The Traveling Plant: Preparatory Logbook

Dolores Steinman

Free to Fly

San Pellegrino Terme, BG, Italy
Scientist

Seeds – light in weight but heavy in promise and hope – travel much faster and easier than fully-grown plants. No passports, no restrictions, but a lot of luck and a sustained collective effort for a little sprout to become a plant and then grow and grow and grow.

I didn’t plant a garden. The woods are across the street and up the hill. Wherever you look, the eye is caressed by greens of all shades – the fabric of dreams.

Little by little, surprises arrived on my doorstep: shoots and leaves. And then, little by little, I started adding colour and fragrance.

After grueling months of loss, suffering and grieving, life around us bloomed again.

Spring evenings under the wisteria and honeysuckle canopy. Summer mornings protected by the laurel and ash trees. Butterflies and bees working and playing on the basil, oregano, sage, rosemary, lavender and thyme. Worms helping out the roots with ever renewed soil for reticent roses. Gorgeous peonies. Fragrant jasmine and wild cyclamen. Random wild strawberries.

Just like the seeds that travelled to my garden, our thoughts and dreams are free to go anywhere, meet old friends, discover new places. Settle even, if the environment is reassuring.