Seeds of Doubt
Or maybe hope…
Some people have a junk drawer in their kitchen. I have a catch-all basket. On the hot July day I looked through it, it contained, among other things, a box-cutter for all the packages delivered during covid, my combination lock for the gym I hadn’t been to in over a year, expired CVS coupons for the same things I had just bought, a cheat sheet for Cable-TV channels, ball-points that didn’t write, invitations to canceled events, dried-up Sharpies. And two small, unopened packets of sunflower seeds I had bought a couple of years earlier. I wondered if the seeds had sprouted after I’d spilled water on them when I brought them home, or if they had just dried up and died by now.
There wasn’t an expiration date on the tiny envelopes. On a whim, I pulled them from the basket and opened them. The seeds weren’t sprouting and they didn’t appear to be dead, but how would I, a Master Gardeners Club reject, know if they were.
Despite the guidelines on the packets saying they should be planted in May, I took them out in the yard, made a bunch of shallow holes in the dirt with a spoon, dropped the seeds into the holes, and replaced the dirt.
I didn’t really expect the flowers would grow under the hot summer sun, but I thought, with a chuckle, if my daughter had anything to do with it, they just might. I pulled out the hose and…
