Sevin Culture

Or Counting Chickens Before They Hatch

I put in a garden, sort of, for a neighbor, the one I mow for. I told her I would only do it organically. And yet a week has not gone by that she hasn’t said, “Can’t we put Sevin Dust on that?” She doesn’t care what is wrong, if some plant has a hole in it, or a plant was cut off by a cut worm, or a plant is just wilted because it got root rot, Seven must be the trick. Every time I say the same thing, “It is poisonous. I won’t use it.” I am accustomed to the Sevin Dust Culture, true enough. Next time I think I will say, “Sure, go ahead, put Sevin on there and I will not work it or plant it again. I will not work with Sevin dust.”

But that she said that to me, again again, ach, it has irritated me. Another illusion to see through no doubt.

And what I have seen is most easily described as “counting the chickens before the eggs hatch.” People who get even a part of their life of their own toil know that there are no sure things. You do not plant a potato and expect them all to make it. All the plants don’t grow. All the eggs don’t hatch, and all that do hatch don’t grow up to be chickens. If you plant a variety, if you increase the fertility overall, if you yes toil some, some of the stuff will produce an abundance.

Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains. (Ann Sexton said that.)

But some stuff dies on the vine.

And you know what else? It isn’t a tragedy.

Which I was also thinking about pulling weeds out of the corn patches. The green corn patch produced a pile of weeds three feet wide, five feet long, and hip high. That can’t be said to be a good thing really, that the weeds had gotten so bad, but then again, that’ll be compost. And so I was thinking that in the wider truth of things, I was not interrupting those weed’s life cycle -- that their life cycle is no less fulfilled as compost than it would have been as a plant gone to seed.

Speaking of chickens, another incubator is due to hatch soon. Let’s hope we do better this time than last. I kept it hotter and moister than I did before. Do one thing, get one result. Want a different result? Have to change something.