A TIME TO SOW SEEDS; A TIME TO HARVEST SEEDS

In my preoccupation with seeds and their potential, the awe in which I hold them, the good fundamental, earthy feel of them in my hand, I have brought forth a new conversation piece.

"What's that?" a visitor asked, picking up my prettiest little dish I have filled with an assortment of seeds.

"Seeds," I replied, trying to stay calm instead of launching into my usual homily about seeds.

"Seeds?"

"Yes. Just plain old seeds."

"Here's a pecan in amongst them."

"Yes."

"And an acorn."

"Yes."

"I thought you said they were seeds."

At that point I wanted to take my visitor out into the yard and show her where a half dozen little oak trees and some pecan seedlings were coming up at the base of several fence posts where the squirrels had stored some acorns and pecans for winter and forgotten about them. Forgotten, that is, unless they have sense enough to bury them purposely for the benefit of several generations into the 21st century. Instead, I said, "Acorns and pecans are seeds and walnuts and butternuts and . . ."

"What are these?" She picked out a few of the big chocolate brown, shiny ones.

"Pawpaw seeds."

"I never saw pawpaw seeds at the seed counter. Do they come packaged like beans?"

Then, unable to keep my answers brief any longer, I told her about my pawpaw tree out back that had about a dozen big, fat pawpaws on it this year, how I ate nearly every one then washed some of the seeds, skinned off the pulp and put them, along with others, right here in this display dish. "Aren't they pretty?"

"They look like big brown butterbeans," she described. "I wonder if you could cook them like beans?"

I wondered too and made a mental note to boil a couple of them sometime just to see what would happen. I suspect it would be like boiling grains of mature corn.

"How come some of them are little and some are big?" She held up a couple of samples questioningly.

"Those smaller ones are persimmon seeds."

"I suppose you've a persimmon tree out back too?" she asked, one eyebrow raised.

"No. There are two trees in the park where I get my supply."

"Supply?"

"I eat some, right there in the park, picked up off the ground. Rumor has it at our family get-togethers that some of our ancestors, several generations back, had 'possum blood. Came over on the Mayflower, they did." I ignored my visitor's amused smile at my straight face and continued, "Sometime I might bring home a few to dry in the sun and occasionally I make a persimmon pudding. I wash and save some of the seeds 'cause they're pretty too, aren't they?"

I picked up a handful of the seeds from the dish and let them fall from my hands like so many jewels. "That's a castor bean seed. Looks like a big fat dog tick, doesn't it? We laughed at the resemblance although I wondered if she had really ever seen a big, fat, country dog tick.

"What's that?" she exclaimed as a big round thing, almost the size of a ping-pong ball, fell down from my hand.

"Oh, I'm sure you've seen one of these. It's an avocado seed."

Yes, she had seen an avocado seed but hadn't thought of it as such.

"And just look at these buckeyes! I love the polished feel of them in my hand."

We laid out some sunflower seeds, some pumpkin seeds, speckled Indian corn kernels.

"I never would have thought of putting all these in a dish and setting it right here on your company room table."

"Well, I didn't either until just recently. I've had a dish of sea shells, buttons, arrow heads, marbles, but they're all, well, dead. There's something alive in these.

"Sometimes when I'm watching television and it seems as if the world is bent on destroying itself, I love to reach over, dip my hand in this dish and fondle the seeds. Each one of them is a reminder of that old, old promise. You know how it goes - seed bearing plants and fruit trees with seeds inside the fruit, so that the seeds will produce the kinds of plants and fruits they come from...."

REJOICE!