Farmers, the midwives and the undertakers

As you might know, we are getting ready for planting down here on the home front! We're going down to the farm tonight! I'm so excited I'm basically bouncing off the walls. It's been a long time since I've gone down there, been very very busy with work. Next week, though, I am off all week! We're getting ready for global youth service day where my Edible Schoolyard dream project will come to fruition. So, in a few days I'll be starting the seed starting journey yet again--round 2 of 3. The plants from my room that I started a few weeks ago are now safe and snug in the back of my car nestled between three bags of Black Kow Manure and one bag of perlite. I did not secure the bloodmeal yet, but we still have hope tucked back in the store shelves of the Rural King. Just please, don't make me walk past another cute bucket of baby chicks again knowing that they can't all come home with me. Ha! 
But what I wanted to talk about today was plant death, and mourning in general. Do you mourn for your plants when they go on to the great beyond? I definitely do for some of my houseplants, because they really become an extension of myself, I feel. That might seem kind of silly, but then again, some people don't even mourn their pets when they cross the rainbow bridge (which is hard for me to grasp). However, with this batch of plants, I knew that not all of them were destined to come down to the farm to live. And today, about twelve little pots sit before me with dried up little sprouts resting over the edges. Now, some of these I'm a little upset over. A few of my Atlantic Giant pumpkins didn't make it, of which I only had five, leaving me with three more vines--three more chances for a big pumpkin for the state fair. Some of my starters were a single pot of a single seed variety, and alas, did not make it, making me again, a little sad. But, I have to remember, this is what I planned for. I knew that not all of these would make it, and even still, in the end, all of them are annual crops which will die after the first few fall frosts. Sweet little babes. 
So I was thinking, farmers and gardeners bring so much life into this world, yet we also watch day today as it slides through our fingers, back into the soil which we work, back into the earth from which all Earthly life springs. We are both the midwives and the undertakers of the plant world--and even the animal world. As I look at these twelve empty pots I am not sad. Lately, I've been sad a lot--not the kind of sad where you cry it all out and at the end there is that beautiful golden sunlight that I promised comes afterward. You see, I have pretty bad depression. I've had it for a few years now and lemme tell you, it's about a bitch and a half--no! Two bitches! A classic two-bitch stuck-in-a-ditch kind of day.  Except it's every ​day. It makes it hard for me to get up in the morning, to go to work, to go to school--everything. But the good thing is I'm getting help. That's the important thing in life; recognizing when you need help. Tell somebody, but know that it might take a few tries until you find the right listener. And always remember, when it comes to plants, have extras and enjoy the feeling of Samsara--the cycle of birth and death, creation and destruction--the constant cycle of life.