27 Apr The Garlic Clove
While making spaghetti last week, I noticed that our bulb of garlic was beginning to sprout a tiny, green stem. I decided to drop a single clove into a cup of water, just to see what would happen.
The next morning, there was a two-inch green shoot sticking out of the glass. By the weekend, long roots had formed and the green shoot was almost a foot long.
We were amazed by this miraculously growing plant and decided to grow another one. The girls and I dropped another garlic clove into a cup. And we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
By the end of the week, it was still just a lonely garlic clove floating in water.
“Maybe it needs more sun,” Emma suggested as she moved the glass near the kitchen window.
“Maybe it needs new, fresh water,” Ella said as she refilled the glass with some cool, purified water.
“Maybe it needs to go outside,” my husband said with a laugh (which, to be honest, was a good point – this experiment was quite the fragrant one).
“Maybe it’s not ready and needs more time,” I said.
It’s interesting how differently we think about what helps plants grow compared with the way growth happens in people. If this little clove were a person, we might be inclined to blame and judge and grow frustrated and impatient.
But we never blamed the garlic clove. We didn’t yell at it and say it’s falling behind in life. We tried different things to take care of the clove, looking for ways to better support it.