The 20th annual plant giveaway will start in a few days. There are about 1,500 tomato and pepper plants, over 50 varieties, in the final preparatory stage for pickup on Mother’s Day. If they go as quickly this year as they have in the past, they will all be gone in three or four days.
This project started out innocently enough. I like to start my own plants from seed and knowing that not all seeds germinate, my habit is to plant a few extras as insurance. In years of good germination, I didn’t want to compost perfectly good plants, so I gave the surplus away. Doing so, I noticed that people were always quite excited and happy to get them. So instead of just planting a few extra seeds, I began planting the entire package of seeds. Then I branched out and started buying more and more seeds based on the varieties of plants people said they liked. To accommodate all these plants, I got a four-tiered light stand, then a second and then a third. Each spring, the project took over my living room for a few months much to my late wife’s displeasure. Ultimately, I received a small inheritance from my mother and used it to put up a greenhouse.
Anyway, the plant giveaway has become a spring ritual in the neighborhood. Folks often stop by weeks in advance to ask if I am doing it again and when the plants will be ready. On opening day, everybody from the neighborhood gathers at my house. People bring food and drinks. There are kids running around with merriment in abundance. It is a lot of work but also a lot of fun and a way of using my skills and resources to build community.
This year, one of my neighbors recalled an encounter I had during the giveaway some years ago. As the story goes, I was out watering the plants when up pulled a highly polished late model Mercedes. The car door opened and out stepped an equally highly polished young man. He was in his late 20’s-early 30’s, expensively dressed in the way bankers and real estate developers dress in these parts with not a hair out of place.
The man looked around for a few minutes and then asked me, “Are these plants really free?” I told him they were. He replied, “You could sell these and make some good money.” I acknowledged that was probably true but that the project is too much work to do for money. And anyway, selling the plants would defeat the entire purpose of the project. The man shook his head in disbelief and went about inspecting the plants. After a few minutes, he selected a large number of plants and loaded them in his car. As he drove away, he rolled down the window yelled to me, “You’re a sucker!”
Now, my neighbor told this story with a bit of irritation. “How could someone be so rude and ungrateful?” I remember the encounter quite well and think of the man each year at giveaway time. But I remember him with a sort of bemused affection. From my perspective, this young guy had completely bought into the delusion of success that is so common here in the Western world. He had the car. He had the clothes. He had the haircut. He even had some free tomato plants which he got from a rube who didn’t know how to make money. But he didn’t have happiness. He didn’t have peace. He didn’t have the joy that comes from generosity or even the joy that comes with gratitude. Frankly, I feel sorry for him.
I like being the guy with dirty hands who wears worn out jeans, black tee shirts and muddy boots. I would rather be the guy who drives an old pick up truck with an open heart and an open greenhouse than the guy who drives the Mercedes and who is trapped in a delusion of acquisition that will never result in happiness or wisdom. When we are mindful, we can see through the delusions, the hype and the marketing. We have the clarity of mind to reject the notion that success is defined by the accumulation of money and material possessions. We can define success in a new way… a way that emphasizes kindness, compassion and generosity for all our fellow creatures. That is the path to true and lasting happiness.
But don’t take my word for it. Investigate for yourselves.
Here is a poem by Joyce Sutphen. I always think of this poem when I think of my friend with the Mercedes.
Guys Like That
Drive very nice cars, and from
where you sit in your dented
last-century version of the
most ordinary car in America, they
look dark-suited and neat and fast.
Guys like that look as if they are thinking
about wine and marble floors, but
really they are thinking about Netflix
and ESPN. Women think that guys
like that are different from the guys
driving the trucks that bring cattle
to slaughter, but guys like that are
planning worse things than the death
of a cow. Guys who look like that —
so clean and cool — are quietly moving
money across the border, cooking books,
making deals that leave some people
rich and some people poorer
than they were before guys like that
robbed them at the pump and on
their electricity bills, and even
now, guys like that are planning how
to divide up that little farm they just
passed, the one you used to call home.
Take care.