Roads to Joy

You can’t under-estimate the joys of emergence, in my book. We began chitting our potatoes shortly after they arrived from the seed company, early March. Today, in early May, the first signs of real growth could be seen coming out through the holes in the black weed cover. Hurrah!

But that doesn’t mean the weeds are completely vanquished — yesterday was my second foray into hoiking the unwanted docks, nettles and grass sprouts out. My strategy is not to eliminate the weeds entirely, rather it’s to knock back the few of them searching for light through the available holes. In this way, I hope that the emerging potato plants will cover the space and take all the available sunlight for themselves. Too bad weeds!

But all over the place leaves are emerging and claiming their own sunlight; little green factories sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. In the case of the potatoes, I want that carbon transferred to nutritious tubers underground, of course, so that it will eventually make its way into our bellies!

The emergence of new life is a great metaphor for so many joys that we experience as we live our daily lives. Perhaps we’re constantly emerging ourselves, metamorphosing into new and different individuals, people who aren’t the same as they were even yesterday. The ‘us’ of the present is not the same person even physically let alone emotionally or intellectually, as the person we knew earlier. And yet we also carry our own history with us.

It can be a tough old road, emerging through the horse manure of life to find the sunshine. But if we can, we must try to grow out of the dross of the past and revel in the warmth of a new day, a new joy.