Grow Where You’re Planted
A Natural Lesson in Determination
Yesterday, I put the yard to bed. I packed and stored wind chimes, cut back peony bushes, snipped pumpkin vines and filled the compost bin. The still blooming alyssum, geraniums, and snapdragons — that I reluctantly pulled from planters, are now piled one atop another to wither and decompose.
Since the humming birds flew south long ago, I took down the red glass, nectar dispenser and hung a black wire cage. The mesh will hold a square suet cake, dotted with millet and sunflower seeds — a high caloric treat. Woodpeckers, nuthatches, jays and chickadees will peck and devour the rich nutrition, as temperatures fall and cold winds bluster down from the north.
Looking up at the deck railing, I spied something green and black.
What is that?
I stepped closer and peered up to find the beginning of a sunflower plant. I wondered if a chipmunk stored the oval ovule in the tiny deck post hole for safe keeping, or if a careless bird discarded it, preferring another pip instead.
Either way, the black oil seed has taken to the conditions surrounding it, and pushed on to live its purpose. The laborer seems unaware that the date is October twenty-ninth. I didn’t have the heart to pull the fledgling from the redwood stained post— nature will take care of its own soon enough.
I drew a few lessons from the determined little shoot:
Fear not the future — control is a myth.
Grow where you’re planted, and be thankful you’ve not been ingested by a bird or a rodent.
Forward is not the only way, but is it not preferable to complacency? Stagnant in a dark crevice?
We’re all only here for a little while, why not make the most of it?
Sending much gratitude to Johnson Kee for the conditions he has offered me — and many others, through 100 Naked Words.
