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Health & Fitness

Faith in a Seed

As the garden is put to bed, an unexpected bit of life.

Friends who used to own boats tell me the best days of a boater’s life is the day he buys it and the day he sells it.

I feel that way about my garden.

Today I put cut down the last of the foliage that turned brown and tattered after this week’s extremely cold nights. The potted plants I took to my enclosed back porch.

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Moving the pots to the back porch before eventually putting them inside the house is the last part of a long process that began when I got excited by the sight of the first daffodil and crocus putting their noses up through the cold soil in spring.

It was a long, strange growing year - a spring too cold and wet, then a summer too hot and dry before the rains returned and the temperature turned more seasonable. I try to keep plants I don’t have to fuss over but inevitably things have to be cut back.

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Now, with satisfaction and some relief, I'm seeing a light at the end of a long tunnel as I get the garden ready for its winter rest. As I reset the fence posts I thought of the Robert Frost poem that talked about good fences making good neighbors. I don’t know about my neighbors but I need netting to keep out the deer. In the back garden, dominated by yew plants deer love, the netting will be augmented by burlap when it gets very cold. It makes gardening harder but at least I can enjoy my flowers and shrubs.

Meanwhile, the feeders are visited by the usual assortment of birds and I can hear others that prefer to stay in the bushes: Carolina wren, white-throated sparrows. Now that winter is coming on I've had some unusual visitors, finches from the north driven south by lack of food when the summer's drought affected the trees in Canada - pine siskins and purple finches.

After the last cutting in my back garden I stood to admire my handiwork.

That's when I saw the weed coming from a seam in the vinyl siding overhead.

Wait. Not a weed. A seedling.

I have found seedlings before, usually young oak or elm created when a chipmunk or squirrel buried the nut and forgot it. But those are on the ground. I usually pull them up and sometimes plant them elsewhere.

But this one was different. Besides growing from an unexpected and more inaccessible place, this one was not a tree. It took me a while to realize it was a sunflower, likely from a seed put there by a titmouse or chickadee as part of its winter cache. Who knows how long ago this one was “planted?” The week’s recent, excessive rain and milder temperatures must've sparked the growth.

I admit, my first thought was to pull it out. But I have decided to leave it alone.

This seedling has found a way to thrive despite the odds - winter is coming on, after all - and I figure if it can work so hard to live after what nature has thrown at it, the least I can do is leave it alone.

It's inspiring to see such perseverance.

The writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed and I am prepared to expect wonders.”

Whether it survives winter or not, this little guy is a reminder that life is too short, and we need all the wonders we can get.

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