Friendship Seeds

...Betty, Dorothy, Ed, Fern, Gladys, Bill, Peggy, Sharon, Steve, Mary Lou, Marvin, Karen, Vern...

Our house and yard are filled with living wonders. Spring arrives with a feast of color - sky blue forget-me-nots, bright azure grape hyacinths, deep cobalt ajuga, nodding columbines, magenta violets, white-blooming heath, pink bergenia and native rhodies, fuzzy , fat pussywillows. Newly awakened bees and butterflies fill the air with their buzzing and fluttering as they drink their fill.

As summer progresses we reap the full benefits of the “world of green” with lush growths of redwood sorrel, salal, evergreen huckleberries, Oregon grape, red huckleberries, juicy red raspberries, stately tall bearded iris, fuzzy blue mountain bluet, giant pink anemones, sprawling, pink-blooming sedum, brilliant orange tiger lilies and wallflowers, dazzling dahlias. Hummingbirds make the rounds by day; in the pale of evening and dark of night moths, mice and flying squirrels quietly share the wealth.

Fall brings on the subtleties of lavender mums and mauve fall sedum; surprising fall crocuses burst forth. There are herbs for seasoning and money plant seed pods for decorations or to pass on to a friend. Raccoons and deer furtively visit and munch what they can to fatten for winter.

As the weather chills and we spend more time indoors, we enjoy a long, slowly blooming stem of tiny yellow orchids in the kitchen window, a sturdy, shiny-green jade plant, erect, spiny cactus, blooming Christmas cacti, shamrock, deep purple Chinese velvet plant and purple heart, and finally - forever later-than-planned-for but always welcome - brilliant red pointsettias. Our eyes are truly sated.

We are continually surrounded by the thoughts and memories of family and friends - those who gave us seeds, a stem, bulb, bunch of roots or plant to nurture, enjoy, and use. This practice of “sharing the growth” with others is an ancient one, but I’m intrigued with the magnitude of it. If the forget-me-nots growing in our yard came from seeds my niece in Montana gave us, who got her seeds from a friend down the street, who got his starts from...then who knows how it all started? Plants have been passed on, in one form or another, for generations - from the very beginning.

We are only giving what was first given to us, but as Martha Stewart likes to say - “It’s a good thing.”

...Kathy, Bev, Stephanie, Jack, Judy, Marian, Helen, Alice, Myrt, Lou, Sandy, Molly, Mary...

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground - everything that has the breath of life in it - I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
Genesis 1:29-31