Earth Day Invite: Growing with Future Generations in Mind

Editor's Note: This is the sixth in a series of articles contributed by Transition Wayland and the Wayland Green Team inviting residents to an Earth Day weekend with Open Houses all over town. Each week until then, you'll learn about another event at a different location. The sixth house in this series is at 237 Old Connecticut Path. The following article was written by Rabbi Katy Allen.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about Honi the Wise One, a personage from ancient rabbinic literature who is also known as Honi the Circle Maker. Honi was given the appellation Circle Maker because of the time during a drought when he drew a circle, stepped inside it, and prayed and argued with God until healing rains came. 

Despite his name, Honi wasn’t always wise. One day walking along the road, he saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asked the man how long it would take for the tree to bear fruit, and the man replied, “Seventy years.” Honi then asked the man if he expected to live another 70 years, and the man told him that he didn’t think he would ever see or eat the fruit of the tree he was planting. But he added, “When I was born into this world, I found many carob trees planted by my father and grandfather. Just as they planted trees for me, I am planting trees for my children and grandchildren so they will be able to eat the fruit of these trees.”

My father also planted trees, and he’s been on my mind lately, too. My father planted real trees – apples and pears and plums, but he also planted trees in my heart, memories of gardening and harvesting and caring for the land. Last winter, his spirit seemed to hover in the small woodlot behind our house. His energy and my memories of his extensive garden propelled me to new beginnings with vegetable gardening and an effort to garden well enough this time to have more solid results than in the past. I’ve always been a rather haphazard vegetable gardener, though I do seem – after years of struggling – to finally have a really productive asparagus bed, and my rhubarb plants also have been thriving.

So now, I am planting anew, and yes, I do hope to eat vegetables from my garden. But more than that, I hope that the flowers and vegetables that I grow will also provide some other nourishment, nourishment that I may not be able to see, that I don’t even know yet what it is, spiritual and emotional nourishment, similar to knowing that someone will eat the fruit of a tree 70 years from now.

The new garden beds are the most fun, but in addition, we’ve also “planted” solar panels on our rooftop. They are giving fruit immediately, but I hope that they will continue to nourish with light and energy all who will live in this house for years to come.

More than anything, the “trees” I try to plant that are most important to me are those of hope and strength and perseverance. I pray that the small differences I make in trying to heal the world will help keep it safe and livable for my grandchildren and their grandchildren, and all the grandchildren in the world. I hope, like my father, to plant trees of the spirit in the hearts of those around me. Like the old man Honi met on the road, I hope that in 70 years there will be fruit from all the “trees” I “plant.”

You can see my new beginnings, as well as my old successes, during our Earth Week Open House, scheduled for Saturday afternoon from 3-5. Come and enjoy some white pine tea, warm or cold, depending on the weather, and some other wild harvest goodies. Walk paths between the flowers and veggie plots and enjoy the written spiritual messages that are also beginning to sprout along the way. And if you’d like, bring a container or bag and take home some perennial plants or seeds. 

I will also show the documentary, Green Fire: A Land Ethic for our Time, about the life and work of Aldo Leopold, that Saturday at 8:15 pm, at my house.

Earth Day 2013 is organized by Transition Wayland and the Wayland Schools PTO Green Team (www.waylandgreenteam.org). You can find more information about Earth Day 2013, as well as a map and schedule of the Open Houses, by visiting www.transitionwayland.org. If you would like to host your own Open House, let us know at info@transitionwayland.org.