Before a dear friend passed away, she gave me a bag full of garlic cloves to plant. I put the bag in a pocket and carried it around for about a week before I remembered what to do with them. Finally, I planted each clove in a box on the balcony. A few weeks later I noticed that some of the cloves had popped out of the ground. Curious!
I told the friend, and she laughed. “Just plant them again,” she said. So, I did. Winter came, and the friend passed away not long after.
Spring came, and the garlic started to show signs of life. I vowed to keep growing the garlic in memory of the friend. Summer came, and I cut the scapes to send more energy to the bulbs. I tried eating the scapes, but they were too hard and chewy. Then to my horror, I realized that I had cut too much; I had tried too hard.
The bulbs stopped growing, and I harvested them. If possible, like the broken heart within me, they seemed even smaller than when they had started as a single clove! I wanted to keep things going though. I harvested and saved the largest of the lesser cloves.
“Just plant them again.”
Later that year I received some really good cloves from family members. I brought those home, and the following Fall, I planted some of the original cloves and some of the lovely larger ones. This time I wouldn’t cut the scapes too soon.
Both clove types sprouted with little effort and by the Summer the scapes were tall and healthy. I thought that I would be more patient this year. As I waited, I soon learned that I had waited too long. The scapes had grown beyond their harvestable state, and some even started flowering!
I collected yet again the shrunken spoils, and received more from the family source. It’s garlic season. So, I’m going to “just plant them again.”
This year I’m using fresh soil, and I hope to fertilize the garlic in the Spring. It’s no longer about the garlic. Every year I can learn and become wiser, as long as I keep planting. This is a great lesson learned from a foregone friend. And it’s that that I will never forget.
“So then neither is he who plants anything nor he who waters, but God who causes the growth.” -- 1 Corinthians 3:7
But we must keep planting.
