Wednesday Wisdom #2 - Amaranth

Amaranth is a spectacular vision of early Autumn. The color is vibrant, the texture whimsical.

The Amaranth pictured above I grew from seed. It’s hard to imagine that the plants, which now stand five to six feet tall, began as tiny seeds. They immediately shot up, taller than all the other seed starts (as you can see in the image above).

I barely got the seedlings in the ground. They were at risk of withering on the tray for lack of soil. My garden bed was a mess, weeds run amok. Rather than address the entire garden, I decided just to clear a small strip of a few feet near the fence, enrich the soil with compost, and get them planted. They should have been staked but I didn’t get that far. They grew alongside the morning glories, intertwined with them. At first I tried to train the morning glories up the fence. In the end, I left them curling around the Amaranth. It seemed a symbiotic relationship.

By now, they are in full glory, towering above the fence line.

My experience with amaranth call to mind those things in our life that we don’t do perfectly, but they still succeed. Some seeds are just determined to germinate and grow.

And that growth can have ripple effects.

Interestingly enough, after I planted that strip of Amaranth, I decided to keep going. With the help of a brother, we plowed the rest of the garden (ok he did it), built raised beds (but I did that!), and mulched. I even installed a wood-burning hot tub for good measure. In the end, the whole project was completed relatively quickly, but I don’t know if I would have undertaken it without those massive seedlings, looking for a home.

Sometimes everything falls into place when we make room for what wants to grow.