[MD] Seeds

[MarshaV]

Dan,

One of my most favorite experiences is to find one of your stories 
nestled within the incoming mail.


Marsha



At 11:21 PM 6/22/2009, you wrote:



>It's good to sit in the garden. Seeds planted last month rise like 
>slowly engorging erections out of the ground, straining to meet the 
>sinful sun, full of unrequited desire. Summer has arrived.
>
>When I turned 25 an attorney contacted me regarding news of an 
>inheritance from my great-grandfather, who'd passed away when I was 
>11. I remember him best for his gardens. I hadn't thought about him in years.
>
>I made an appointment with the attorney a week hence. In the 
>meantime I couldn't help but wonder what the old man left me. If it 
>were money he'd of left everyone money and the news would have 
>reached me. My family can't keep secrets. If not money then maybe a 
>house or an old car... I was excited.
>
>When I met with the attorney she handed me a shoe-box sized box and 
>what looked like a coffee can with no markings on it, just plain 
>silver in color. It didn't feel like there was anything in the can 
>but the box felt heavy with paper. It was taped securely shut. I 
>said: is this it? She said: that's it! I could tell our meeting was over.
>
>Once back in the car, I excitedly took out my pocket knife and cut 
>the tape holding the box shut. It had to be old antique money worth 
>a fortune, or maybe stocks and bonds. But when I took off the cover 
>and looked inside, all I found were a half dozen old hand-written 
>notepads. I thought, what the fuck is this shit? I took off work and 
>drove all the way up here for this?
>
>Opening the notebook on top I could see it was a type of journal. 
>The last date entered was in 1962, about three years before my 
>great-grandfather passed away. I picked up the notepad on the bottom 
>and looked inside. It was very old and some of the pages had been 
>inserted into protective plastic sleeves to keep them from 
>deteriorating further. The dates were from the middle 1800s.
>
>I put the notepads back in the box and opened the can. The lid was 
>very tight and it hurt my fingernails to open it. Inside were 
>packets of seeds, each packet labeled as to what kind of seeds it 
>contained and the date. I figured the seeds were no good, what after 
>over fifteen years, and I nearly threw out the can. On second 
>thought, I kept it.
>
>I remember as a boy I always got motion sickness when we traveled to 
>great-grandfather's farm. He lived in the hilly part of central 
>Illinois. It was the hills that did it to me. Looking back though, 
>it really was a magical place for a young kid. Trails ran 
>everywhere, probably made by deer or other critters, but tended to 
>by great-grandfather so that the paths didn't become overgrown by 
>the surrounding forest.
>
>They had 40 acres. Great-grandmother stayed in the main house just 
>off the county highway and great-grandfather stayed in a shanty at 
>the back of the farm. It seemed perfectly natural at the time but 
>looking back it does seem strange that they lived apart like that. 
>Maybe it was just that they couldn't live with or without each other.
>
>Along the trail to the shanty were various gardens, terraced 
>lovingly out of scrub soil, the leavings of prairie weeds. We'd 
>always find great-grandfather in one of the gardens, taking careful 
>notes after measuring each plant in a cordoned off plot. In his 
>shanty, the walls were lined with jars of dried herbs, and in the 
>root cellar smelling of sweet sand and cedar were cans of preserves.
>
>There was only one table in the shanty and it was covered in books 
>and piles of papers. During the autumn the walls would be festooned 
>with drying plants tied in bunches. He heated the room with a wood 
>stove and there were chairs by the stove to keep warm in the winter 
>and to sit and chat during the summer. The updraft from the chimney 
>would pull cool air in from outdoors.
>
>I started documenting my own experiments that first year. I made my 
>first journal entry, just below my great-grandfather's last. I'd 
>read all the journals through many times by then. I had come to 
>deeply appreciate the gift my great-grandfather had left to me and I 
>had begun my own seed program. I've since expanded my outlook, but 
>at that time I worked year to year.
>
>I simply picked out the best, most vigorous plants and 
>cross-pollinated them. Later, I learned to select for certain traits 
>that I valued more highly than others and how to develop 
>true-breeding seeds... seeds that would result in plants all sharing 
>the parent plants' traits. I learned to select for local. Since I 
>started 30 years ago I've had to adjust springtime ahead by over two 
>weeks. It is all carefully documented in my notebooks, no, in our 
>notebooks. Everything is documented there, date and time of 
>planting, phase of the moon, growth rate, days of sun and rain, everything.
>
>The first year, I planted every seed in the canister. Only about 1 
>in 10 came up, but I learned how to save the seeds for next year by 
>storing them carefully away in vacuum-sealed bags. Those were 
>heritage seeds, very valuable in retrospect, though at the time I 
>didn't know that. They're valuable to back-cross with future 
>generations to keep the heritage healthily static and yet allow for 
>Dynamic diversity too.
>
>These days with the Internet there are a great many seed banks where 
>a person can trade, buy, or sell seeds of all kinds. In my 
>great-grandfather's day though, it must have been much more 
>difficult to develop great strains. And he had some great seeds in 
>that canister.
>
>I plant many, many seeds these days. Once in a while, some 
>completely unlooked for trait will Dynamically emerge. The more 
>seeds I plant, and the greater I manage the environment, the greater 
>the chance is of a jump in evolution. To an uneducated observer, it 
>might look like "oops." But it's not. It is the end result of 
>hundreds and indeed thousands of years of careful selection.
>
>I often wonder why great-grandfather left me the seeds and journals. 
>I don't remember being particularly close to him. I paid attention 
>when he spoke to me while the other kids ran and played. But that 
>was more of a case of not wanting to be rude than it was of any 
>great interest in what he was telling me. I remember his eyes used 
>to shine when he thought he was imparting some special knowledge, 
>some little secret known only to aficionados.
>
>I also wonder to whom I will leave the journals. I guess someone 
>will come along who seems a likely candidate. The kids are all busy 
>with their jobs and families and the grandkids are all gamers.
>
>The first of the journal entries were from my great-grandfather's 
>grandfather, way back in 1844. The old man owned a farm; there's a 
>road named after him now that runs just past where his farm sat. He 
>grew enough to eat and enough to sell to pay his bills and he was 
>generally happy, from the looks of his entries. It doesn't seem to 
>have been a bad life to lead. I am very proud to continue his heritage.
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_____________

"He who neglects the present moment throws away all he has."
   (Friedrich von Schiller)