Blog 6 & 7

Blog 6: This week we visited True Love Seed's new location in Glen Mills, PA. Alongside Owen giving us a tour of the space and introducing the group to the plethora of seed varietals and their people it hosts, there were representatives from Grow NYC and the NRCS and the USDA also there to co-facilitate and scheduled programming to talk about resources available to growers. It felt good to reconnect with True Love and to finally see the new space: almost an acre of verdance, the saturated fuschia pink of flowering celosia and dahlias, and a ripening smooth bitter melon still stick in my mind. I enjoyed helping to process ashwagandha seeds (I had no idea they were encased in these bright scarlet red casings!), and Lenape tobacco alongside Amanda and Amber. It was a long, refreshing day, and I am glad I was able to make it out. Here are some moments I captured throughout the day. Dahlias- offspring and parents comparative  Towering sorghum, a variety from South Sudan. My arm is fully outstretched for scale. A ripening smooth variety of bitter melon on the vine. Ulam Raja/ King's Salad flower grown and used in Malaysian cooking. Also known as Chactsul (Mexico),Cambray Rojo (Honduras), Mozote Doradia (El Salvador), and Flor de Muerto (Costa Rica). Spilathes, or Toothache Plant- I love eating the whole bud and letting it fizzle in my mouth! Not for everyone :) Baby moringa tree - Indian subcontinent, Philippines, and China Besobela/(Amharic): የኢትዮጵያ ቅዱስ ባሲል/Ethiopian Holy Basil Boriquen Tobacco Plant white Lenape corn Blog 7: We had our seed politics workshop, which was started with a timeline exercise: the first half of which left me feeling angry and forlorn, as we dove right into harrowing historical events: going over the rolodex of antiBlack and antiNative genocide and neocolonialism both centuries past and into the present decade. As a palate cleanser we then "rewrote" seed keeping history, highlighting events of Black and Brown resistance and reclamation of our seeds by the people. I hadn't watched the documentary before coming to the workshop, but the day renewed my rage and sadness in what has been lost to colonization, and also what is being regained very slowly. We are hurtling towards an end date with this empire, but it stretches far beyond Turtle Island; I remind myself that it's selfish and naive to expect to see the finale in my lifetime alone. This is a generational dance, and one that everyone plays a role in if we let ourselves.