CC Ep #8

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Welcome

[00:00:44] Samantha Young: Hello, friends. Welcome to episode eight. I'm so grateful to be here and grateful to be bringing you another fantastic conversation today, and just grateful for this podcast in general. [00:01:00]

[00:01:00] I had a lot of doubts in myself when it came to starting a podcast, just really doubting my own ability to create anything consistently. Part of my own work with shame is around consistency and this capitalist idea that was really stuck to my ribs from being raised in a capitalist society-- this idea that consistency is a virtue and to do something consistently is the best and most virtuous way to do something.

[00:01:36] So I have a lot of shame around not being consistent, but the reality is, I have ADHD, I have autism. I am the matriarch of a household. I wear many hats, and I'm not gonna be consistent, but I'm proud of myself for showing up consistently to this podcast, because it truly [00:02:00] brings me so much joy to do this, and hearing your feedback on the episodes and the conversations, getting to include you in this podcast. A lot of a lot of the guests on this show have come from my interactions online, and it truly feels collaborative, and I want this space to feel even more collaborative in the future.

[00:02:25] I'm so grateful that you allow me to do this and to continue putting out something consistently that feels like something of value is being made, giving us a space to make anti-capitalism more normalized, to take it down from the ivory towers of academia and make it digestible and really talk about how so many things are anti-capitalist: the natural world, the way that we exist naturally [00:03:00] is anti-capitalist, inherently. And I want to continue doing that. I love doing this.

[00:03:08] There are costs involved with running a podcast, so I know it's a big ask right now, but if you have even $3 a month to spare, I would love if you could go to my membership site and sign up and support the podcast. There's costs involved with the software that I use and the different programs that allow me to keep this going and make a nicely edited, transcribed podcast, because accessibility is also really important to me, and that also means that I take a lot more time to do all of this on my own. If you have the ability to support that materially, then I would super appreciate that, and if you don't, I just appreciate you being here.

[00:03:54] If you want to contribute to this podcast in a way that's not material, of course you can always [00:04:00] like and share, leave a positive review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this. Share with your friends, send them episodes, conversations that they might enjoy. Give me your feedback. I know you can leave comments on Spotify now, and you can also leave comments on my YouTube channel, or you can just reach out to me in the DMs. I'm not on Instagram too often these days, but I'm there sometimes. Whatever it is. I'm so grateful for the people who listen to this podcast, so I would love to continue to have your support in making this thing possible.

Gardening: The Oldest Profession?

[00:04:39] Samantha Young: Moving on to this week's episode. We are getting into gardening as an anti-capitalist practice, as a creative practice. I am talking with my friend Rebecca about her new project, Gardening For The [00:05:00] End of The World, and I cannot wait for more people to hear Rebecca's mind and learn about her ideas about gardening and the way that it can be not just a practice for connecting with the earth, but a radical practice, a creative practice, a spiritual practice, all of those things-- a mutual aid practice-- all wrapped up into one.

[00:05:24] This is really near and dear to my heart because I come from farmers. On my mom's side, my great-grandfather's parents came from the Midwest to California to be avocado and citrus farmers in the 1910s and twenties, and my mom's mom, my grandmother, is a garlic farmer. She has some land in upstate New York with her husband and they've been growing garlic my whole life.

[00:06:00] Gardening is truly the oldest profession. And I'm a former sex worker, so this is not me knocking sex work, because usually people say that sex work is the oldest profession. But I am tempted to say that gardening might be older than that. Either way, it's something that humanity has been doing since humanity became a thing. Gardening is something that we've become so separated from, and so removed from the process of having to grow our own food, so inviting that back into your life does so much more than simply just make your front yard look beautiful or, feed you for a season. There's so many ripple effects to gardening, and I cannot wait for you to hear what Rebecca has to say about it.

Trans Day of Visibility

[00:06:51] Samantha Young: As I'm recording this, it's Monday, March 31st, and it is Trans Day of Visibility. This [00:07:00] day always gives me mixed feelings, because visibility is not a guarantee of protection. Representation is not a guarantee of rights or respect. And at the same time, trans people are... trans people are my life. And what I mean by that is: so many of my loved ones are trans people. I have more trans friends than cis friends, and they are my chosen family. They are my child's godparents. Something I'm really looking forward to this year is getting to see my best friend get married, and to come together and celebrate trans love in that way.

[00:07:48] So it's not that I don't agree with trans visibility, it's just that I always wonder: what is visibility really doing? And what is the purpose of [00:08:00] visibility if it doesn't also come with protection and rights and respect? If you're trans and you're listening to this, know that I love you and your rights mean everything to me, and if visibility is something that empowers you, then I want you to have that. But also know that if visibility isn't safe for you, I'm sorry. And I wish that the world was safer for you.

[00:08:26] Something that happens with systemic shame is it often convinces us that there's nothing we can do, while at the same time telling you that you're not doing enough and you should always be doing more, and it leaves us very caught. It leaves us very stuck. It leaves us incredibly bound, in this way.

[00:08:47] One example of systemic shame that I deal with myself is always feeling that I'm not doing enough. I'm not taking enough action when it comes to protecting trans people for fighting for [00:09:00] trans rights. And then I remember that I'm raising a child who may end up being trans themselves, we don't know. But I'm raising that child to see trans people as something that is completely a normal part of life-- because they are, and trans people have always been here, whether or not they've been visible to the dominant culture-- and raising a child who will not only see trans people as normal, but just see them as humans and to understand that there's nothing dangerous about a trans person. That's huge work. And that's an example of doing something.

Confronting Systemic Shame

[00:09:50] Samantha Young: So when it comes to systemic shame telling me I'm not doing enough and trying to shut me down from imagining new ways and new futures, [00:10:00] I want you to think about where the voice of systemic shame creeps in, where capitalist shame creeps in and tells you're not doing enough, and actually examine that. Actually examine the facts. What are you doing? Do you personally want to do more? Are you capable of doing more? Or is it possible that the actions you are taking are enough within your capacity?

[00:10:28] This is about being honest with ourselves and not succumbing to shame, and also not hiding away from responsibility. There is a middle ground to be struck here, and it's really hard to do that when you're constantly telling yourself that anything you do is not enough, or when you're constantly worried about being seen as a good person, being seen "doing good." Sometimes the good you do won't be visible. Sometimes the things you do won't be seen. [00:11:00] They won't earn you points.

[00:11:01] Ask yourself truly, what are you doing? Is it having a positive effect on the world and is it possible to do more if you feel an imperative to do more?

[00:11:14] I think so much of shame can be tempered with just responsibility and trust-- trusting in your own ability to respond to the needs around you, the needs of your environment, the needs of your own body, the needs of your community, your mycelial network-- responding to those things, trusting in your own ability to do that.

[00:11:37] So much of shame that keeps us afraid of trying, of imagining new futures, of getting curious and compassionate, and being open to the world around you. Shame and fear will shut you down and close you off and keep you from imagining. Capitalism also cuts us off from our imagination. It wants us to stop imagining new [00:12:00] futures. So these things go hand in hand.

[00:12:02] Trust in your ability to respond to the needs of your environment and those around you, and most importantly, your own needs, 'cause you can't help anybody else if you haven't eaten all day, babe.

[00:12:15] And if you don't know where to start when it comes to confronting your systemic shame, if you don't know what it means to start trusting yourself and taking responsibility come and join my Discord. Come and join the Shame Alchemy circles that I'm hosting every month. I just did my first one last week. It was great. I'm excited to tweak some things and improve some stuff based on the feedback I've gotten. We'll have another one next month and we'll get together and talk about these things, and you can start to develop your own toolkit for transmuting your shame so that you can actually put your effort and energy into imagining and creating the world you want to live in.

[00:12:56] Okay, that's enough soapboxing from me. [00:13:00] Let's get into our Astro Mission Log and debrief this eclipse season.

Astro Mission Log

[00:13:13] Samantha Young: So we made it through the first eclipse season of 2025, although we're not entirely outta the woods yet. There was the new moon solar eclipse in Aries this past weekend, and oh man, there's so much going on in the skies right now. We also had Mercury and Venus, who are retrograde, both enter back into Pisces, but there's a switcheroo going on here because at the same time, Neptune is now officially in Aries. What happened the past two weeks? And on top of [00:14:00] all of that, Mars is still in Cancer. I can't believe Mars is still in Cancer.

[00:14:05] Do I sound like a crazy person right now? Because I feel a little Charlie Day when it comes to finally wrapping up the astrology of March. We knew-- and by "we," I mean astrologers-- we knew that this month would be crazy, and it's always interesting when, as an astrologer, you look ahead and you see some really intense transits coming up and you're like, "whoa, that's gonna be a lot," and we can make guesses. Some people make accurate guesses about what's going to happen on a global level, on a mundane level when it comes to astrology, but we can never know ahead of time what it's going to feel like, personally, for each of us to go through these transits.

[00:14:49] It's been really nocturnal lately, which means everybody is feeling these transits in their bodies a lot more. We have-- if you're [00:15:00] not aware-- the day sect and the night sect, and the night sect is the Moon, obviously; Venus, and Mars.

[00:15:06] So obviously Venus is retrograde right now and she's flip flopping back and forth between dignities, which means her effects be between signs, between Aries and Pisces, are much more strongly felt. On top of that, we have the Moon, which doesn't retrograde, but what does happen to the Moon and the Sun are eclipses, and we just dealt with that.

[00:15:27] We just had the Moon, two weeks ago being eclipsed, and on top of that, as we're still recovering from Mars retrograde in Cancer, as Mars is gaining speed in Cancer, still really uncomfortable, that's who has domain over these multiple retrogrades and over this eclipse that we just had this past weekend.

[00:15:52] So Venus, Mars, and the Moon are all speaking really loudly in the skies right now, [00:16:00] and they're the nocturnal planets. On top of that, Mercury, our bisexual icon, our non-binary, fluid, goes back and forth between day sect and night sect, that non-binary king is also up in the mix with the nocturnal friends. I would say right now we could probably qualify Mercury as being nocturnal, just because the effects of this Mercury retrograde are piled on top of all these other transits going on right now. So if you're feeling a little wonky in your body, or if you're wondering, wow, what the fuck is so intense about this? Why am I feeling this?

[00:16:39] If these feelings have been really intense for you, take note of what your body's been going through this past month, and especially this past two weeks, because the nocturnal planets are really, truly dominating the skies right now, and speaking the loudest. They are the ones at the front of whatever plot lines are [00:17:00] unfolding right now.

[00:17:01] And at the same time, March is ending. Today is the last day of March. Like, we did it. Now we have information in our bodies about what these transits felt like, and time marches on endlessly. That's Saturn.

[00:17:19] So, Neptune is in Aries. This is one of the changes that are going on with the outer planets in this current era that we're in. There was Pluto moving into Aquarius, we've got Neptune in Aries, uranus will move into Gemini soon enough, and obviously the tides of time are changing. We feel things shifting. Everything is upside down, and the only real piece of advice I wanna offer for this is to not try to predict how everything's gonna go. Astrology is helpful, but when it comes to the outer planets especially, and what they're [00:18:00] doing, they are not speaking human language. They are telling big, huge stories over time that extend beyond human lifespans. So instead of trying to grapple with what they're saying, all we can really do with outer planets is go through the portal with them, or be drug along behind them. Whichever way you choose.

[00:18:28] Ari Felix, a dear friend and one of my teachers, describes the outer planets as the great humiliators, and I take that description with me a lot when I think about the outer planets and the transits they're having right now, and the ingresses that are being experienced with the outer planets. They are the great humiliators, and to be humiliated means that you're not in control.

[00:18:53] Maybe not being in control, not being able to predict what's going on brings you [00:19:00] a lot of stress, brings you a lot of anxiety, and maybe the lesson for this time is to find a way to make friends with uncertainty, with not knowing the future, with not even being able to predict, not being able to make the same educated guesses that you maybe have normally made that you've been able to use to get you through life.

[00:19:23] I can't offer you any solutions to uncertainty. All I can tell you is that uncertainty is not going anywhere, so you might as well make friends with it.

[00:19:33] Okay. Let's get onto this conversation with Rebecca. I'm very excited for you to learn about Gardening For The End of The World. Let's get our hands dirty.

Intro to Rebecca

[00:19:45] Rebecca Sapolsky: It's so funny, 'cause there is the creative aspect of me and the gardening aspect and all this stuff, but like, a good operations, man? Just... ooh.

[00:19:53] Samantha Young: And gardening is that too, right? Gardening's a system.

[00:19:57] Rebecca Sapolsky: Gardening is a system. Although if [00:20:00] you watched me, you wouldn't think there was a system in place sometimes. I have some raised beds and some containers, and then there's like an in-ground bed.

[00:20:07] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:20:07] Rebecca Sapolsky: And I've, for years, have called that "the mystery garden" because I would plant things and I wouldn't write down. Like I knew what I planted, but I had no idea where. I would just completely forget.

[00:20:19] So you plant bulbs in the fall, you plant a whole bunch of stuff in the fall or to come up in the spring, early summer, and every time I'm like, "What is that coming up? That doesn't... I don't... did I plant that? What is that?" And it's like, you gotta wait for the actual bloom to come up and you're like, oh, that's why I planted that. Oh, that's great. Mystery garden strikes again. I didn't blame myself. I just called it mystery garden because you never knew what you were gonna get.

[00:20:47] Samantha Young: That's fun though. I that idea.

Rebecca's Gardening Roots

[00:20:50] Samantha Young: I guess I would love to know a bit about your own story with gardening in general, and just how you got to here, with [00:21:00] Gardening For The End of The World.

[00:21:01] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah.

[00:21:01] Samantha Young: Love that title.

[00:21:03] Rebecca Sapolsky: I don't know if you remember, but you did a reading for me, a financial year reading for me, and that's actually where it came from.

[00:21:09] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:21:09] Rebecca Sapolsky: You and I were discussing stuff and then I said "Gardening For The End of The World," and it was your reaction.

[00:21:15] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:21:16] Rebecca Sapolsky: You were like, "oh my god." It was so visceral. I was like, "oh, that's something," and I wrote it down, and I highlighted it. I put a circle around it. I was like, oh, that's, wow. That's a reaction. And then as I tested it out with other people, I got the same reaction. Out of every single person I've said it to, they're like, what? It's like a, "Ooh."

[00:21:39] Samantha Young: It's intriguing. Like it makes me wanna know more. Yeah.

[00:21:42] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you for that.

[00:21:44] So gardening... I've always been around gardening. My grandmother who was born and raised in England-- married, they had two kids, it was World War II, and afterwards-- they lived in and around London, so that was completely [00:22:00] decimated. Demolished. So they were encouraged to go to Canada, because Canada was unscathed. It was a safer place. It was a place where kids could be, and not like, in the midst of rubble. So they moved to Canada and then eventually they moved into the States.

[00:22:19] And I just remember my grandmother, growing up, she always had that sort of English cottage garden situation. They started off with lawn, especially in the backyard. There was lawn, and it's slowly retreated until there was one little tiny patch of lawn, because she had two grand grandchildren that lived close by, but most of it was just all garden. There was a little cement patio area and there was gardens along the side, and then there was gardens all the way through the back, and it was tiered. I can see it still. 40 years later. I can still see it in my head. I can still see it. And [00:23:00] so she was definitely the inspiration for gardening. She's the one.

[00:23:05] I would just go back there and it was just always so lovely and it felt so different than anywhere else. I grew up in Buffalo. Which, steel town, right? When I was growing up, the steel had dried up and it was starting to become more of a rust belt city, and sometimes there were opportunities, sometimes there weren't. I remembered that just being so different, that garden-- and especially that backyard. It just felt so nice to go back there and see all those flowers in bloom and see different things throughout the growing season.

[00:23:38] My mom had some plants. She tried her hardest. It was funny, like there was there was one rose bush that grew up along the side of the one path that led to the back door. And I ended up hating that rose bush so much, because when I was learning to ride a bike, I fell in it like three or four times and I was just like, "All right, I'm done with [00:24:00] this."

[00:24:00] And then there was this patch of Lily of the Valley that grew along the other side of the patio between the neighbor's driveway and our property. And it just took over every year, and then it would die back and take over every year and die back. My mom passed in 2011 and my sister and I ended up getting Lily of the Valley tattooed on us with her signature. Flowers mean a lot.

[00:24:31] Samantha Young: I was gonna ask, was it mostly flowers in your grandma's garden? Did she grow food too?

[00:24:36] Rebecca Sapolsky: Nope.

[00:24:36] Samantha Young: No food?

[00:24:38] Rebecca Sapolsky: No food. And you would think that she would, like a victory garden kind of a thing, but no food. No food whatsoever. It was always flowers, which is interesting.

The Importance of Flowers

[00:24:47] Samantha Young: Flowers are very valuable. I think we need flowers just as much. But yeah, it is interesting. There's something to me about keeping a flower garden. It's very Venusian, obviously. 'cause it's doing [00:25:00] something for the sake of the beauty, knowing that this thing you're growing isn't necessarily gonna feed you physically, but gosh, having flowers around, it doesn't mean you're not fed spiritually.

[00:25:12] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yes.

[00:25:13] Samantha Young: I think about this all the time, especially right now because it's spring where I live in Portland, and spring here is... it brings me to my knees every time, because the flowers. I grew up in Southern California. There is wildlife there, it's not all concrete, but it is a lot of concrete, and it's just a different climate. It's the desert, it's palm trees. You don't really know that spring is coming until you get allergies. That's like my, that's been my association with spring for my entire life.

[00:25:44] And then I came up here 10 years ago, it was April 2015 and I moved to Portland and I was like, there's no way this place is real. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. I was like, there's colors [00:26:00] busting out of the sidewalk, it rains here. I was like, "There's water!" And the flowers. I get really emotional about it, because you start to have connections with your plant friends, right? You start to build relationships with them. I never knew about crocuses.

[00:26:18] Rebecca Sapolsky: Oh.

[00:26:18] Samantha Young: I never knew about crocuses until I moved to Portland. I didn't know what they meant. They're usually the first ones that pop up that symbolize the end of winter is coming. And it's so emotional. I will get emotional about it.

[00:26:31] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah.

[00:26:31] Samantha Young: When I was having my son three years ago, I was due on March 21st, so I was expecting an equinox baby, but my pregnancy got really complicated. I ended up being hospitalized for preeclampsia at 30 weeks, which was like the beginning of January.

[00:26:47] So I was in the hospital for the remainder of my pregnancy and then he was delivered at 34 weeks. So I spent like that whole January living in the hospital. But they let me go out for walks, 'cause I [00:27:00] demanded it, and I was obviously really lonely time 'cause it was 2022, so they were still giving a shit about COVID. My husband could come, he could be in the hospital, but he was the only one. We had a cat at home and he didn't wanna live in the hospital, understandably, so he would come and go, visit me as much as he could. It was very lonely.

[00:27:20] I would take these walks, and it was that time when the crocuses were starting to pop up and it was just me and my baby, having these moments. My life was just so small, right? Going outside and taking this walk every day was my highlight, and I would see the crocuses and it was so hopeful. I already loved them just because, Portland winters are really vicious. Anywhere that there's not a lot of sun.

[00:27:46] Rebecca Sapolsky: It's just all gray all the time.

[00:27:47] Samantha Young: Anywhere the winter gets tough and crocuses already mean so much when you start to see them, but then now for me too, it's like this personal thing. I'm like, I think of crocuses and I think of my baby, and I think of having him right [00:28:00] at that time where the crocuses were starting to bloom and it wasn't when I even was expecting to have him, either.

[00:28:06] So anyway, flowers are just as important as food. Just wanted to put that out there.

[00:28:11] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. But that's the great thing about flowers, right? Because they do trigger these really strong emotional responses in us. It's amazing. Some people think about the flowers I had on my wedding day, and I dried them and I saved them, or the first date with my partner and they gave me a rose or whatever. I love that that's like, your hopeful flower.

[00:28:36] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:28:36] Rebecca Sapolsky: They're so cute and they're so precious, but it's also like, how resilient is that?

[00:28:43] Samantha Young: They're so hopeful. It's true.

[00:28:45] Rebecca Sapolsky: Because it's like, you're popping out-- here, they pop out of the snow, honestly.

[00:28:50] Samantha Young: That's crazy.

[00:28:50] Rebecca Sapolsky: I live in Boston currently. They'll get snowed down and they're still like, "Hey, we're still here doing our thing, being purple and being all pretty." The tenacity, the [00:29:00] strength, the resilience. And then they keep coming back-- and not just keep coming back, they will spread. They love to take over and populate a whole area if the squirrels don't eat them first. And they're purple. And I love purple. So like to me, they're great flowers.

[00:29:16] Here, even before the crocus, we have something called snow drops, and snow drops come up on longer stems and they're little three-petal white flowers, and they droop a little bit. Those are the very first flowers that we get. And about two weeks ago, the one little patch that I have popped and I was like oh, yes.

[00:29:36] I fully need and want ,and we all need, to have four seasons. Like we need to have that whole entire year. You can't just have continuous summer, up here at least. And I have a great respect for winter. There's a lot of important things that can happen if we respect and honor that time.

[00:30:00] But I saw them and I was just like, oh my God, I love you winter, but you're here, you're coming.

A Relationship With Time

[00:30:06] Samantha Young: Yeah. It's beautiful. Gardening in general, right? It's a relationship with time. That's what it is.

[00:30:11] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yep.

[00:30:11] Samantha Young: When you were talking about your grandma's garden and then your mom having plants and trying, I was laughing 'cause I was thinking, that's how it happened in my family too. Like, it skipped a generation. My grandma is a garlic farmer, and has been pretty much my entire life.

[00:30:29] Rebecca Sapolsky: Wow.

[00:30:31] Samantha Young: She met and fell in love with her third husband right around the time my mom got pregnant with me. So they found love, they decided to move to upstate New York where my grandma's husband is from, and they bought a plot of land and started growing garlic and literally have been doing that ever since.

[00:30:48] Rebecca Sapolsky: Wow.

[00:30:48] Samantha Young: But it's funny, it does skip a generation 'cause my mom is not a gardener. She's not a plant lady. But when you mentioned winter, I thought of garlic specifically because I have been present for all the [00:31:00] different phases of garlic, throughout the year.

[00:31:02] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah.

[00:31:02] Samantha Young: It's like having a baby. It takes a long time to grow some garlic. Yeah.

[00:31:06] Rebecca Sapolsky: That is a long game right there. Absolutely.

[00:31:08] Samantha Young: Yeah. Literally it will take you nine months. And so I've been there for all the different phases and winter is so important for garlic. It's really important for garlic bulbs to be down in there, under the frozen soil. They need that.

[00:31:22] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah.

[00:31:23] Samantha Young: Having that appreciation for four seasons is also something that's happened to me since moving to Portland. 'Cause Southern California, we get two and a half seasons. It is what it is. Like it's just the climate, but now, since living here for the last decade, I have such an appreciation for the year being split into four parts, and feeling it in my body too.

[00:31:45] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yes. Yes. And some people never do, but I think it takes a while to appreciate and really sit in each of those seasons.

[00:31:54] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:31:55] Rebecca Sapolsky: Everybody's gonna have their favorite season, I get it. Fall is constant golden [00:32:00] hour and it's like the most magical time. I'm in New England. People come here for a reason.

[00:32:05] Samantha Young: New England fall. Yeah.

[00:32:06] Rebecca Sapolsky: Exactly. But each season has something that is truly unique and magical and beautiful and wonderful about it. You really have to have an appreciation for all of those things, right? Because if you are a gardener, it's not just gonna be all about summer, right? There's things to grow, much like your grandmother, right? There's things to plant in the fall.

[00:32:28] I planted so many tulips and hyacinth and a whole bunch of crocus, hoping all the little critters back here did not eat them. We'll see. But I planted so many bulbs because I wanted spring. I knew I was going to need spring to be colorful and beautiful and vibrant and fulfilling and generative and creative, 'cause that's the act of creation: those bulbs sitting in the ground, it's much like Persephone, right? We think about it sitting [00:33:00] in the ground, sitting in the cold. They need that. They have to have that.

[00:33:04] And then as the earth slowly turns again, we start to get more light. The air starts to warm up, the weather pattern starts to change, and then it all starts waking up again. And then it comes forth and the life begins anew. And that happens every year, too. Sometimes it's a little bit later. Sometimes it's a little bit earlier. Unfortunately, I've noticed just in the past five years that things are much more dysregulated because of the weather and because what we do to the climate.

[00:33:38] Samantha Young: Like this year, the crocuses were early. Too early.

[00:33:41] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. That's when you start to notice and you're like, oh no.

[00:33:43] Samantha Young: "Hey friends, I love seeing you, but why are you here?"

[00:33:46] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. This feels too early. What's happening out here? Yep. That's where I really developed a connection with the weather and really trying to not just look at the weather report, but really, what is the weather here?

[00:33:59] There's always [00:34:00] microclimates within the community, the neighborhood you live in. But like, what is the weather pattern? What comes over from the west and comes over to us in the east and what comes up the coast and what comes off the ocean and how does that all interrelate to us? And what can I do as one lone person trying to grow some flowers outside and make my soul happy? What can I do to help that? What can I do to make sure that keeps happening every year? Because it feeds your soul, it feeds your eyes. It feeds all five senses, but it goes beyond that too. It's like that spiritual, other worldly realm. They can be transcendent.

Gardening is Anti-Capitalist

[00:34:49] Samantha Young: Oh, absolutely. This is why I was so excited to talk to you about this, because everything you're saying right now goes so against capitalism. It can't be summer all the time. And that's [00:35:00] the deal with capitalism. Capitalism is, everything's always blooming and fruiting and growing and expanding. I think it's so funny when they call it degrowth, when something is shrinking, I'm like, you can't even accept that it's not growing, so you have to call it degrowth, you still have to center the idea that everything is always growing.

[00:35:22] And gardening, which is real and true... Capitalism, that's not how that shit works. You need to be buried in the dirt, in the frozen dirt, in the dark, and then you need to come alive again every year. That cyclical thing is so sacred and also, it blows my mind 'cause I'm like, that's how it works. That's how the world works. And capitalism is just kicking down the door being like, actually no. We're gonna do it this way, three percent year over year, no matter what.

[00:35:55] Rebecca Sapolsky: And we're gonna cut down all the resources in order to make that happen, and now the [00:36:00] resources aren't growing fast enough. It's an ever -present, never-relenting hunger and consuming.

[00:36:10] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:36:11] Rebecca Sapolsky: And there is no time to rest. There is no time to digest. There is no time to look back or even look forward in a genuine way.

[00:36:21] Samantha Young: I feel like in capitalism, looking back is only meant to serve you as far as you can use it to propel yourself forward.

[00:36:28] Rebecca Sapolsky: And I really think like, Tricia Hersey, right? The Nap Ministry. Rest is resistance. Rest is an act of rebellion. Gardening, too, is that deep belief that I'm gonna plant this seed, it's gonna grow, but also know that it's going to die back and go into the soil again.

[00:36:52] But new ones come up. It's not a relentless grow and now this 20 foot tall monster that [00:37:00] I don't know what to do with. There needs to be that cycle. There needs to be fertile, fallow, growth, rest.

[00:37:07] Samantha Young: You call it-- in gardening, when something won't stop growing-- invasive. It's called an invasive species. And the only way to deal with those is to cut them down and limit them. I think about this astrologically too, because, Saturn has always been associated with agriculture. The scythe going through, cutting down the fields and doing all of that.

[00:37:30] But I think it's also about Saturn's relationship to death and the cyclical nature of time. I feel like capitalism has this irony to it where outwardly, it's very death phobic, only wants things to grow, but then at the same time, is so very much a death cult that it's almost like gaslighting.

Rebecca's "Awakening"

[00:37:52] Samantha Young: I'm curious how you personally arrived at seeing gardening this way: something that's creative, [00:38:00] spiritual, political even. What was your what was your "awakening" with that? Or was it just something that you always recognized?

[00:38:06] Rebecca Sapolsky: I don't think I always recognized it. When I was younger, it was about "I wanna grow some pretty flowers." I lived in Philly for almost 15 years, and when I first moved there, it was an apartment. I didn't have a place to grow anything. And I was like, Ugh, okay. That's a bummer, but it is what it is. Eventually my husband and I bought a house, and so we had cement pads in the front and the back. People don't have lawns. We lived in Philly. I literally lived a seven minute walk from the stadium complex in South Philly.

[00:38:39] Samantha Young: Is it like those row houses?

[00:38:41] Rebecca Sapolsky: I had a row home. Yep. I did. And so you had like a little front area, but really was like an extension of the sidewalk. And then you have a little back area. And I did containers, I did a weird, mini raised bed situation in the back. And that's where I started thinking about, I'm in the middle [00:39:00] of Philadelphia, which is pretty hardcore in its mentality.

[00:39:05] Samantha Young: Yeah, it's not like Portland where everybody has a backyard habitat.

[00:39:09] Rebecca Sapolsky: Not at all. There was a lot of cement pads. On my block-- 'cause you can see people's backyards, to an extent-- there was not a lot of green stuff happening. But that's where I realized, this is this is adding something to this little area that we live in and it's putting something out there.

[00:39:27] And that's where I started thinking about like how it's a creative process. It's more recently that I've been thinking of it as truly an art form. Because it's beautiful. And whether you grow vegetables, whether you grow flowers, both, whatever you're growing, it's all beautiful. Just a little shoot of green coming out of that brown soil.

[00:39:54] Samantha Young: It's a sight for sore eyes.

[00:39:55] Rebecca Sapolsky: It really is. It's so beautiful. You become engaged in [00:40:00] it. There's all the smells that happen. There's the sounds that are happening in there, because it's the rustling of the leaves and the plants and like the little buzz of all the insects going around, and so you're immersed that way. You have your visual, you have your sense of sound, you have your sense of smell, sense of taste, whether it's vegetables, whether it's edible flowers. And then the touch. I always think of the lambs ears. I think that's a good one everybody has touched at some point, right? 'cause you're like, "Ooh, they look all soft and kinda furry." And they are lovely to touch.

[00:40:32] I have two raised beds and a trellis that goes over and around so you can walk through it. I'll just touch the leaves and I'll just sit there.

[00:40:40] Samantha Young: It's really nice.

[00:40:40] Rebecca Sapolsky: I just stroke the leaves because it's that tactile thing, right? It's a soothing balm for you. But it also needs you to be the soothing balm for it.

[00:40:57] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:40:57] Rebecca Sapolsky: For the garden.

[00:40:58] Samantha Young: It's a relationship.

[00:40:59] Rebecca Sapolsky: [00:41:00] Yes. It's a deep relationship. Going out there and talking. I call them all Planty, like "Planty, how are you?" Everybody's Planty out there. Just don't have better nicknames. Although I do have a lilac and her variety is called Miss Kim. So I do refer to her as Miss kim.

[00:41:15] Samantha Young: That's Miss Kim.

[00:41:17] Rebecca Sapolsky: I'm not disrespecting her. She's special. She's lovely. I go out and I talk to them. I'm like, "Hey, how's everybody doing out here? Everybody got some good bees and flies and everything else and doing okay?" So there is that very reciprocal relationship that needs to happen, and that's very spiritual. That's very creative.

[00:41:38] I think it's political too, because you are not saying, I'm just going to run this stupid race that I never asked to run that I got born into. I am going to say no, and I'm going to go grow some flowers simply because they're [00:42:00] beautiful.

[00:42:00] Of course they also help any vegetables you wanna grow too, right? I'm gonna grow some vegetables because I wanna be able to be self-sufficient in that way, even if it's just that little bit of self-sufficiency. Because here, we only have 150 growing days. That's not a long time, without a lot of equipment and things to protect your plants from the winter and the snow and the ice. It's a short growing season, but you can say no, I'm gonna take this part back and I'm going to eat and I'm also going to share it when I have a bounty, right?

[00:42:35] Samantha Young: There's almost always a bounty. Anybody who grows any type of food is gonna have too much of it. Almost every time.

[00:42:41] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. 'cause it always comes. Even if you succession plant, which is every week or every two weeks I'm gonna plant a few more, nope. Inevitably it's all at the same time. I gladly share with my neighbors and I even share the bounty of the flowers too, because all of the zinnias might start popping all at the same time. They're [00:43:00] called "cut and come again" for a reason, because you snip the bloom, more come up. And they want that, 'cause that helps their generative cycle.

[00:43:08] And so I share that bounty with people, too-- because yes, we need the food, we need sustenance, but we also need that beauty in our houses. We need somebody to go, "Hey, these were going in my yard and I thought of you." Like, how lovely is that to have somebody just out of the blue say that to you?

[00:43:25] Samantha Young: It increases. What I love is, what you're talking about is really just increasing the amount of connections in your life. Like, you have this connection to your garden, and then the bounty that comes from that kind of forces you to go and connect with another human. Or else you're gonna have rotting food sitting around, basically. There's so much reverence in it too. Say I grew a bunch of tomatoes and it's too many. For me, it's like a race against thyme to get it to other people to enjoy this tomato.

[00:43:57] And there's something in that. [00:44:00] Everything you were talking about, it was bringing me into presence, right? Like you have to be present in the time that you're in with gardening every day. Like you said, only 150 growing days. There's harvesting seasons. It requires you to be so present with time because you're in relationship with the flow of time, right? Like you're in the cycle with it.

[00:44:21] That's so antithetical to capitalism and it is, like you said, very political. I find it very ironic that like the first settlers who came to Virginia from England were called the First Planters or whatever they, the Initial Planters or whatever it was. That group of people were sent over literally for the whole idea of: we're gonna go and plant our seed.

[00:44:48] And of course it was literal as well as metaphorical, 'cause they're planting the seed of colonization on this continent here, too. But it's just so ironic to me that they like, call [00:45:00] themselves the first planters and then we're here living out the long-term consequences of that. And for something that was supposedly founded on self-sufficiency, you can see how it's political when self-sufficiency is penalized, or it's restricted. Like, just the idea that a phrase called "guerilla gardening" exists, to me is a sign that things have gone very wrong. I'm glad guerilla gardening exists, but the fact that we need it is like... we have to fight for our rights to grow our food outta the ground? Clearly something has gone awry in the last 300 years.

[00:45:39] Rebecca Sapolsky: Or even to be able to live in a place that has open ground. Because I think of Philly, it was all concrete. It was all concrete. There were blocks that didn't even have trees. It was barren. And you can't grow your own food. You can't be self-sufficient if you're living literally in [00:46:00] concrete.

[00:46:00] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:46:01] Rebecca Sapolsky: It's impossible. But I saw people grow stuff all the time. It's containers, it's whatever they can do. It's like, window boxes.

[00:46:08] Samantha Young: Yeah. The little amount of sunshine you get. That's what's always freaked me out about those row houses, is that there's only windows on two ends of the house, and the middle is just blocked off. The lack of sunshine you get in your house, it's harder to grow.

[00:46:21] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. I thank goodness that our house faced north. It was a north- south, not an east-west. So the back of the house got sun all day constantly. So at least you could sit in the back end of the house and be able to have sunlight coming in windows and being out in the back cement pad, as I like to call it.

[00:46:42] So all of those. Just like doing all those little containers in the middle of concrete, that's political. That's an act of resistance that's saying no, we need this. Yes, this is where we live, and maybe for generations we lived here, but I need this, we [00:47:00] need this. I want it in my front yard, the front area of my house, so that everybody gets it. Everybody can see it, everybody can experience that. Yeah.

[00:47:10] Samantha Young: It's deeply political. I don't remember who said it, but it was like, "the political is anything you do in the public," or something like that. I don't agree with that, 'cause I feel like obviously politics are things we do outside of the public eye too, but I think there is something inherently political in doing something visibly like that. The choice between front yard and backyard. The way that gardening, especially food, it really does force you into interaction with other people. And the visibility of it. Here in Portland, everybody's got gardens, front yard and backyard. Everyone's got certified backyard habitats or " we're a plant sanctuary yard". I'm in an apartment complex, but my neighbors on the other side of the wall, [00:48:00] they have a bunch of plants like spilling out onto their patio and in their windows. I can see it when I walk by.

[00:48:06] There's something to that culture in Portland that I really appreciate. Because it's one of those things like when I'm walking through a neighborhood, sometimes you will walk by and if there's garden beds in someone's front yard and there's just a million tomatoes hanging off of it, for the most part people do not care. They're not gonna come out and be like, "You're stealing my tomatoes!" if you walk by and grab one. 'Cause it's like, I put it in my front yard, I'm not trying to hide this.

[00:48:31] Rebecca Sapolsky: You made that active choice to put that there.

[00:48:34] Samantha Young: To grow food in your front yard.

[00:48:37] And for the other issues that Portland has, I've always really enjoyed that. Gardening here is almost taken for granted, like the amount of community spaces I see. There's so many community gardens and so many front yard garden boxes, there's people who are constantly teaching others how to grow food.

[00:48:57] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. And it's not like in [00:49:00] more well-off places where it's like the manicured landscape. It's "oh yes, this is our garden," but you never planted it. You don't maintain it. You constantly have other people doing everything for it. So is it really your garden?

[00:49:14] Samantha Young: And that's the relationship part of it.

[00:49:16] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yes.

[00:49:16] Samantha Young: Being in relationship, like you were saying. I love that you just sit out and talk and just see what's going on in the garden. The five senses thing, too. I have a really sensitive nose, so when it comes to pleasant scents, it's really nice for me. It's like my favorite sensory experience. And yeah, there's these specific smells that I have from when my grandma harvests garlic, in the garage they're drying it out and everything just smells like garlic. Or she has a little sunflower garden patch, and sometimes when it's really in bloom, you walk by and you can smell the sunflowers. Which don't have a really strong scent, but like, when you smell it, it's so nice, it's so comforting.

[00:49:58] Rebecca Sapolsky: And it's all of them. It's that bigger mass [00:50:00] of them all together. It's that community of those flowers that bring out each other so well.

Gardening As A Sacred Practice

[00:50:08] Samantha Young: In your own journey with gardening, I know we've talked about the snow drops and the crocuses. Are there any other plants or garden practices you have that feel really sacred or transformative or radical to you?

[00:50:24] Rebecca Sapolsky: So where I live now in Boston, it's fancy. There's definitely some land. There's a lot more landscaped areas than 'people planting their own thing' areas. And I feel like even that is radical, me being out there and like actually digging up the soil. In the fall I planted... oh gosh, it was a lot. It was like 200 bulbs.

[00:50:51] Samantha Young: Oh wow.

[00:50:52] Rebecca Sapolsky: I went a little crazy. But again, there had been some weird weather the past couple years, and so all the bulbs that I had planted just two or three years [00:51:00] ago, most of them had rotted out. So I had to find some wholesale and get some new bulbs and plant those in. But just being out there and doing that, 'cause there's nobody else in my neighborhood digging up their own soil and looking at it and going, "oh, look at all these awesome worms that are in here."

[00:51:19] So I needed to do that. There's so much green out there right now. I'm so excited, because we just finally are above 40 most days now. So now there's all these things coming up and it's so exciting. So I feel like doing that for myself-- and my mother-in-law, because my mother-in-law really loves it and we're on her property. I choose colors for myself, but I also know what she likes specifically and I always make sure to have those front and center, so when she's looking out her kitchen window, she sees it and it makes her happy.

[00:51:52] So to me that's sacred. Doing that, planting all that stuff for the fall so you get through that winter. And it was a [00:52:00] nasty winter here this year. In January and February, it didn't get much above 20, 25 degrees most days. It was icy. It wasn't even snowy. It was not pleasant at all. And so being able to go out there and every day see a little bit more growth and a little bit more growth.

[00:52:15] It used to be that I was very proud of myself: "Oh, look what I grew. Yeah. I did it."

[00:52:21] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[00:52:22] Rebecca Sapolsky: But now it's much more of like, "Thank you so much for being here. I'm so glad you made it through the winter and so did I. We're gonna be here together and I'm gonna come out and talk to you every day and tell you how much I'm so happy that you're here, and do what I can to make sure you come up again next year." That truly is being protective and loving life.

[00:52:48] And, if we wanna talk about bullshit, pro-life nonsense, right? That's pro-life. You're protective of that life. You're protective of the things that need to [00:53:00] grow, and then they come up and you are protective of them as they are here too. That's what pro-life is: being and keeping it all-- holding it in reverence. And holding it as something sacred and something beautiful. It's not just picketing outside of an abortion clinic. That's not what truly being pro-life is. And I don't call myself a pro-life person. That is not me at all, but that's, to me, truly loving life.

[00:53:30] Samantha Young: Yeah. And part of being pro-life in that sense, especially when you're connecting with gardening and the cycle of life and death, it means being pro-death, too. Because that is what's necessary. We have to cut certain things down to allow other things to grow. Because the earth's resources are finite. That's why we pull weeds, 'cause the weeds aren't bad, but they are taking energy from the things that we are intentionally trying to grow. That's why they have to [00:54:00] die.

The Politics of Lawns

[00:54:00] Rebecca Sapolsky: That gets back to-- oh my god, the politics around lawns. That could be like a whole separate thing, because I just started reading about the history of lawns and I was like...

[00:54:10] Samantha Young: You'll get so mad.

[00:54:12] Rebecca Sapolsky: I know. So angry. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna stop reading because I'm getting mad now. I can't deal with this energy right now.

[00:54:18] Samantha Young: The more you learn about lawns, the more angry you will become. That is a fact.

[00:54:22] Rebecca Sapolsky: Absolutely. God, they're so infuriating. But some of the things that we consider weeds in the lawn really actually are helping that soil be better. So like, you think of the white clover. White clover's a little... it can be invasive. It's not a native. And then there's that whole talk about what's native, what's invasive. That's a whole thing. But white clover, the pollinators love it, and it draws them to your yard. And like, even dandelions. Dandelions draw out-- I think they're nitrogen fixers. I could be wrong, but they also pull out some [00:55:00] toxins outta your soil, so they're not really "bad".

[00:55:04] Now, one of the things that I really do think is pretty bad is something called a Tree of Life. That thing just takes over wherever it's at. And it is not from North America. It grows by suckers. It gets everywhere. It's like kudzu. It just everywhere, and you're like, "no, get this outta here." Let's yank it. Let's get it outta here.

[00:55:26] Samantha Young: I really feel like gardening is such a microcosm for organizing humans. Because you have to balance all these relationships: there are plants that aren't good for each other, and shouldn't be together, but then there's other plants that are beneficial for each other, and they have different needs at different times. And so you're doing this puzzle of relationships to make it really symbiotic for everyone, and sometimes that means removing certain things. But it's also acknowledging that each of these things has its own unique needs, and when we can [00:56:00] balance those relationships successfully, then we all get to flourish.

[00:56:05] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yes. It's community, right? It's building community, it's building relationships, whether it is between plants, between humans, or between plants and humans. That's all interconnected, too. There's certain vegetables that just don't wanna be in the same bed together. Like, last year I grew pumpkins, which was so much fun because those vines went...

[00:56:26] Samantha Young: Pumpkin is so fun to grow. It will get crazy.

[00:56:31] Rebecca Sapolsky: They went so crazy. I had no idea how crazy it was gonna get. And they went absolutely insane. They cut across the lawn. They were trying to get to the other garden. I was like, oh my gosh.

[00:56:41] Samantha Young: Pumpkins don't give a fuck. They really don't.

[00:56:44] Rebecca Sapolsky: They're awesome. But also, I know that they also draw a lot out of the soil. They were great, and I had little ones, I had a big one that decided to grow on the top of the trellis and I was like, please don't turn into a 25-pound pumpkin on the top of the trellis.

[00:56:58] Now, I can't grow them [00:57:00] again this year, because they do take a lot out of the soil, and so you need to really-- not just "oh, I'm just gonna put more fertilizer in there," like we do with our agriculture practices now. Don't do that. Give your soil some rest, grow something else that's gonna help put the nutrients back in naturally, and then you can come back to that. Because again, it's just taking every resource out of the soil itself, and then it's barren and then you've killed it, and then we have to keep moving. And that's colonization right there.

[00:57:31] Samantha Young: You don't till the soil, you don't do any of that. My favorite thing when I was a kid and I would go out and spend like the summers on my grandma's farm was she would let me do the aerating with the spikes.

[00:57:41] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yes.

[00:57:42] Samantha Young: Oh my god. I love doing that. I was like, oh, you have to let air into your soil.

Stewarding Land vs. Owning Land

[00:57:47] Samantha Young: I heard this thing once, it was like, yeah, all of human life is supported by six inches of soil, basically.

[00:57:53] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yep. The six inches of top soil.

[00:57:55] Samantha Young: That's what supports all of us. Which is crazy, but it brings me to [00:58:00] this concept, which I haven't explicitly stated, but I've been hearing it a lot when you've been talking, and it's that idea of stewarding land versus owning land. Because it's like you said, somebody can have a garden. You can own a garden. You can have garden beds and maybe you've got a good sprinkler system set up so they're always watered and then yeah, maybe you pull some weeds occasionally, but really it's like a landscape kind of thing. And if that's where you're at in your relationship to the land as a starting point, okay.

[00:58:31] How do you see that? How do you see that showing up?

[00:58:34] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. No, I totally agree. When you see a very manicured, landscaped area, that is "I own this, I have put this mark on the land because this is mine." It definitely feels like this territorial pissing situation: this is my property and I want to have hydrangeas and this sculptural bush. But it looks so dead. That stuff, to me, looks [00:59:00] dead. Yes, you're growing things, but there's no soul there. You just decided what looked sculptural and good. It's like going to an art museum and like you can't connect to that piece of art. 'cause you're like, where's the soul in that? Where is it speaking to us as human beings?

[00:59:16] Stewardship is much more about what I touched on earlier. It's not just, what can the land do for me? What am I doing for this land? What am I doing for these plants? What am I doing for all the invertebrates that we need in order for all these things to grow? What am I personally doing to help the all of this grow and stay healthy and be able to keep doing what it's doing so it can give back to me in those ways that I talked about: in the creative, in the spiritual, in the mental health.

[00:59:53] And so that's where I've really been diving in the past couple years, is the [01:00:00] stewardship, right? And being able to say, "Yes, you're giving me something, but what am I giving you in return?" This is not a Giving Tree situation where it's gonna be one sided, and I'm just gonna take.

[01:00:13] "That's gonna be great. It's gonna make me feel better." Okay. Yeah. But you keep doing that, eventually it's not gonna be there. So what can I do? What do I do to be in service of this land that I have the honor of living on right now?

[01:00:33] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[01:00:34] Rebecca Sapolsky: And I really think about, for me, taking care of the soil and making sure it's healthy, making sure-- we have done such a disservice to soil. When I grew up, we didn't live near it, but there was Love Canal right up in Western New York, and that was a horrific amount of chemicals just dumped into people's neighborhoods, basically. People built houses on top of this chemical waste. [01:01:00] Horrific. I think about the river in Cleveland that literally was on fire.

[01:01:05] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[01:01:06] Rebecca Sapolsky: So I think about our soil, especially six inches of top soil. A lot more hardcore gardening magazines and journals have talked about how a lot of that six inches of top soil is gone. And then what does that do to all the worms and all the beneficial insects and just everything that's living in that six inches? It's not being able to do what it needs to do to keep everything healthy and keep everything growing. What can I do? What can I do here-- me, personally, physically here?

[01:01:39] But then like, what else can you do to get that out into the world and talk to people and not be preachy? I always find it somewhat puritanical when people start going, "It needs to be all natives and you need to do this and you need to do that," and it's just another form of extremism. Please stop. I'm gonna grow the zinnias no matter what. It's gonna [01:02:00] happen. These bees are pretty darn used to it by now.

[01:02:03] I have a native patch. Specifically, I sprinkle seeds that are native to this area. I sprinkle them down every year and I have this native patch and it's just all monarda, which is bee balm. And they're like, cool. If anybody's ever seen them, they're cool little spiky things. They're awesome looking. And Black-Eyed Susans and hyssop. So like those things grow there, and I have a patch of that, and if they make it over to one of the other beds or containers or the garden, that's fine too you're more than welcome to join the party over there. But being militant about any of it defeats the purpose of really trying to be a realistic steward of the land.

[01:02:50] Samantha Young: Yeah, because it sounds more like somebody sticking to like a rule book as opposed to just learning about the relationships or the potential [01:03:00] relationships that can occur here.

Settler Colonialism & "Invasive" Species

[01:03:03] Rebecca Sapolsky: Jessica Lee, I heard her do a talk once. And it was about, what is really native? What is really invasive? We throw these terms around, but all those terms come from white colonialism.

[01:03:22] Samantha Young: That's exactly what I was about to say. I'm like, this kind of reminds me of white supremacy a little bit, where things have to be codified and written down, and it's scientific, so those are rules. Or even just the even just the connotations of designating one thing: one plant is native and one is invasive.

[01:03:43] Rebecca Sapolsky: It was a fascinating talk. This was the best part: she did this talk about this subject specifically, like thinking about these terms in a white colonizer sort of idea.

[01:03:54] Samantha Young: Oh yeah. Jessica J. Lee.

[01:03:56] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yes. That's her.

[01:03:57] Samantha Young: Looks like she has a book.

[01:03:59] Rebecca Sapolsky: She has a few books out. [01:04:00] I think the newest one is called Dispersal.

[01:04:02] Samantha Young: Dispersals, yeah.

[01:04:03] Rebecca Sapolsky: She's incredible. But she gave this talk in the middle of a weekend gardening webinar thing that was like, "learn how to make containers and learn how to take how to better care of the soil" and blah, blah, blah. But then she comes in with this talk and I was like, whoa, we're blowing the minds of so many middle American white people right now, tuning in 'cause they wanted to learn about container gardening. And I was like, "oh my god, I freaking love you right now." It was so cool. But she really was like, "we gotta just think about these terms. Let's just talk about how these terms are not okay, and what they bring up in us." What kind of imagery, and like you said, what kind of rules? What are we really saying when we talk of this?

[01:04:49] Samantha Young: I wanna read this now. If anyone's interested, Dispersals, it's a essay collection, but it's on plants, borders, and belonging. She's talking about what happens when [01:05:00] plants leave their original homes and put down roots elsewhere. And I'm like, then we're gonna have to talk about immigrants, aren't we? We're gonna have to talk about colonization a little bit.

[01:05:11] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah.

[01:05:11] Samantha Young: I love that.

[01:05:12] Rebecca Sapolsky: 'Cause if you think about the change in climates, right? There was the change in the grow zones. They recently updated, and a lot of people like moved up: if you were like a 6B, maybe now you're like a 7A or even a 7B, which is a huge jump-- in your grow days, in the warmth cycle and the heat cycle. But that also means plants are not gonna respond to the grows zone. "I gotta stay over here." No, they're gonna say, "I need to move up there because I need the cooler weather in the wintertime, and that's up further there. That's where I've never been before."

[01:05:43] And so plants are starting to move. They are starting to go elsewhere. And so really, what is invasive? What is native? What is a "good" plant in this [01:06:00] area? Even think about that. People go, "these are the good plants here," and it's whoa, gee.

[01:06:04] Samantha Young: What do you mean by "good"?

[01:06:06] Rebecca Sapolsky: You talking about people in your neighborhood, or are you talking about plants right now?

[01:06:10] Samantha Young: It's very much that. It's very much white colonialist, capitalist thinking, even if it hasn't been explicitly described that way. The words we use matter. So I'm like, of course it's gonna encourage us to think about people in this way, too.

[01:06:25] What makes a plant invasive? Generally, that it takes more than it provides. That's a really loose definition of what an invasive plant is, right? It spreads fast, generally takes too much, doesn't give back the right things.

[01:06:41] That's what fascists say about immigrants: they spread too quickly, they take too much, and they don't give back enough. If we can think about plants like this, it's not a leap to think about human beings in the same way.

[01:06:53] Yeah, I'm with her. I am with Jessica Lee on that.

[01:06:56] Rebecca Sapolsky: She's so cool. Her writing is just glorious, so I [01:07:00] highly recommend. I'm actually about halfway through that book. I'm a big library person. If it really moves me, then I buy it. So that's definitely in my buy list, because already halfway through and I'm like, yes. Yes. Because she's lived in different places, too, all over the world, and she understands that experience. She really personally understands immigration and what is native, what is invasive, what does all of that mean? I can't recommend her enough, honestly.

[01:07:26] Samantha Young: This is why I'm so glad that you're doing Gardening For The End of The World, because there's so much rich metaphor and connection to make from gardening to all the rest of this bullshit, as an answer to it.

Plants Are Disability Justice Allies

[01:07:37] Samantha Young: What it made me think of, when you were talking about the grow zones changing, is... plants know what they need environmentally, so they go to where that is. And it made me think of disability justice. So much of what makes life hard, what makes it a disability, is a mismatch in environment, and living in an environment that's hostile to your sensory needs or just can't [01:08:00] meet whatever your needs are 'cause it doesn't fit into what white colonialism has designated as normal or natural or native. It's about knowing what environment is good for you.

[01:08:13] And we, as humans living in this neoliberal project, we're like, "oh, my environment's not matched well for me, I need to change," right? It's me that needs to change, instead of figuring out what the environment is that you would need. We're not supported in doing those types of things, right? It's very much like, "You are where you are. If you don't like it, you can leave. But also, fix yourself," basically, if the environment's not working. And just like with gardening, humans need help.

[01:08:45] Plants need help. You're in a relationship with your garden, basically creating an environment, right? You're creating the right environment for these plants. It's nurturing. It's a lot like raising children. It's just trying to create the right [01:09:00] soil for them. But you can't force any of that, either. There's so much metaphor here.

[01:09:06] Rebecca Sapolsky: I know. And it's tied to so many things, because gardening, nature, just being outside, not being tied to a desk for eight hours and being told you can't even leave this building for eight hours, all of that is... we are part of that and we need part of that. We need to be in there and out there and immersed in it. Everybody, across the board. It doesn't matter if you're an able bodied, rich, white man, or that you're a small child with no agency, or that you are neurodivergent. Everybody.

[01:09:48] Samantha Young: A poor, Black, trans woman needs that as well.

[01:09:51] Rebecca Sapolsky: Everybody needs it, deserves it. It is a right. And [01:10:00] it gets taken away. It gets taken away because we decide to build lots of tall buildings. Because we like to put down cement and sidewalks. We keep taking it away from ourselves. And I know that there's a lot of talk about how our mental health issues are connected to not being connected to nature as much, and I just feel like we keep doing this to ourselves. Obviously there's things that are outside of you or I. I'm not the one deciding to build giant, 20-story, ridiculous office buildings or anything. But we have to demand it. We have to reclaim it.

[01:10:42] And the taking away of public spaces, that's a big part of it, too. There's none of those outdoor or just even like, those third spaces where people can sit and be together and be in community. And so much better if there's green around it. So much better. Those, [01:11:00] even, are being taken away because we wanna build a massive Walmart or wanna build parking lots.

[01:11:07] Samantha Young: Oh my god. Don't get me started on concrete parking structures.

Therapeutic Horticulture

[01:11:12] Rebecca Sapolsky: So gardening, nature, our environment, the weather... it's everything. It's all of it. Like to me, I don't know if I've ever really sat and articulated it before. Obviously there's so many justice issues that we have to tackle, but for me, starting from the gardening part of it, starting from the nature part of it, and having your feet planted in the earth and being grounded is where you can then go out and make the change that you need to see in the world, but also that other people need and deserve.

[01:11:52] Samantha Young: A hundred percent. I think for me personally, the most important part of gardening is that it [01:12:00] increases your sense of agency, and we really need that right now. It's a good gateway to feeling more personal agency. Outside circumstances, the government, the world, whatever's happening externally, there's things you don't have agency over and never will. But that's what makes it important to figure out where you do have it, and I think gardening is a really good way to just increase those feelings of personal agency.

[01:12:32] There's a lot of choice involved. We can't control everything that happens in the garden 'cause it's a relationship. It's like you said: I'm gonna sit out in my garden. That's a choice I get to make. I get to be in this relationship. I get to choose to be visible with it, do it in my front yard instead of my backyard, and it produces something. And that's very fulfilling.

[01:12:54] The sense of personal agency and autonomy you get from that relationship to [01:13:00] me, I think is important, 'cause people just need to know what that feels like. You need to know what personal agency feels if you're gonna generate more of it.

[01:13:08] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yes.

[01:13:09] Samantha Young: A lot of us are really familiar, maybe, with the feeling of helplessness-- the opposite of agency. We might be really familiar with that feeling and that's okay. I'm not making a judgment call, but you need to be just as familiar with what agency does feel like if you're going to move towards that. That's just my soapbox about why I think people should garden.

[01:13:29] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. And even if it's just-- I hate using the word 'just' because everything is important-- if you take one container, just an 8 or 10 inch wide container and you just throw a handful of seeds in there, and they grow? It feels so good. I grew that. I helped that to live.

[01:13:51] When you were talking about agency and giving people that sense of autonomy, there's more and more of it happening here, but it [01:14:00] really gained momentum in France. There's a whole like therapeutic horticulture movement.

[01:14:06] Samantha Young: Love that.

[01:14:07] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. So I did a mini certificate program on it, because I was like, oh, what is that? And it's about giving people agency, autonomy, helping them heal through trauma, through physical impairments-- tilling the soil, planting seeds as physical therapy, occupational therapy in conjunction with mental health, therapies and treatments. It's just something that's very healing, and it's giving people that autonomy back. It's giving them that "I'm going to work this. I'm gonna dig in the soil and I'm going to put a seed in there, and then we're gonna grow something and it's gonna be really nice and lovely," but it's also about "I am going to try to use my body again [01:15:00] to make this happen. This is gonna help me heal something inside of me that's not healthy, that's not working for me right now." You can use it in hospitals, mental health-- like inpatient or outpatient settings-- any sort of clinics, schools.

[01:15:21] There's so many different applications for it, but it was such a different way of thinking about it. This is something that can really, truly transform people and help them heal. So I thought it was really cool, and I used to work for a school district, so I'm like, I wonder if I know any OTs that would be interested in-- they could handle the therapeutic part, right?

[01:15:40] Samantha Young: You can do the gardening part.

[01:15:42] Rebecca Sapolsky: I can help with the gardening part. And I think about kids who maybe struggle with fine or gross motor skills, how can we help them? Like, how does being out there in the weather, in the environment and getting outdoors help them with all of those challenges and how can I help them grow and be and feel [01:16:00] more confident in their bodies?

[01:16:02] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[01:16:03] Rebecca Sapolsky: Or like nursing homes, right?

[01:16:06] Samantha Young: Oh yeah.

[01:16:06] Rebecca Sapolsky: Every nursing home should. I don't know why more of them don't have something like this as an option.

[01:16:11] Samantha Young: They really should. My grandma is in her late seventies and she eats garlic all the time. She's always outside. She's so happy. She's so healthy. She's got more energy than I do, a lot of the time. Old people need to be outside. It's good for them.

[01:16:26] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah.

[01:16:28] Samantha Young: And same thing with kids. People always say if your kid's in a bad mood, either take 'em outside or put 'em in water, and usually it'll fix whatever's going on with them.

[01:16:36] Rebecca Sapolsky: It's the same for adults too, but we tend to deny ourselves.

[01:16:39] Samantha Young: It actually doesn't go away. It's still true when you're a grownup, but we forget that.

[01:16:44] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. Again, capitalism, right? You gotta be at the grind. You gotta be doing this, you gotta be doing that. No time for rest, no time for sniffing a flower.

[01:16:53] Samantha Young: You cannot stop and smell the flowers.

[01:16:54] Rebecca Sapolsky: Nope. Do not enjoy that crocus, Sam. Do not enjoy it. Gotta keep marching. Gotta keep moving.

Gardening For The End of The World

[01:16:59] Samantha Young: [01:17:00] Everything that you were just describing to me, it sounds like it falls under that umbrella of Gardening For The End of The World. It's a Substack you've started. And what do you wanna do with that? Or what do you want that to be for other people? What are your goals for Gardening For The End of The World?

[01:17:17] Rebecca Sapolsky: There's a lot of really deeply, darkly fucked up shit happening.

[01:17:21] Samantha Young: Yes.

[01:17:21] Rebecca Sapolsky: 'Cause I played around with that phrase. When I spoke it to you, I think I said "gardening for the end of the world."

[01:17:27] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[01:17:28] Rebecca Sapolsky: Afterwards I was like, oh, that's cool. You had that reaction to it and you were like, whoa. I was like, what about "gardening at the end of the world"? But gardening at the end of the world seems so bleak. Words are important, and that one little word. That one little preposition.

[01:17:41] Samantha Young: Yeah. Gardening at the end of the world sounds like the guys playing the violins on the Titanic.

[01:17:46] Rebecca Sapolsky: "We're done for." But gardening for the end of the world, because it's about... things are ending, but it's because it's the last grasp of people who are in charge, who have power, who are like, "oh, we're losing our power [01:18:00] now." Now we gotta clamp down.

[01:18:01] Samantha Young: The death rattle.

[01:18:03] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yes. And gardening for the end of the world says "no." These fucked-up people are gonna get theirs. I don't care who you are, everybody has to acknowledge the fact that something is absolutely ending at this point. It might end up taking fifty, a hundred years. I don't know when. None of us know that. But something is absolutely coming to an end.

[01:18:26] But gardening and nature and being a steward for that? That keeps going. That continues on. And that is like that seed of optimism. I plant a seed. I literally am planting a seed because I am optimistic that it's gonna come up in the fall, that I'm gonna get something beautiful and that it's going to make its own seeds, drop them and even more comes up next year, and keeps going. And keeps going.

[01:19:00] It's really hard to be optimistic right now. It doesn't matter what group you identify with. Everybody is feeling it. Everybody is getting just fucked. But gardening is there, it's always gonna be there. We can plant seeds and we can be here and we can keep going. And we can say, "Fuck you, I am planting this and this is gonna grow and I can eat it, or I can look at it and be in love with this gorgeous, orange, pink, yellow color, and I can experience joy when you're trying to take away my joy, and I can also give that joy and that nourishment to others, and you can't stop me from doing it."

[01:19:53] Samantha Young: That's like, my favorite part about it. I've been identifying it in myself lately as ragged hope, where it's like, [01:20:00] I'm very tired and I do not often feel a lot of hope, but I will take actions that indicate hope. It's planting seeds. That's why we have it as a phrase, as a colloquialism, "planting a seed". Gardening, at its core, is saying, "I have a vision for the future, for this plant, and I'm gonna do what I can to make it come forth." Even if I don't get to enjoy it, like avocado trees or something like that. Even if I don't even get to enjoy what comes out of this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna take this action today. I, for some reason, believe in the future, that it will be there and that it is worthwhile.

[01:20:42] Having a child is a much bigger deal. But this is something that I've come to, when people talk about like, how can you have kids? How can you bring a kid into a world like this? Sorry. I'm an optimist. Sorry, I don't know what to tell you. That's just who I am.

[01:20:56] And it wasn't that I'm like, "oh, I'm gonna have a kid and then the world's gonna be better," for [01:21:00] me it was like, I know I could bring a child into this world and they could have a hard life because of the way that the world is going, but for me, I needed something to do it for. It wasn't enough just to do it for myself. And other people are different and that's fine, I'm not saying everybody has to feel the way I feel, but it was similar to gardening, on a different scale. If I'm gonna fight for the future, it's not enough for me to do it for myself. And having a child is very much, "okay, there is a future and it might not be mine, but it's very real and it matters." And gardening is a much lower stakes way to practice that same hope. You don't have to bring a human life into the world, but you can grow flowers. You could grow tomato and eat it, and that's incredible.

[01:21:45] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. And growing a child not just inside of your body, but outside of your body. It's all the same. It's all gardening, it's all being a good steward for the life that comes after [01:22:00] you. Because that's what it is. I can do this for myself, and I can do it for my kid, but what about if my kid has a kid, and if they have a kid and they have a kid?

[01:22:12] All of this is also very like Taoist, right? It's weird to love a philosophy, but I really deeply connect to Taoism, and it's all about the way and the flow of life. And it's all about being in that flow, being in that connection and understanding that you are just a small part of it and that doing things now-- gardening now, raising a decent kid now-- affects what happens later on. And so if I'm doing the good thing and raising a kid who tries to be the best human that they can and not be a horrible, rancid pestilence on this earth, that's planting a seed of hope. That's caring [01:23:00] about what happens after you. It's like a Bodhisattva vow: I am going to do what I can to forego my enlightenment to make sure that everybody else can reach it.

[01:23:15] Samantha Young: That's beautiful.

Everything is Gardening

[01:23:17] Samantha Young: So with with your Substack, going forward, what should people expect? What kind of content are you trying to put up there?

[01:23:25] Rebecca Sapolsky: I do longer form essay things. One that I published recently was about fertile and fallow, right? Like we, we really need to honor those cycles, not just out in the world, but on ourselves. We need rest. We have periods of motion. We have periods of rest, but also creatively, we need to have fertile and fallow. You're gonna have moments where you're like, "Oh my god, I have this inspiration and I'm gonna write this whole thing, or I'm gonna create this beautiful thing," or whatever. And then you're like, "Whew, okay. Brain spent. I did that. Now I need time to think and I'm gonna just sit [01:24:00] and I'm gonna rest and I'm gonna either edit that or think of something new to bring out into the world." Fertile and fallow. So it's things that come up.

[01:24:08] Obviously you have to be deeply tied to the seasons, and I was having this conversation with my mentor and we were talking about how I believe that we really should be setting our intentions in like November, right? When really, that's kinda like the wheel of life. That's the cycle. That's when things are really shutting down and going to bed and going to sleep. And that's where you need to set your intention, because you're not gonna set your intention and immediately, New Year's Day, we're gonna go right for it. That's not how things grow. You need to set your intention. You need to let it sit underground and think about it for a little bit.

[01:24:46] Samantha Young: Oh my gosh, that is actually so true, now that you're saying that. 'cause I do this already. It's Sagittarius season, right? Like the end of November, beginning of December, I start thinking about what I wanna do for the next year. And it's just funny that you say that 'cause there's [01:25:00] intentions that I set for stuff I wanted to create back at the end of November. And stupidly, I told myself, "I'll get this out in December." I'm only just now finishing that thing, in March. It needed that time. It just needed to gestate a little bit.

[01:25:15] Rebecca Sapolsky: It needed to gestate, and now, look, it's spring. It's the equinox.

[01:25:19] Samantha Young: Exactly.

[01:25:19] Rebecca Sapolsky: It's the time of rebirth and birth, and now you're almost ready to birth that thing. I don't think people even think about, "now it's March, now it's the equinox, I'm gonna set my intentions." If you're like big into astrology or lunar cycles, now is the time, but you need to set those much further back. Let them sit inside of you, let them gestate, because other things might come up and you're like, "Oh, that's what it really needs to be. It's not just this, it's this thing now. It's this bigger thing."

[01:25:50] It's those kind of topics that I like to think about, because that is all tied to gardening, but it's also tied to our creative cycle and who we are as creative-- [01:26:00] everybody's creative. I hate "the creatives." Everybody's creative. We are all generative. We are all creative and we create things. That ties back to gardening.

[01:26:10] You were talking about disability justice, and I think about that horticultural therapy and how does that tie in together, and ideas of this weird militancy we have in America around gardening. 'Cause I read a lot of UK gardening magazines too. They have their own problems. The English have got a lot in their soil that they need to work out, but they don't have that same weird puritanical militancy about things that we do, and that's fascinating.

[01:26:39] So that would end up that's on my list. That's in my Notion. I have a running list of just different topics I wanna talk about, but it's thinking about how we live our lives, how that is gardening. And like I talk about gardening topics too, actually talk about, "let's grow this," right? It's also about how we live and how we're gonna move through this [01:27:00] change in this world into whatever the new iteration may be. May it be positive and wonderful, lovely and beautiful, and something better that we all deserve.

[01:27:11] Samantha Young: Yeah. I love that. Everything is gardening.

[01:27:13] Rebecca Sapolsky: Everything is gardening. That's my base. Everything is gardening, in a more holistic sense of the word.

[01:27:20] Samantha Young: It really is, though. Everything is being in touch with that rhythm of life and energy and death. It made me think of a specific word when you were talking about the creative process. Funny enough, the word I was thinking of is 'sporadic'. And I have another podcast that I do very sporadically with one of my friends, and we talk about etymology and astrology and the intersection between that. But my friend Smoolie who I do the podcast with, they're like an etymology whiz. They know so much about words, and they gave me this really beautiful explanation of the word 'sporadic,' because it came from planters [01:28:00] on Greek islands. I think there's islands over there that are named Sporades, but basically the word sporadic came from these planters, these farmers, and they planted sporadically, meaning that it wasn't uniform, it wasn't in rows. It's not how we're used to seeing big grow operations. They planted meaningfully and intentionally where they thought that plant had the best chance of growing. So it wasn't always uniform and it wasn't always predictable-- sporadic.

[01:28:29] The connotation we have around sporadic, I think, is a little bit skewed and negative. You're sporadic, you're inconsistent, or you're unreliable. But the true meaning of it is actually about only popping up when it is the most effective or the most impactful, or doing so with the most intention. That's really what sporadic means, and it comes from gardening. I was thinking about creative practice-- this is what, when you said that, made me think of when somebody shows up sporadically to their creative practice. Maybe they're in a [01:29:00] fallow phase.

[01:29:00] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah.

[01:29:01] Samantha Young: There's a lot of opportunities for shame to creep up: "I'm not creating, I create so sporadically." You create when there's something that needs to be created. It grows where it's supposed to grow and when it is supposed to grow. I just think that's really beautiful and I wanted to bring justice for the word 'sporadic'.

[01:29:19] Rebecca Sapolsky: No, I love that. I think I totally agree with you on that. It does have a very negative connotation. And it doesn't need to.

[01:29:27] Samantha Young: Yeah.

[01:29:27] Rebecca Sapolsky: There is an intentionality behind that, and it is very much about growing, making itself known and having that deep intuition of, "This is when it needs to happen. This is how it needs to happen. And this is where it needs to happen." I love that. I'm gonna look up the Greek farmer thing. I'm gonna look that up.

[01:29:49] Samantha Young: Yeah. If you wrote about it, that'd be really cool too. I just thought of that. The overlap between gardening and creative practice.

[01:29:54] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. I love that. That's so cool. So my Substack is all over the place. That it is, [01:30:00] but it's sporadic in the most positive sense. And I also do-- I call it garden coaching and consulting. I do it in person, here in the Boston area, but I've done it virtually for a few people now, and it's fun because somebody's walking me through their garden. We're on Zoom or FaceTime and they're walking me through, and I have a whole host of questions I ask ahead of time, because we have an hour together. There's a lot to go through.

[01:30:23] So I ask a whole bunch of questions ahead of time, but then we like talk about, okay, this is the spot. Let me see it. What do you wanna feel in this spot? Yes, all the important things-- water, soil light, all that kind of good stuff-- all the logistics, all the operational things are super important. But also, what flowers do you absolutely love because they bring up this special memory for you? What do you want to feel like when you open the door and you go into that spot where we're gonna grow something? What do you wanna feel like? Do you want senses?

[01:30:54] Do you wanna remember your mom? What do you want? What do you wanna do? How do you wanna [01:31:00] feel when that happens, when you go over there? And that's been really fun. So I ask a whole bunch of questions ahead of time, we do a virtual thing, and then I create this whole PDF of okay, here's what you told me you wanted. Here's what we talked about. Here's a whole list of flowers or plants or veggies, or whatever it is you wanna grow. Here's a whole list of things. Here's some things that maybe you didn't consider before. Here's reputable places where you could buy those things, because that's a whole other thing too. Oh my gosh don't get me started. Baker Creek Seed Company, you jerks. So I give that whole thing and that's like a PDF I share with the person.

[01:31:40] I've done in-person. A lot of times it's, "I just moved here and I'm not sure what to do with this," or my one friend, her entire rotator cuff needed to be rebuilt. She's bionic now. It's awesome. But she's a gardener. She's like a hardcore gardener like I am, and she's "I can't do anything." And I'm like, "Alright, coming over. We're gonna do some stuff. You're gonna boss me around [01:32:00] and that's fine. Boss me around."

[01:32:02] I called it a spa day, where dig it up. What's in here that's old? What's in here that's still viable that you could grow this again this year? Maybe let's throw a little compost in here. Let's make sure the soil is nice and healthy. And so I went over a few times and helped her do some stuff and I was like, oh yeah, that's like a big thing, because as we get older, our bodies can't necessarily do the things that we wanna do or the things that we were doing in the garden, and so helping people be able to still do that.

[01:32:31] Samantha Young: That is a crazy valuable service. Especially the PDF and the buyer's guide too. That, to me, would be the most valuable part because I'm like, just gimme a list. Tell me where to go. Tell me who to give my money to, who to not give my money to.

[01:32:45] Wow. I love that you're offering that. And yeah, if anybody's listening, obviously I'm going to include Rebecca's information in the show notes, but I would highly encourage following the Substack, [01:33:00] reaching out if you wanna start your own garden, even if it is, like you said, just like an 8 by 10 container, like a little plastic tub or something you have to start with.

[01:33:09] Rebecca Sapolsky: Window boxes. If that's all you have, if that's all you're able to do? Phenomenal. You know how much you could do in a window box? Like see, this is where I'm gonna start to get like, all planty on people because I'd be like, oh my God you know what you could just do in just a window box? Come on now.

[01:33:23] Samantha Young: Oh my gosh. I love that. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for sharing. I want more people to hear about this, so yeah. I'm glad we got to do this.

[01:33:31] Rebecca Sapolsky: Yeah. I am too. No, I really appreciate this. A lot of times it feels like it's just earth trying to talk through me to other people, so the more I can talk to people about it, like the more I can make sense of it.

[01:33:43] There's all, there's all kinds of healing medicines we could be growing and making and so many things. It could be like, talking in these greater ideas and concepts of what is creative, what is humanity, what is spirituality in relation to this and how [01:34:00] is this all the big tree of life where we're grounded in the ground, but our branches are up in the sky?

[01:34:04] Samantha Young: Absolutely. Everything really is gardening. It really is.

[01:34:10] Rebecca Sapolsky: That should just be the tagline. Everything is gardening.

[01:34:13] Samantha Young: Everything is gardening.

Shout-Outro

[01:34:14] Samantha Young: #EverythingIsGardening. That is so true. Also, #PumpkinsDontGiveAFuck. They really don't. I loved this conversation. I hope you did too. I hope you learned something. I hope you're inspired to start gardening-- and like Rebecca said, even if it's just a window box, even if it's just a little plastic tub, there's always possibilities.

[01:34:38] And it's not just about growing something. It's not just about producing something. It's about the relationships you get to have and to nurture through gardening. I am over the moon about Rebecca's concepts and her gardening consultations. I will definitely be hiring her in the future when I'm ready to [01:35:00] start gardening. Just pure gold.

[01:35:04] And before we close up this episode, I wanna give a shout out and a little call to action here for my dear friend Karina's Kickstarter. Online, you may know them as @FemmeSupremacy. Karina is an incredibly wonderful, talented individual who makes zines and writes and is really oriented towards survivors and color therapy and doing really bright and beautiful designs.

[01:35:44] Karina is creating an affirmation deck for survivors, and it comes in beautiful colors, a fun font, it's very nostalgic, and these affirmation decks are for self-love [01:36:00] and healing-- things like "I am more than my trauma" and "I do the best I can and that's good enough," and "Slow progress is still progress."

[01:36:11] these affirmation decks would be wonderful for anybody you know who's maybe dealing with chronic illness or disability, or just having a hard time. Maybe they've survived something that they've gone through and need a daily nourishing practice to affirm themselves and to have something bright and colorful that's rooted in actual color psychology to aid in their healing.

[01:36:38] There's still a couple weeks to go for Karina's Kickstarter, and we're not all the way there to our goal yet, so I would love if you would head over there, give it a share, give a donation if you're able to, and let's get this affirmation deck going, because I love what Karina does. I love their vision. I just love who they are. [01:37:00] Karina's a fantastic person, and I'm so lucky to call them a real life friend. Supporting what they do brings me genuine joy, because Karina believes in survivors thriving and living full lives, and I wholeheartedly believe in this project, so go out there and give a shout.

[01:37:23] I hope you got something out of this week's episode, and like I said: your ongoing support, whether it's just throwing a like out there every once in a while or the DMs I get telling me how much you enjoyed certain conversations, it all means the world to me and it's why I keep doing this podcast. So thank you. I will see you next time. Until then, take care of yourselves and take care of each other.[01:38:00]