Meg Buerkel Hunn, Advisory Council Chair: (More) Lessons from the Garden

Yes, my garden still considers me a student, and my guess is that my garden would grade me below-average…

Sometimes the lessons my garden wishes to impart in me have to be learned and relearned time and again.  Taught and retaught.  Told and retold.  It must be hard work to be a garden with such a block-headed student gardener!

Here are a couple of new(er?) lessons from this summer’s carrot patch:

Lesson 1: Gardens are forgiving. So often I think I must follow all the directions to be successful.  My garden teaches me that sometimes even if I do follow all the directions / suggestions, success is compromised or varied.  Then there are other times that my garden is sooooo forgiving.  Take these carrots for instance.  The back of the packet of carrot seeds DOES say to thin them to about three inches apart.  These carrots were (clearly!) not thinned, and they are delicious!  Sure, they take a bit more work to clean and prepare, but they also make quite incredible bite sized snacks with just a rinse in the sink!

Lesson 2:  Gardens give more than is obvious to the eye.  We all know carrots grow underground, but all those carrot tops are also edible and delicious!  Take these carrot tops, their leaves made an excellent Carrot Greens Chimichurri Recipe – Love and Lemons!  I’d never had chimichurri before, and I really like it!

Lesson 3:    Sometimes the garden just gives you gifts… I did not plant these carrots.  They are the result of some carrots that I missed pulling last year that flowered.  The flowers graced some of our dinner tables last year… they look a bit like Queen Anne’s Lace.  The flowers I missed cutting for the table dropped their seeds, and here they grew.

Lesson 4:  Gardens (and most growing things) are abundant givers.  All of these carrots sprang from one carrot plant – a quick search reveals that each carrot flower can contain thousands of seeds.  You all may know by now that one of my favorite quotes is ‘You can count the number of seeds in an apple, but can you count the number of apples in a seed?’ With carrots, the gift gives with great, exuberant abundance!

Yes, my garden is still teaching me… I hope I can take these lessons to heart – both for my garden and my life.

-Meg Buerkel Hunn