Queen Anne Hill - Seattle, Washington
Mid-February, 2012 - cold and windy, with heavy rain all afternoon
The same tomorrow . . . and the next day . . . and so on, and so on.

THE COMING OF THE GREEN, AGAIN . . .

Whenever I’m away from Seattle for a long period of time I have a long list of busyness to tend to when I’m back in town. Necessary stuff. Time-eating stuff. Crawl-around-town-in-traffic-and-find-a-place-to-park Stuff.
Stuff with no joy or pleasure in it. Put-my-head-down-and-just-do-it Stuff. This week: Car serviced, emissions inspection, new license tabs, driver’s license renewal, dry-cleaning, move documents in and out of the safe-deposit at the bank, garage triage, and piles of mail to sort through.

But The Coming of the Green, Again over-rode the busyness . . .

(Thursday morning)
A stare-out-the-window-into-the-cold-windy-rainy-day kind of morning.
Unlike a poet or song-writer, I’m not inspired. Annoyed is my state of being. Because what I see is dirt - flower beds and pots of raked-and-ready dirt.
Dirt the way I left it in late Fall after all the dead plants were cleared away.
And while it is still way too early to plant, it is not too early to want to be out there in the yard - digging in the dirt.
And planting.
The urge has emerged.

The oncoming light of a change in season has reached in through my eyes to activate the part of my brain/heart/soul that yearns for Spring.
The Green inside me is banging the bell of LIFE.
And I want to be out there in the yard - not in the car in traffic.

To hell with it.
Still dressed in suit and tie for town, I did a mental u-turn and drove out to Swanson’s Nursery.
Much to my delight, the parking lot was full of cars.
I am not the only fool for Spring who is out and about.
People still wrapped-and-capped for winter, in raincoats, carrying umbrellas, were roaming around fondling bare-limbed fruits trees, gently touching the brave winter pansies, running their fingers through tubs of fecund compost, and filling their carts with pots of anything that looked like it might bloom soon: dwarf iris, narcissus, daffodils and sweet-smelling hyacinth, and loading up with lots of fearless pansies already waving their little banners of blue and orange and purple and white.
My car and I came home full of Spring.

(Friday afternoon.)
On the desk in front of me as I write are what appear to be tiny stones.
Holding one in the palm of my hand and peering at it with a magnifying glass it looks like a small brown pellet of dirt or a dried-up bean.
In fact it is a seed.
From a packet I bought yesterday at Swanson’s Nursery.
Its scientific name is Tropaeolum Majus.
Its common name is “Spitfire,” a variety of climbing nasturtiums.

If all goes well, six months from now this little stone will have been the source of a virile green vine roping around my porch, waving moon-shaped jade-green leaves and holding up shapely orange flowers.

And some warm July afternoon, I will collect the smallest leaves and the brightest flowers and put them on top of a fine summer salad.
All of that - every last bit of it - is inside this little stony pellet - as possibility and promise.

One of the graces of nasturtiums is that all parts of the plant are edible.
They add a crisp watercress taste to the salad mix.
And eating flowers adds an existential taste to the quality of a summer day.

Alas, it is too early to plant the nasturtium seeds outdoors.
One must wait until the likelihood of frost has passed.
In Seattle March 22nd is the average date of the last frost.
April 15 is the date after which no frost has been recorded.
And this is mid-February.
But I am impatient.

I remember . . .
Kindergarten . . .
Little white paper cups with a cotton ball inside.
And some water.
On top of the cotton, a seed.
The cups were placed in a cookie tin.
The tin was placed on the window sill in the winter sun.
Above the steam heat from the radiator.
And we waited . . .
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday . . .
And waited . . .
Thursday, Friday . . .
And over the weekend, while we were not watching, the miracle happened.
By Monday the seeds had cracked and something white was reaching down while something green was reaching up.
A tiny plant had come to life.
WOW!
I still remember . . .

It’s been a long time since I did the seed-in-the-cup drill.
But I did it again on Friday.
A brown ceramic tea-cup, a cotton ball, water, and two nasturtium seeds.
On a south-facing window sill to catch the sunlight.

Like a gambler throwing dice at a craps table I shouted at the seeds,
Come on, baby, do it for Bobby!
Bobby needs Spring!

(Saturday afternoon.)
Peering at the two still-inert seeds through the magnifying glass, I see nothing. No sign of life.
I know it’s in there.
But so far, nothing’s happening.
I am impatient.
Come on, come on, come on - do it!

(Sunday morning.)
Nothing . . .
Maybe they’re not seeds - just little rocks after all - I’ve been scammed.
Maybe I should try a new batch - raid my wife’s supply saved from last year.
Maybe I should open another packet of seeds.

I did buy nine packets. (Nine is my lucky number.)
I have California orange poppies, a morning glory mix, blue corn flowers, three other kinds of nasturtiums, a mix of flower seeds to attract hummingbirds, and a mix to attract butterflies.
Enough to cover half the yards in the neighborhood.

The mixes never seem to work out and grow and bloom.
But I buy them because of their possibilities.
In my mind it is high summer and they are doing their job.
The yard is full of flowers and hummingbirds and butterflies.
When I open the packets and poke around in the seeds with my fingers, that’s what I imagine.

(Sunday afternoon.)
When I was a child my father often warned me that if I swallowed a seed - orange, watermelon, grapes - a plant would grow out of my nose and ears.
A harmless father joke, I suppose.
Little did he know how seriously I took the proposition.
Or how often I deliberately experimented with seed-swallowing.
And how anxiously I checked my ears and nose for signs of green sprouts.

The results were disappointing, of course.
But I attributed the failure not to my father’s mischief but to my choice of seeds and lack of information about how to fertilize them.
I even ate some dirt.
Yes, I really did.

Recall that every part of the nasturtium plant is edible.
So . . .

In tribute to my father’s sense of humor . . . in memory of my childhood hopes . . . in the firm belief that maybe I’ll get it right someday . . . and knowing that when it comes to matters of LIFE, anything can happen . . .
I ate three nasturtium seeds on Friday afternoon - just after I placed the other two seeds in the cup.
Maybe this time . . .

(It’s easy, actually - like taking a pill. Think of seeds as a diet supplement.
I popped them into my mouth, swallowed, and washed them on down with a glass of warm water. No dirt this time.)

As I was falling asleep that night, I laughed out loud.
“What’s funny, dear,” my wife asked.
“Wait and see,” said I, imagining the moment in a few days time . . .

“What’s that growing out of your ear, dear?”
“Part of a salad.”
“What?”
“Nasturtiums - just wait until they bloom!”

(Sunday evening.)
Hardly a week goes by now without an announcement from the world of Astronomy that several more exo-planets similar in composition to Earth have been discovered orbiting around a star like our sun.
At a distance compatible with the development of Life.

Then the astronomers throw in the numbers.
There are 100 billion planets just in the Milky Way and 10 billion of them are in this category of possibles.
Most are millions of light years away.

As I am writing I have an image up on my computer screen.
Taken by the Kepler telescope.
Showing one tiny speck of light - an exo-planet.
A possibility.

And in the palm of my hand I am holding another tiny speck.
A nasturtium seed.
Another possibility.
I look at first one and then the other . . .
And out the window at the soft morning light of oncoming Spring.

I will never travel way, way out there.
Maybe someday, somebody will, but not me.
Meanwhile, I am here - like the seed - still full of the possibilities of Life.
Still hopeful . . .
I will never understand it all.
And that’s all right with me . . .

(Monday morning.)
Checking the seeds in the cup with the magnifying glass.
Checking my ears in the bathroom mirror.
It’s just possible that something is happening . . .

“You’re imagining things, dear,” says my wife.

Yes.

Spring.