This Splendid Season of Seeds
They make you want to save them!
Note: This week’s post is from the Postcards archives because I’ve felt the need to look up from the news, to go outside and be reminded of the quiet beauty of this season. It’s a time to rest, and to be together. (I admit I had to go back a few years to find it!)
The post:
Dry leaves have been raked from the driveway and from part of the woods, and now they blanket the vegetable garden. I can still pick small lettuce leaves before dinner, but everything else, including the glorious orange sunflower, has bowed to the first frost.
This is the season for stalks topped with spent flowers and pods full of seeds, in all their restful colors and fascinating shapes. They make you want to save them!
Wait, first take a moment with me to remember last week!
Did you notice? While the flame-colored trees were holding all our attention, brown stalks and dry curled leaves were quietly appearing everywhere.
Seeds drop and disappear into the sun-warmed soil. They fly through the air! They stick by the hundreds on my jacket, but still it’s one of my favorite times of the year.
All month we’ve been saving seeds in small packets of white tissue paper, taped and labelled: Cosmos, Cone Flower, Chrysanthemum, Queen Anne’s Lace, Milkweed, Turtleheads, Daisies, “unknown”. And more!
Today we put some in a container along with a porous cloth bag filled with milk powder to keep the seeds dry, ready to overwinter in the refrigerator vegetable drawer.
But there’s more to see outdoors.
Let’s break away from these small discoveries, and watch the leaves being spread from a tarp onto the garden.
Gather the last of the Mexican sunflower seeds before you leave. Stop to look through bare branches at the nearby hills. Listen for a few moments, then go out of the garden and latch the gate. All is well.
It’s time now for sitting around the fireplace in early evenings … reading seed catalogs!
We wish you a happy, healthy Thanksgiving.
Just what I needed to see this morning. It's a beautiful world.
Thank you for this nurturing post. The photos are beautiful.