The first act of cultivation is not planting — it’s inquiry. Test the soil. Read its chemistry and its silence. Some soils are burdened — with metals, residues, or exhaustion from years of extraction. Others are simply asleep, waiting to be woken. You must know which you have before asking it to feed you.
Every olive carries history in its roots — Athens crowned with Athena’s gift, Noah reading the branch as landfall, empires rising and falling while the trees still bore fruit. To plant one here is to graft that long memory into Northwest soil, a wager that what endured for millennia might endure again.
