Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. Greek proverb
My garden is late this year. The excuse I’m using is, that I got my nails done for my son’s wedding and I didn’t want to spoil them. Yesterday my husband and I went to a garden center. I looked at the tomatoes and I wasn’t impressed, $9.00 for three tomato plants was the sale price. But, they had Sweet 100 so I bought some and another cutting tomato. I haven’t been happy with my little vegetable garden, not because it doesn’t grow well, but because I don’t tend it well.
A good companion plant for tomatoes is sweet potatoes I am told. I’ve never grown them before but in my cupboard, I had two types of sweet potatoes beginning to sprout. I haven’t planted regular potatoes either so I dug through my bag of Yukon Gold potatoes and found a couple with the tiniest sprouts and cut up my potatoes and sweet potatoes. On YouTube, I watched a video on how to make slips of sweet potato to plant. It is very cost-effective and gives many slips from one potato but I don’t have the time, nor is there much room in my little garden.
I’ve never got into square foot gardening which is what I should do to make the most of my small space. We don’t need a large space to grow food. I would not like to depend on my garden for our food but if every inch we have was put under cultivation we could grow an abundance of food. The front lawn could grow vegetables instead of grass. In fact, it would make a great potato patch, not that I want to get into intense cultivation of our food.
I love going to the grocery store and picking what I want to eat. I also love the fact that I could create a garden that would feed us. If I ever need to we have more problems than just being able to afford our grocery bill.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. Marcus Aurelius Cicero
One of the things I love about listening to Jordan Peterson is he puts in perspective, taking things for granted. We take our freedom, our access to water, food, and freedom as a right and we complain if we think things could and should be better. His question often is why aren’t things worse? How have we managed to build a society where we respect the rights of others, we educate children that are not our own, and we try and help people who have a rough go of it.
We could live in armed family clans even if we were only armed with sticks but we don’t. It is safe to travel, alone, and as a woman. Everything about our society is not perfect, and being part of it we may minimize the mistakes of the past while those impacted by them have been impacted greatly in negative ways. We may be tempted to say, but look at what you gained instead of what you lost.
We need to be careful because all of us are capable of seeing the glass half empty instead of half full. Our society was built from the ideas in a book. It is a book that changed the world. People who follow the teachings of that book never do it perfectly and it isn’t evident to a lot of people that the source of their good society is because of that book. This wasn’t evident to me but after listening to a Jordan Peterson interview with Vishal Mangalwadi author of “The Book That Made Your World” and “This Book Changed Everything” I am seeing life and society differently. As I listen to Jordan Peterson’s podcasts and read his books I am grateful that even though our society is not perfect it is better than it could be.
I am becoming more grateful for people who tried to build a better society and more empathetic towards their failings. I wonder if we would have the strength of character needed to challenge the ills of slavery, as England did in the early 1800s? It was effective and no other country was standing up to do it. Indeed Adam Smith believed or so it seems from his writings that slavery was a societal ill, but he didn’t have faith that it would be ended.
What if England didn’t outlaw the slave trade and finally slavery? Would we still have it today? We do still have slavery in parts of the world.
What does this have to do with a garden? I have a garden because I live in peace and plenty. I live in peace and plenty because of the ideals Canada is built on. We aren’t perfect, and life is not fair, some of us have life easy and some of us have life hard, but in a country like Canada, I believe we can, for the most part, build a life we can be proud of.
Therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so unto them. The golden rule Mathew 7:12
We’re blaming society, yet we are society. So to make it a better place, we must change ourselves first. Unknown
A society can only be rich with good thoughts and intentions. Unknown
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