A few years ago my dad gave me a sambac jasmine plant for my garden with a tiny onion growing in the pot. They were cohabitating. I thought it was cute, so I left them. But he said to me as he handed it over, “That’s a weed.”

“No, that’s an onion.”

“It’s a weed.”

He was trying to tell me what Patrick repeated over and over in class last week. That if it doesn’t belong, it’s a weed. A parasite. Noise. Lot of weed-analogous examples here applicable to modern day life.

What’s growing in your pot with you, taking root? Should you take it out, or give it a minute?

I’m not a huge fan of the current flavor of advice that says, “Let go of what doesn’t serve you.” How does one make such a determination? It strikes me as preemptive most of the time. I need to suffer for a while to know.

Besides, what if what doesn’t serve me now will in ten years if I stick with it? And also, why does anything have to serve me. Why can’t it just be, even oppositionally? (New word?)

It’s evident from many areas of my life that I struggle with this. Relationships in which I’ve hung on too long. My stock portfolio. What can I say? I’m a long-term gal. A serial committer. I’ll die before I leave, lose everything.

I guess what I’m saying is, “Wait and see,” and Patrick emphasizes this too, all the time. So does my dad. Wait, watch, observe, proceed. See for yourself. That’s the only way you’ll learn.

The onion eventually became huge and I noticed the jasmine’s roots hugging the bulb. Maybe they needed each other in a new environment. But the pot grew smaller and smaller and they both began to suffer. The sambac leaves yellowed a bit. The tops of the onion’s shoots crinkled. It was time.

So I harvested it, this onion, this weed, and chopped it into a fine soup.

This is the kind of thing I think about driving home from my farm class late at night, the kind of thing that makes it into my nightly journal.

I’ve just been terrible at extracting these little notes and sharing them here because all I want to do when I get home after a long day is watch something in bed for a while and turn in. I also assume nobody wants to hear this. I mean, is this even useful to anybody but me?

It’s 10:30 pm. Am I even making any sense goyz?

Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked at length about annuals and perennials, row size and arrangement, transplanting methods (manual v. machinated), and how there are no right or wrong systems. The best way is the one that works for you and your operation.

If you’re interested in small farming planning, techniques, and management, I highly recommend checking out the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology. Their website and YouTube channel is chock full of resources and easy, visual guides.

I also want to share this show I caught on on PBS a couple of weeks ago: Resolve to Solve with Miles O’Brien — Colorado River Reckoning. Essential viewing to understand the current and enduring water scarcity situation in the Colorado River basin, the role of agriculture in this mess, and why certain crops are so problematic.

I thought I had watched a single episode, but I guess it was a double header? Because I also watched Geothermal: Drilling Deep for Power. When the Colorado River stops flowing through dams at the rate it has in the past and stops generating hydroelectric power, what are our other options? I learned a ton.