There is nothing easy about planting. This I can tell you. I have for the past month been witness to a planting frenzy. I do not know what they are planting. I have been told everything from Canola to Wheat and Barley. But from where I am standing, (or sitting, or driving) they are planting what comes in very big white sacks, delivered on a very big truck, and seemingly, always late at night. I do believe that if ever in future I hear that peep-peep sound that trucks make, it will remind me of this period of my life.

Growing or planting season is a period of the year during where all the conditions needed, such as temperature, moisture and sunlight are at its most favorable. I always imagined this to happen around springtime. After all, we all do think of spring as earth coming to life. Turns out, not always. Here we are, at the end of autumn, and witnessing planting all around us. It seems that no matter where I look, there is either a tractor pulling a very big “gedoente” made up of things that spout while other things turn. I think this thing jams itself, because I have witnessed more than one farmer bent over it muttering all sorts of threats while tapping it with whatever tool he has in his hand. All the while, his companions – and there can be any number of them – advising from the sidelines. Or a seriously big fertilizer truck delivering the biggest bags of stuff you could possibly imagine. And no. It does not happen during office hours. Farmers do not have office hours. They are out there before sunrise, and well into the night, I sit at the lounge window and watch the lights going up and down the fields. Planting is a serious business.

Like me, I am sure, most of you have received, at some point in your life, a sweetly encouraging WhatsApp picture of a gingham decorated pot, full of delicate pink roses, and a decorative scroll telling you to grow where you planted. All this, against a sunny sky, maybe a bird flying overhead, and a pair of unsoiled gardening gloves beside the Fine Bone China teacup, to finish off the picture. Once upon a time, I too thought it a good thing to say. Just grow where you are planted, I would tell my distressed friend. Never again will I make light of planting.

You see, planting it turns out, takes a lot more than the picture. Long before the rose arrived, some farmer (or grower, I have no idea what one would call a person that farms with flowers) had to start with soil. It may not have been good soil. It may have had too many stones in it, and lots of weeds. (Ha! You see! I know this stuff because I have been watching the farmers around me clearing them away.) Then, I suppose, he had to find the best whatever a rose grows from, and prepare that, and…can I at this point just say: Blah-de-blah-fishcakes? You see, picking a rose for my analogy was a bad idea. I have no idea how roses are grown and have no desire to go and ask my Aunty Google either. Which of course I can’t. Ask my Aunty that is. Because we are in the middle of a four-hour load shed. I think you get where I am going with this, right? What I am trying to say is: there is a lot more to planting and growing than meets the eye. It is seriously hard work.

Back in Pretoria, one of my favourite shopping places had a sign at the exit. It read: Have you eaten today? Thank the farmer. That’s a bit presumptuous, I used to think. I do not see a sign outside my office saying: Have you received an email today, thank the PA. Or: Did you have a drink of water today? Thank the plumber! What I can tell you is this: farming is very hard work. It is not work you can do eight hours a day. Your window of opportunity to get crops in is so small, and then, can you imagine the faith it takes to know that your seeds will sprout and grow tall enough to be harvested? Can you imagine the knot in a farmer’s stomach when it doesn’t rain. Or when hail builds up. Not to mention creepy crawlies that eat plants. The list goes on.

But now, back to growing where you are planted. I suppose again it sounds so easy. But there is nothing easy about uprooting. My very good Blond Friend and her husband have now moved down to Hermanus. Talking to her on the phone the other day, she was telling me that she was looking for a Pilates class to join. Now, there are some people I can imagine draped over a very big plastic ball, and some I can’t. Somehow, I can’t reconcile Blond Friend, with only a small toe and middle finger making contact with a brightly coloured rubber mat. I did not know you were into Pilates, I diplomatically ventured. No, she said. She has never attended a single class, but, she said, it is a way to meet people.

Now you see. This is where reality comes in. Growing where you are planted takes some effort. It takes a while for your heart to forget that you are no longer in your old familiar soil. It takes a while for your furniture to get used to the pot being a different shape and that it no longer fits the way it did at your old pot. In time, you will discover rocks and weeds in your way, when you least need to make the discovery. There are bound to be some tears along the way, and had I been more poetic, I am sure I could turn a phrase about these tears watering the soil. There will be dry spells (like when I oversee watering the pots) or wet spells (when Colin forgets that he already watered earlier in the day.) But more than that, you will need to keep the faith that everything will turn out for the best.

Time flies, and before we know it, these crops will be harvested. As much as I am sure it will be a wonderfully educational and fulfilling moment to see crops being harvested, I hope not to be here to see it. By that time, I hope to be on my mountain, in Betty’s Bay, trying to arrange our furniture to fit the new pot. I will unpack the boxes and find all my favourite cups. I may peck a tear over a broken bowl.

One thing however is guaranteed: at least one of my Tribe will send me a picture, and it will say: grow where you are planted. I will read it in the car, on my way to Pilates class.