Italian Generosity

Tony just gave it to me--a mound of parsley seed so generous that it spilled over the edge of my outstretched hand. My neighbors are the best.  Hand-picked, every one of them, for their unique qualities and contributions to my life--this time in the form of never-ending Italian (flat leaf) parsley.

I planted two types of parsley this last spring.  Each seed was blessed and coddled and watered and stroked and loved and tended and watched until it grew big enough to live on its own outside.  And when the summer was done, my Italian parsley was slender and sparse.  Disappointment was the flavor of all those efforts.  And as I think about it, the planting and tending process was very much from my Norse heritage and not my Italian side.  Truth be known, genetically I don't have an Italian side, and I think I was just too stiff.  They don't do it that way.

Old pot with dirt and parsley seeds.  Even the rooting around
of a pesky squirrel did not derail the process.

So Tony told me how to plant my spilling-over gift so that I would have parsley forever: find a big, old pot with dirt; throw the seeds in the pot; scratch the dirt a little bit; keep it moist.  That's it.  I'll need to do that again next spring or summer.  The plants will grow.  They will reseed on their own the second year (that's why I'm supposed to do it for them the first summer) and the cycle will just keep going.  Parsley forever.



If all the Things I get to do today were flavored with "lighten up," "let go," "ease," "flow," "throw it in the pot, scratch it and keep it moist," how easily would life spring forth and grow with abundance--forever.

Lush, large, Italian Generosity