I walked out of a Fred Meyer carrying a bag of groceries on a weekday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To my left, hundreds and hundreds of potted herbs, flowers and vegetables were shelved against a concrete wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I saw a homeless woman with a backpack and two suitcase strollers standing in front of the herbs, looking at them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This made me stop and watch the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She handled various herbs with silky motion. She brought them to her nose. This continued for several minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wondered what was going through her mind:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Had she once tended an herb garden and derived as much satisfaction as I do tending mine? Was there a special herb from childhood? Many people have one, although I don’t. Was there a special herb for cooking she once plucked in the summer evenings? Mine are dill and chives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman began to move along so I began to move along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She didn’t steal any of the herbs although she easily could have done so, unnoticed, except by me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wouldn’t have done anything. If you are somebody who would have, you should start an herb garden and get your head and heart straight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is true that I have seen various herbs grown in fine ceramic pots in various homeless encampments. I believe some were used when one chef used a blow torch to cook up some crawdads. What herbs best season crawdads?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve seen hanging flower baskets on derelict RVs. I’ve seen live Christmas trees decorated with neighborhood discards. I’ve seen homemade wreaths of sage and cedar on the sides of pallet and plywood shanties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I drove home and watered my herbs and lamented I still couldn’t find tarragon anywhere. They are very elusive this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I walked out of a Fred Meyer carrying a bag of groceries on a weekday morning. To my left, hundreds and hundreds of potted herbs, flowers and vegetables were shelved against a concrete wall. I saw a homeless woman with a backpack and two suitcase strollers standing in front of the herbs, looking at them. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8461"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8464,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8461\/revisions\/8464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}