Lockdown #1 happens and I plant seeds. Like a lot of other people. Bunnings sold out of seeds, and potting mix, and all sorts. It interests me that, at a time of great uncertainty, for seemingly many, there was an instinct to connect to the land, to plant – which is always a kind of prospecting of its own subject to the vagaries of pests, weather, and apathy towards watering to name a few. But we default to a deep knowledge that, somehow, the land will take care of us.

Seeds. So much potential in something so small.

My approach to gardening is pretty much to fill in the space: food and flowers good = weeds bad. I trade seedlings on the Inner West Buy Sell Swap page and join the Pollinate the West group and score free things from the Good Karma page. In socially distant ways I’m more locally connected than I’ve ever been. My seeds bear seeds, and then there’s thousands of them: broad beans, parsley, rocket, nasturtium, calendula…

I put packets of seeds in my local Little Free Pantry and seedlings when I have them. It’s hard to picture the reach, the generational journey those seeds have made to me and from my hands to others.

What I was looking for from some groups changed. I joined new groups and left others.

I’m trying to give language to something which we’ve all experienced over the last few months but maybe haven’t given words or thought to….

This is a basic model of a complex community
This is that community being ruptured by a crisis event
This is a new community fusing together out of necessity and proximity and shared experience
This is the ‘altered’ complex community

The ruptures and disruptions have occurred at different levels within: our homes, personal relationships, at work, our city, our state. People have moved: house, state, country. Shops have shut down. Some people lost work and found it in totally different industries or haven’t found it yet. Some people will have long term impacts of anxiety and depression following these exhausting long periods of social isolation. …you know.

You know the ways your life will never be the same again.

There is no going ‘back’ to normal. There is only going forward, into something new.

What do you want to resurrect from what was? What do you want to keep from new fusions and connections? Name a few things or write them down. This isn’t an experience that is happening to you, how can you happen to the experience? How can you bring what you want to bear on it in some small (or big) way?

Do not underestimate the power you have to shape the world you want to live in at this extraordinary moment.

Plant the seeds now. Not knowing how or if they will grow.

So much potential in something so small.