I know a lot of you grow food. It is an amazing thing to do, isn’t it, especially if you do it from seed! A seed is one of the most incredible things on the planet that we can visibly see; notice that “see” and “seed” are so close in spelling. Consider an okra seed, about the size of a small pea. Visibly it looks like a tiny pebble, seemingly inanimate. However, if you plant this “pebble” about 1 inch below the Earth’s surface and water it regularly, an amazing plant will emerge. About 7 years ago, that is exactly what I did and the result was unimaginable. Three months into the watering, I stood next to a plant twice my height with a “waist” of at least 7″. I had to grab it and bend it over so that I could reach its upper fruits. Somehow, in merely 90 days, a speckle of a dark-green “pebble” had grown to be a gigantic organism replete with beautiful yellow flowers and delicious lantern shaped pods rich in Vitamin C! <\/p>\n
This plant, just one of ~400,000 plant species on the Earth, taught me so much. It clarified for me how spectacular and intelligent life forms are. It reminded me that all life serves other life; the okra through its flowers (for pollinators), and its oxygen and fruits (for 200-lb primates and other animals). It challenged me to grow “13-feet” in three months using only light, water and soil. Two-thousand days later, I still think about this okra plant and all that it taught me. It is no wonder though, as I still have some of it inside of me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I know a lot of you grow food. It is an amazing thing to do, isn’t it, especially if you do it from seed! A seed is one of the most incredible things on the planet that we can visibly see; notice that “see” and “seed” are so close in spelling. Consider an okra seed, … Continue reading “growing up”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-ag"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7BrNb-e","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/solarutopia.org\/onehuman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}