Kale... Abundance... Grows

 Every time I step out into the garden before making food, I am inevitably greeted by KALE.

A green sea of kale that just yesterday looked like, “Wow, what abundance!” or “Well, I think nothing will go to waste. I've got this,” somehow turns overnight into a jungle ready to swallow our entire house including the trail to the outhouse.

It's as if every plant in the garden is screaming:

“Pick me! Can't you see my leaves are already starting to turn yellow, red, and purple?!”

If you don't know what kale is...

Sometimes not knowing something is happiness!

Which I am about to ruin for you.

Kale is a beautiful green leaf. It looks a little like corrugated cardboard that survived a flood and a drought. It has a distinctive, slightly bitter, impossible-to-cover-up flavor - inevitable remnants of all the hardships and twists of fate it has endured.

A joy for the liver and death to parasites.

Once upon a time, we planted kale, knowing that growing almost anything else requires effort and constant investment.

But kale can grow like a weed here in Alaska.

It seeds itself.

It shows up in places where nobody invited it.

And every year, there is more of it.

A very profitable investment, I must say.

This spring my husband appeared with his eyes shining:

“I added a new variety. It's incredible!”

I nodded, with a certain sense of dread inside.

Because incredible probably means:

“It will produce three times more leaves than last year's kale - the kale we still haven't finished eating, and the kale you've been asking me to put less of in our food.”

Acceptance is when you no longer ask, “Why?”

You simply prepare another freezer.

The neighbor's freezer.

Perhaps my husband hoped I would find it easier to pick off and wash away the slugs from the new variety because apparently someone comes at night and irons its leaves flat.

Unfortunately, with the same spirit of acceptance, I had to crush my husband's hopes.

I don't like spending too much energy washing vegetables straight from the garden.

It's probably a family program.

After all, my grandmother survived the war eating dirt.

So why shouldn't we survive by eating vegetables with a small amount of dirt on them?

And the slugs? - Bonus protein.

Our kale grows with such enthusiasm that it seems to have received a universal order to save humanity from vitamin and mineral deficiency.

I have never seen leaves this enormous before.

Apparently, this particular variety has survived its narcissistic trauma.

It certainly doesn't suffer from fragility.

So I guess it healed. Good for it.

I look at our garden and realize:

I am not growing kale.

Kale is growing me.

Increasing my capacity.

Providing therapy at the same time.

Eventually, you stop believing that you are in control of your life.

All summer, starting in May, you harvest.

In the fall, you harvest.

In winter, even freezing temperatures don't seem to bother it much.

Yes.

That's how stubborn it is.

Wash it or at least pretend you're washing it.

Cut it.

Dry it.

Freeze it...

And consume it in quantities exceeding the human body's recommended capacity for processing fiber, with all the consequences that come with it.

All winter long, we eat frozen kale.

Kale chips (or the way I made them) have not gained much popularity in our household.

Kale smoothies... well, in our family, I am the only one who still has the desire or willpower to drink them.

And even I have less and less of both.

Creamy kale soup.

Kale patties.

Kale crackers.

Kale ice cream. (worth trying!)

Kale bread.

Kale juice.

Kale salad.

Or just kale with avocado or nut butter...

At some point, you start adding it to pies just to surprise your guests.

The guests stop coming.

The kale remains.

Sometimes it's genuinely hard for me to watch it continue growing when I physically cannot keep up with the volume of the harvest.

I harvest one batch.

I turn around...

And there it is again:

- “So, lady of the house? Another smoothie?”

Me:

-“I literally cannot fit another smoothie into my body.”

And then, with yet another lecture, it says:

-“Well, thermal processing reduces my volume several times over and increases the absorption of my minerals...”

That's when a suspicion slowly creeps in:

The Universe has big plans for you.

Sometimes I think that if we leave kale unattended for another couple of years, our cove will officially be renamed from Halibut to Kale Cove.

But I still love it!

Easy to grow.

Frost-resistant.

Healthy.

Generous...

VERY generous.

Maybe it's time to create a new art-therapy practice:

✨ Meeting Your Inner KALE: When There Is Too Much Good in Your Life and You Don't Have the Capacity to Process It All.

A practice in expanding your capacity for joy and prosperity, silence and peace.

And what resilience!

What reliability!

What a source of support!

It helps you accept the cyclical nature of existence:

In spring - the joy of the first fresh greens.

In summer - pure enjoyment.

In fall - the experience of letting go of excess, accompanied by profound insights such as:

“Abundance means remaining calm about other people's and your own surpluses and losses. About things that seem to go to waste. About things you invested in for nothing.”

For nothing?

Not at all. Somebody benefits from it.

And then comes the practice of giving your neighbors a firm, solid:

“no”

when they ask:

“Do you want some kale?”

No guilt.

No regret.

No fear of missing out.

And in winter, you eat frozen kale and think:

“You know what? It was worth it.”

And the following year...

The whole story repeats itself.

 YYEAHHH! KALE!