Sowing Seeds

There is a young gal who comes around my house selling bread pudding and coconut crust every now and again. This is pretty common for moms to bake and send the kids around in order to make some extra dollars. My friend Olga is about 11 years old and used to come to my old house. Eventually she figured out where I moved and started hitting me up there. I’ve learned that the bread pudding tastes funny like fish and isn’t to be consumed by my lips but the coconut crust is usually a nice afternoon treat. One day she came by selling pudding and she was carrying as well a bucket of beans. Apparently someone who also didn’t want the pudding gave her beans instead of money. Olga didn't really want beans though as she said her mother already had plenty of them. Beans are, after all, a staple in the Belizean diet. She asked me to take some from her to make her load lighter. After putting some in a container for myself, she then proceeded to throw beans around, which landed in the small patch of earth outside my front door. I laughed and then asked her to stop, not really wanting a mountain of beans to clean up. Of course I didn’t clean them up but forgot about them once she went on her way, selling to other neighbors. A week later, in checking on my little flowers planted earlier I noticed that a bunch of beans had begun to sprout and climb the fence. More seeds have been sown and another garden is being grown. And of course, always with the kids who seem pleasantly interested in their environment, which for the meantime includes me. 

The garden here at the House of Culture is growing quite well. The tomato plants are HUGE and they’re finally popping out babies. The squash plants have beautiful flowers which bees are seen getting quite intimate with. The carrots are growing deep, I just know it and the celery, well, they were planted too far into a shady area and too close together but they just keep on growing, slowly but surely. New seedlings just greeting this fresh green world include a variety of peppers, eggplant and a cabbage seed – the latter kindly  donated by a high school student doing community service. My life has become so much about gardening its kind of ridiculous. Seed packets litter my desk and seed cups litter the back porch area. And usually about 3pm I can be seen sitting around with kids, watering the garden, pulling weeds or teaching lessons about organic gardening, composting with worms, or painting the garden beds, making things look more creative. Overall, its not a bad way to spend my time. 

I'll post some new pictures next week.