Invitation One: We’re incredibly excited to invite you to our annual, autumn seed-swap! Our autumn seed-swap is a chance for us, and all of you, to meet each other in person! It is a chance to share seeds and the stories they encapsulate! At our seed-swaps, we accept anything; be that seed you’ve carefully saved this season or a pack of dusty tomato seeds you’ve found at the back of the shed. Heck, you don’t need to bring any seed along if you don’t have any; the day is all about abundance and sharing, this might be the perfect opportunity for you to find a seed that inspires you to grow and share seeds and their stories the following year! The sign up link and full programme can be found on eventbrite
Invitation Two: We’re inviting, no, we’re urging you, to stop pottering around for a minute, to stop podding peas and winnowing and to sit. . . to sit and reflect on how this growing season has played out; the challenges and the joys you’ve encountered, how you’ve felt tending to your crops in the rains of July and the beating sun of early September. In a few weeks we’ll be sending out requests for the stories that have come to you in your moments of reflection. As we move forward together, we’re keen to bear witness and remember the journeys we’re all going on as we engage in the vital work of saving seed, that’s invitation two!
Invitation three is to dream! Seasons meld and configure each other and, crucially, they configure us and our aspirations. While our gardens are no doubt seeming to fade with the closing days of summer, heralding for us a time of rest, in rest there is time to dream. Is that not what the seedheads starting to form on our lettuces, our cardoons and in the bellies of our squashes are trying to tell us? These seeds are an invitation to dream, to dream of the seasons ahead, to dream of ample rain this winter to sustain us through the next year, to dream of the beets you’ll sow in the spring and the brassicas that’ll hold sway over your winter gardens, brassicas that will bear abundant shoots in the months to come. The grower’s year never ends, only lulls! Sit with the more-than-human; the plants and creatures that make up the places we share, sit with them and dream of the stories that are yet to be told.
We’re so looking forward to having as many of you as possible to celebrate at our autumn seed-swap.
With love,
Randa
