Today’s thoughts come from me as a kitchen gardener.

One of the things I’ve been doing this strange, stressful year, aside from learning how to make sourdough bread, has been taking various vegetables from the kitchen and seeing if I can get them to grow.

I saw a video a few months ago showing how “simple” it is to root produce that ordinarily would be tossed into the compost after using. I like to garden outside but I’ve never been very successful growing food. I was curious to see if it would work for me.

I started with green onions. They seem pretty obvious since they usually come with roots. I stuck the ends of a bunch of scallions in a glass of water after I finished using the green parts. It wasn’t long before new roots grew. I felt so proud like I had accomplished something major instead of nature taking its normal course and having a lot to do with it.

After the green onion rooting success in water, I moved them to pots with dirt. They still survived and are thriving. I’m so proud of my scallions. I looked in my pantry and inside the fridge’s produce drawer for my next challenge. I thought I’d try an onion since that also has obvious roots. I was successful in creating rot. That was not a horticultural triumph!

I then tried a wilted bunch of celery. It had gotten limp in the fridge and since some herbs recover if they are put in glasses of water, I thought I’d try that with the celery. It works with cut celery. My bunch of celery was not happy. Maybe it was too far gone, but it was not happy and like the onion began to rot.

I left things for a while and turned my attention to the enjoyment of the success of the green onion growth planning how to use all of the ever growing bounty. I did come across another bunch of celery which was smaller than the last one so I stuck it in a jar of water to see what would happen.

Again I left things sit. I changed the water every few days but nothing really seemed to be happening. It wasn’t rotting but it wasn’t seemingly doing anything either.

Then one day I noticed there was something different. The celery looked bushier and greener than it used to. I took it out of the water and nothing there. No roots. And yet, day after day it looked more and more lush and bushy. Who knew celery could be that happy? And then one day after never seeing any roots, they had grown. My celery sprouted roots! I was so surprised it worked!

The surprise growth of roots reminded me that there are times when some creative ideas and projects need to be started and just left alone to sit and do their thing. To be left unbothered and un-poked, until one day the idea is ready and the puzzle’s been figured out. For ideas to develop they need the right conditions. It’s different for each idea and sometimes things have to be tried a few times to see if they’ll work.

Have you had any success with any projects or ideas by just letting them sit undisturbed?