather bound spell book with all of my most potent spells. I was pretty sure that if I tried hard enough I could talk with animals. And I loved being outside, in my little garden, planting and digging. For me, it was magical. I would put a tiny seed in the ground and months later it would become something new and different and it would grow and change, only to die and be reborn again the next year.

I feel that same magic now when I garden, although I’m more patient, and in some ways even more excited when a new plant takes root. I’ve talked before about the importance of native plants, and a couple years ago had planted a few Great Camas plants. Great Camas is an amazing plant. It’s a traditional food source of indigenous tribes along the upper west coast of north america and has even been used as currency for trade. It’s an absolutely beautiful plant with long, glossy, deep green leaves and stunning dark purple flowers that grow on a tall stalk. They’re so important to the local ecosystem, so when I planted the few that I found at the nursery I was very excited. A couple of them promptly died, but one survived. And this year, she actually set seed! So now I get the honor of taking these seeds and spreading them around the garden. Where there was one plant I may now have many, many more. For me that very much feels like magic. It’s this slow transformation, much of which we cannot see, but over time it grows and becomes something new. I gave up on being a witch once I learned that you, sadly, could not go to school for it. But often, when I’m in my garden, I listen to the buzz of the bees and the chickadees calling. I see the soft green shoots of new plants and I think to myself, this is the true magic. And now, for just this moment, I’m the witch that I always knew I could be.