Starting Seeds

08/05/2023

purple peas may be my new standard. So much easier to find among the vines than normal peas!

27/04/2023

purple + green

20/02/2023

Cleaned out two of the four* beds, added compost, and took down big weeds in the . Here’s some photos of the various stages, honestly it’s been my first time really working the garden since I got COVID last May. Grateful to be feeling well enough to move soil.

The front 4x8 has onions and shallots in it, the back 4x4 has been a workhorse (watermelons volunteered there last summer) so I’m going to let it lay fallow. Planted frost hardy things just in case we get another cold snap. So carrots, peas, spinach, beets, celery, and radishes. Honestly some of that seed is old, so we’ll just see what decides to come up!

Also pictured: neighborhood cat Peeta, a grub that I chucked into the street. 🤷🏽‍♀️

*I still have the herb beds, asparagus barrels, and a variety of small containers to wrestle with. But four beds makes me feel better about the work to do, ha!

19/02/2023

Like most of you, warm weather means I feel like creating things again. 😂

Plotting out a general plan for the 2023 garden: spring, summer, winter. This helps me think through crop rotation for nutrient and pest/disease management, but mostly is meant to give me a roadmap. Often, when I don’t have a plan, I get lost and overwhelmed, so I try to do a little of ahead-work and think through what I absolutely want for me instead of going to the store and panic-buying whatever happens to look pretty.

Don’t worry, I’ll still do the latter, but atleast I have bumper rails.

What are you planting this year? Do you try to look ahead or do you just take it one day at a time?

(I am also loving the Freeform app on the iPad iOS 16, it is making this templating so easy instead of having to fight a pen and paper or static online document!)

24/01/2023

21/01/2023

some of the pictures I find are long. You have to >tap< the screen to get the whole image. Thanks for understanding

19/01/2023

hi my loves, we’re back recording eps. I’m sorry for the break, it’s been a wild couple of months, but also…nothing blooms year-round, eh?

Expect another set of episodes early next month! Love you! 🌱💚

03/12/2022

hey y’all :) still here, just took a little break. I was maybe a little ambitious and thought I’d be able to be consistent through changing jobs and traveling, holidays, and also a little sickness. Turns out, it’s not just me! Our interviewees have been unavailable too. Eh, life happens! I have a long list of folks to interview still and hope you’re enjoying our first couple of guests.

Thank you for the support and talk to you soon. 💚🌱

13/11/2022

Episode 4: up today! Listen wherever you like your pods (YouTube linked below) to hear and El on how we maintain balance in our lives when we're prone to burn hot, how we grow when we're met with trouble, and how we can take care of ourselves while actively taking care of the world around us.

We spent a lot of time talking about roots and resilience, building our communities and habits to help us become and stay established even when disaster finds its way. 💚🌱

https://youtu.be/mmSS8pa78bY

30/10/2022

Episode 3 up now. We're talking about caring for others, caring for plants, and caring for kids, and all of the joy and grief, successes and failures that come with it.

25/10/2022

Planting lil baby seed onions today. Look, how tiny!!! I don’t much care for the white ones so I’m not gonna plant them. (She says, knowing that if she has them around she will attempt to sneak them into open spots in other beds)

25/10/2022

Follow causes.com for more!

22/10/2022

Driving today, listening to What Happened To You by on .

I was inspired to read it after recording for our podcast with Dr. , in which we talked about and as well as childhood ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) and what we can do as individuals to help heal ourselves, our families, and our communities.

If you haven’t read this book, Hoopla Is an app that many public libraries provide access to, providing audiobooks, ebooks, music, and comics. It makes many of my trips more pleasant.

If you want a physical copy and live in the central Georgia area, send me a DM, I’ll see what I can do!

18/10/2022

“Plant a garden, play a board game!”

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to Forrest’s interview, we joked that this was the quote I was going to use for him, so here it is , forever in history. 🙂

Ironically, we also talked with another guest , about board games recently (to be published soon!). Are a love for board games a sign of the times, or is it a thing people with gardens like? They are a great way to connect with others, to think creatively and strategically, and to allow for play in our otherwise busy lives.

Forrest recommended PARKS. What are your favorite board games? 💚🌱

16/10/2022

In our first interview is up, available anywhere you listen or on YouTube here:

https://youtu.be/unCoD5Qolsg

Join us this morning as we talk with Forrest (and Dave) about finding balance in the ways we interact with our communities, no matter where we are, our experience, or our abilities.

14/10/2022

“I think the things that I've learned from my garden is: it's okay to just take life as it comes to you.

Like, I feel like sometimes we're always like pushing to the next thing, pushing to the next thing and pushing to the next thing. And like, stuff will grow if you just leave it alone, and you just let it happen to you. Um, life doesn't stop and sometimes you'll

get that little carrot out of the weeds. Um, you know, it's, it's okay to not harvest your tomatoes every day, and just let some things die on the vine, that's okay. Uh, life is gonna happen. It happens to your garden. It'll happen to you. And we'll all just be okay at the end. Turn, turn your soil over at the end of the season and grow something new next year.”

——

Excited to drop our first interview this Sunday. In addition to Dave, here’s a little snippet from Forrest on lessons learned in the mud: take life as it comes to you, you don’t have to keep pushing. Just learn from it, turn the soil over, and plant something new next year.

See y’all Sunday morning. 🌱

12/10/2022

Dropping this Sunday | 9am ET | Meet DAVE

it’s Dave’s world and we’re just living in it.

Join Dave and Dave’s good human, Forrest, as we talk about getting started where you are, living as a part of community and…potato berries?!

See you then. 🌱

08/10/2022

end of the summer season for the , clean up is always bittersweet. what are y’all planting for your fall gardens?

02/10/2022

Today’s the day! First episode of Starting Seeds is officially up. Come throw hands (in the mud) and let’s see what we can learn together.

This weeks’ episode is just a primer, we have some amazing and interesting guests that you’ll meet in our time together and I hope you will find the same delight, learning, and challenges in these conversations as I have.

Grab a cup of coffee or tea and buzz over to YouTube (linked below) or anywhere you like to listen to your pods.

https://youtu.be/0Rs8E7AJieA

25/09/2022

Been doing a little traveling so no garden pictures but still editing our first couple episodes. :)

18/09/2022

Contrary to what this photo might lead you to believe, we didn’t choose to plant watermelon in the this year. They just decided to grace us with their presence. What has in your this year?

What else has shown up unexpectedly in your life that you’ve chosen to cultivate even if you didn’t ask for it?

15/09/2022

Recorded our first two interviews this week and my cohost only turned off the recording three times. She’ll probably make appearances because I am a prisoner in my own home, but she’s sweet so I hope you’ll enjoy her cameos.

Getting super excited for what we’re going to realize together with Starting Seeds after our first guests and can’t wait to share it with you.

We’ll officially release our first episode (it’s already up if you want to ruin the surprise or give us a follow!) at 10am ET Sunday October 2, with biweekly releases following. Looking forward to sitting down with you all as friends, gardeners, and caretakers of the world around us.

Available on YouTube, Spotify, and/or anywhere you like your pods. 🌱

13/09/2022

especially children….

11/09/2022

Ever since starting a garden, the best part has been sharing what it produces with others. You’ll often hear me asking what people would like to have and I’ll collect clamshell packaging for little deliveries. Today, I dropped some stuff off at Macon Community Fridge. If you’ve been looking for ways to contribute to those who are struggling, look into community fridges as another resource tangential to food banks. You can bring plates of food, premade sandwiches, produce, bottled water, or other goods so shoppers can have a variety of foods to supplement their menu. Some shoppers are homeless. Some are unemployed or underemployed, trying to feed kids and babies. Every little bit helps, no one should ever go hungry if we can help it.

07/09/2022

Weeding this weekend got me thinking about .

Four weeks ago, I mowed my yard in a hurry before the rain that weekend and I mowed over a bunch of these weeds pictured below. As I was doing it, I remembered a friend telling me once that these things were particularly insidious and I really should pull them up by the roots if I didn’t want them to spread.

At that point, however, I figured good was better than best and mowed right through the yard without pulling anything up first. Insert surprised Pikachu face as I watched the yard return to its natural state over the last month and these weeds came back with a vengeance.

While I’m sure there’s a lesson in here about doing what you know to do instead of what you want to do, these guys actually got me thinking about the number of times I do things for appearances, in a hurry or for show instead of doing what I know I actually need to do for myself.

Showing off the worst of yourself and trusting others to allow you to work through it is a point of vulnerability that very few of us exercise on a regular basis. I started playing disc golf recently and found myself apologizing for bad throws because I don’t allow myself to be a beginner and to just enjoy things sometimes. Sometimes being vulnerable backfires, sometimes people may consider your messiness to be a distraction or a weakness. Or sometimes you trust someone to keep a secret or to act in your best interest and they betray you.

But today, I’m glad to be in the weeds with the bugs and spiders and the worms. I’m doing what I can and when I know better I do better. I hope you can save a little bit of grace for yourself today and this week if you find yourself in the weeds. They’re not as bad as you think.

Am I alone in this? Surely I’m not the only person who practices disc golf in secret or has a hard time with improv. Where do you find is hardest to find peace with your imperfections? (Originally posted on LinkedIn 2022-09-03)

05/09/2022

what did we pull from the today

04/09/2022

Starting Seeds will post biweekly on Sunday mornings starting in October. Mascot number One is helping get the studio set up as we speak.

She recommends picking out a sunny spot in your home or garden to relax, and since it will just be starting to get chilly, maybe a cuppa something warm to join our guests with. What will you be drinking? 🫖

02/09/2022

02/09/2022

STARTING SEEDS is based on the thought that as humans, we turn to nature for comfort, creativity, and inspiration. And in that, lessons we learn in tending a garden or caring for plants spill over into our personal, professional, and private lives.

Modern thought leaders want to give you a silver bullet or quick way to fix your relationships, business, or the hole in your heart. STARTING SEEDS is built on the idea that there is a fire, there is magic in all of us and there is nothing new. We’re all evolving, growing like the old parable suggests, like mustard seeds.