Seeds

A few years ago one of my sisters gifted me with cosmos seeds from her own garden. Last year I planted them for the first time and they took—blossoming into a bed of bright orange flowers that lasted throughout the summer.

This year, the original plants reseeded and multiplied themselves into a huge span of dancing orange that fills half of my front yard.  Butterflies and bees are here all day long, finches come and go, people pause in their walks to take in the fullness of the growth.

Now, in mid August, the seeds for next year are coming in. I’m gathering part of them and will let the rest fall to the ground for next year, trusting that the seeds will sprout into themselves in the spring, even though there’s nothing in the seed itself to indicate it will become a glorious, 5-foot high, dancing, sun-loving plant.


Both acts—saving and letting go—are intentional.  They come from my awareness that
1) growing these flowers adds joy and beauty to life,
2) the natural ecosystem benefits by the presence of the flowers, and
3) there’s a life-force energy within the plants that has nothing to do with me.


So much surrounding these seeds—beauty, trust, potential, abundance, life force, life cycle, promise, hope, decline and regeneration to name a few.  Yet they always seem to be encased within a small, nondescript shell that conceals, even belies, what they really are.  Who they really are.