Potato plants make good role models. In fact, I wish I could be more like a potato.

Potatoes grow steadily and purposefully under the ground until they are mature and ready to be used for good purposes. They are low-maintenance, easy to grow and offer a high return on investment. For every seedling you plant, you can count on five to ten new potatoes.

Once harvested, potatoes can be a vital source of nutrition, human energy and economic well-being. They can even be re-planted to create more potatoes. I wish I could say I lived my life as reliably and generously as a potato.

Early in their growth cycle – as if recognizing they can’t achieve their full potential alone in a dark and dirty environment – potato seedlings send out green leaves above the soil to soak up energy from the sun, which is then transmitted underground to help the potatoes grow and develop.

While potatoes are processing the benefits delivered through their leafy appendages, they are also sending out shoots below the surface to create new little spud-lings that also develop and mature into useful food. It’s an amazingly interdependent collaboration. Dirt, seedlings, leaves, sun and rain – all working together, quietly and invisibly for good.

Potatoes slowly absorb and process the elements they need to become a version of themselves that can offer nourishment and societal benefit. Waiting for potatoes to ripen takes patience, because you can’t see it happening the way you can with above-the-ground fruits and vegetables. You must trust the unseen process, until the green leaves start to fade and turn yellow – the signal that the potatoes are ripe and ready for harvesting.

If potatoes were people, I think they would be good students – lifelong learners. They would be the kinds of people who continuously pursue knowlege – and who take time to process and evaluate new information before forming unripe conclusions.

Potato people wouldn’t always be so quick to develop opinions, or so casual about passing judgement on others. They would recognize that the dark and dirty environment they inhabit is growth-inhibiting without a generous and steady complement of sunlight.

I would like to behave more like a potato. I want to discipline myself to have the patience to really understand people and situations before being critical. I want my conversations and actions to be nourishing, not poisonous to others.

As I mentioned in my post “Afternoons with Sister Mercy”, I planted red potato seedlings for the first time this year in an attempt to redeem my unsuccessful efforts with sweet potatoes last summer (when a bunny ate the leaves my sweet potatoes depend on for growth). This time, I didn’t underestimate the vital role those leaves play in a potato plant’s survival – or the threat of an innocent-looking predator – and I covered the potato bed with rabbit-proof netting.

The extra effort was worth it – and I harvested dozens of delicious potatoes this week!

I gleaned a lot watching the growth cycle through the eyes of my potatoes. I learned that healthy growth can’t happen if I keep my head in the dirt and ignore the importance of sunlight; that if you give back more than you are given, you can multiply the benefit to others; that collaboration almost always yields better results, and if a &*$#@ bunny destroy your crops, I can try planting smarter in the next season.

He who restrains his words has knowledge,

And he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.

Proverbs 17:27