Four In A Row And I Stopped Trying

There is an empty pot on your step and it has been empty for two years.

You kept it. That is the part worth noticing. You could have thrown it out with the last dead thing in it, and you did not, you emptied it and stacked it and it has been sitting there through two winters holding nothing.

Because four of them died.

Not all at once. Over about a year and a half, one after another, and each one you did roughly what you were supposed to do, and each one went the same way, slowly, in a manner you could see happening and could not stop.

And somewhere around the third one, you stopped talking about it. And somewhere around the fourth, you made a decision, and I want to say what the decision actually was, because you have probably never put it in words.

You did not decide that gardening is difficult. You decided something about yourself.

You decided that you are not a person who can keep things alive. And you say it lightly, when it comes up. You say it with a laugh, in the way people do when a thing has stopped being funny some time ago.

So before anything at all about soil or light or water, that is what has to come off you, because if it does not, then this whole site is just four more chances to prove it.

A plant that died is not a report on you.

It is not evidence, it is not a pattern, and it is not a statement about what kind of person you are. Plants die for reasons that have nothing to do with attention: they arrive already stressed from a shop, they are the wrong species for a room nobody could have known about, they were sold in the wrong month, and sometimes there is no reason available at all.

You have been reading four unrelated events as one verdict about yourself.

In the morning sow thy seed

There is a line in Ecclesiastes about sowing, and what it does with uncertainty is unusual.

In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good. (Ecclesiastes 11:6, King James Version)

For thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that.

Read that again, because it is doing the opposite of what you expect a verse about sowing to do.

It does not promise a harvest. It states, flatly, that you cannot know which of the things you plant will come to anything. That is not a caveat tucked at the end. It is the reason given for the instruction.

Sow in the morning and do not hold your hand back in the evening, because you cannot tell. The not knowing is the argument for planting more, not less.

And notice what that does to the accounting you have been running.

You have four failures and you have concluded something. But the verse describes a situation where some things prosper and some do not and nobody can tell in advance which, which means four in a row is not a signal about the sower at all. It is what happens sometimes when you cannot know.

The verse assumes losses. It builds them in at the start, and it still says put the seed in the ground.

You are able to plant something without knowing whether it lives, and four losses have never once been a verdict on the person planting. Ecclesiastes 11:6 gives the not knowing as the reason to sow rather than as a warning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a decision about yourself out of the hands of a dead plant.

Nothing measured, nothing recorded

Here is the practical part, and it is going to sound like the wrong advice.

Do not track it.

Everything you have read about growing things will tell you the opposite. Keep notes, label them, check the light, record what you did so you can learn from it. That is sound advice for somebody who is curious and relaxed about the whole business.

It is exactly wrong for you, and here is why.

The moment you write it down, it becomes an experiment, and an experiment has a result, and a result is something that can come out badly. Four dead plants have already taught you that you are somebody who gets bad results, and setting up a fifth measurement is setting up a fifth chance to confirm it.

You do not need data. You need one uneventful experience of putting a seed in soil that carries no verdict either way.

So no notebook. No photographs. No date on a label. If it comes up, it comes up, and if it does not, you will not be able to point at a record and say there, again.

This is not anti intellectual and it is not superstition. It is that a person who is frightened of a result should not be handed a measuring instrument.

You are able to plant something that is not being measured, and a record has never once been what any seed required to grow. The written word sows without knowing and does not keep an account of which prospered, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present where nothing is being proved.

One seed, one pot, nothing written

So here is the assignment.

Plant one seed in one pot of soil this week and write nothing down.

One seed. Not a tray, not a set, not a project with several things going at once so that at least one survives, because that arrangement is hedging and hedging means you are still expecting to lose.

Any seed. Something from a packet, something out of a fruit, something a neighbor gave you. It genuinely does not matter and the not mattering is part of it.

One pot, and the empty one on the step will do, which is presumably why you kept it.

Then put it somewhere and leave it. Water it when the soil looks dry. That is the whole method and there is not any more of it.

And write nothing down.

If in three weeks there is something green, that is a good thing and you are allowed to be pleased. If in three weeks there is nothing, then there is nothing, and there is no record of it, and it does not go on the list, because the list is closed.

You are able to put one seed in the ground with nothing riding on it, and it has never once been a test that you could fail. Ecclesiastes 11:6 sows in the morning and again in the evening without knowing, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody filling a pot that has been empty for two winters.