Domesticated
For a long time, our ancestors were hunters and gatherers. Their movements were synchronized with the seasons, the cycles of wild food and animal migrations.
Our predecessors’ nomadic lifestyle began to change when they realised the power of a seed. Not just as a nutrient powerhouse to consume on sight, but as a parent to a baby plant which, if gathered, preserved and sown at the appropriate time, would yield predictable food.
When the first farmers ‘came to be’, so did the first permanent settlements. Beginning with villages, then towns and eventually cities. All on the backs of hunters-turned-farmers who harnessed the power of nature by growing food from seed and learning how to preserve it through the winter.
Popular history would have you believe that it was our forebears who domesticated plants by selecting the juiciest fruit, the tastiest grains and the hardiest vegetables to save seed from and plant again. Over many years and with careful selection, plants were bred for desirable traits and tastes, evolving from their small, tough, seedy prototypes to the varieties we consume with gusto today.
What if we got it all wrong?
But recently, while reading Antoine de Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince to my son, a different theory came to mind. Do you remember the coquettish rose in the story? With her horror or drafts and intolerance for the cool night air on their tiny planet? The poor Little Prince was eventually run ragged from tending to her fickle needs…putting up a screen each day to block the drafts and placing a glass globe over her so she could keep warm each night.
Rose’s unreasonable demands got me thinking about plants. Wondering if it wasn’t us who domesticated them after all…but perhaps it was the other way around? What if it was we humans who were domesticated by plants?
Think about our hunter-gatherer prototypes…strong, brave, resilient…living each moment as it came. Never knowing where we’d lay our heads at night. Complete and utter freedom of movement and responsibility beyond meeting our own basic needs each day. And perhaps those of a partner and children if they’d also survived the day’s adventures. No privilege. Just each person thriving on their own gumption. Nomadic life was probably pretty wild and fun (for the able-bodied)…great material for stories around the campfire at the end of each day.
But then imagine one autumn day, many moons ago, when a strand of golden grain caught wandering Wilma’s eye. Guided by intuition, she plucked the ripened berries of wheat from that stem, ground them together with a rock, mixed the powdery flour with some water and set the rudimentary dough on a stone next to the night’s campfire. As Fred regaled her with stories of the day’s hunt, the first flatbread was baked. And humans were hooked.
The fix was in
Wilma sought out more strands of that golden grain, some to grind into flour, some to save as seed. She convinced Fred to stay put for once so she could diligently plant, weed, and water that seed, ensuring it had just the right amount of everything it needed to grow healthy and happy. And produce more wheat.
Other plants soon cottoned on to this sweet deal. Quickly learning that they could attract humans with their colours, scents and tastes and thereby escape the drudgery of living in the wild. No more fighting pests or competing for sunlight, water and space. No no, if they trained humans to tend to their needs, they could relax and enjoy la dolce vita!
Soon spears were gathering dust in corners as humans hunched over their hoes and rakes, sweated in fields and tended to their fickle crops’ every need and desire.
The plants would release their human servants in the winter, once their own life cycle was complete, and allow them a few months of rest, feasting and hunting. (Plant masters learned that their people-servants performed better when they were allowed at least a little time to free-range.) But not too long. Plants were never dumb enough to last more than a few months once out of the soil, so as to ensure their servants were starving enough by winter’s end to joyfully march back into their gardens.
Well. The ruse is up, plants. For me, anyway.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…?
You see, last fall went on deliciously long for us in the Similkameen Valley. I kept putting off the arduous task of ‘bringing in the garden.’ Leaving carrots, beets, potatoes and kale in the soil just a little longer. Then a little longer still. Then dangerously past the first frosts. And do you know why? Because everything was still growing! Eventually, Old Man Winter did catch up to our little valley (and it was a doozy when he did) and all the plants died off. I fretted over the vegetables in their icy tombs of death. I hadn’t cured the last of the potatoes to save to plant next summer! Or turned over the soil! What if my vegetables rotted and molded and brought on some cursed blight?
But none of that happened. The potatoes I left in the soil seemed quite capable of skipping the curing, storing and replanting steps and simply started growing again in the spring. The kale resurrected itself and started growing too, eventually gracing me with plump seed pods that will no doubt burst in the next month or so, making way for a new harvest. In fact, the more I looked around at my untilled, untended garden, the more I saw the plants simply taking care of themselves. Self seeding. Spreading. Competing with each other for light and nourishment. And in the process, becoming tougher, stronger. Nutrient dense.

Love is a double-edged sword
Hurt by this perceived betrayal, I was tempted to turn away from my spiral garden’s maintenance altogether. But then I remembered the other lesson from the story of The Little Prince. That it is in tending and taming that love and purpose are found.
Perhaps it is true that our gardens do not need us to fuss over them quite as much as we do. Nor do our children or partners, family or friends for that matter. But when we tend to them and tame them they go from being one of thousands, to unique in all the world.
The Little Prince said it best when he addressed the garden full of roses on earth:
“You are beautiful, but you are empty. One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you – the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.”


About the author
Jessica Johnson runs a small, traditional Bed and Breakfast from a vineyard in the Similkameen Valley of British Columbia, Canada.
Raised to be a strong, independent career woman but now a vigneron’s wife and stay-at-home mom on a fledgling homestead, she is clumsily yet happily establishing roots in her new landscape.
An expert at almost nothing but curious about nearly everything, Jessica writes about her adventures in rural B.C. where she raises her son and other wild creatures and is learning the old ways to preserve and grow food.