Gathering seeds of hope and humanity

As I worked harvesting the last of the peppers, squash and eggplant last Saturday, I wondered how I could sit down that night and write about gardening.

All I wanted to do was weep.

After four straight days of overwhelming fear, shock and anger, I was supposed to compose my thoughts and relate my latest tale of garden joy. How could I do that when I felt consumed by grief?

While I snipped off the red and green peppers, my eyes saw my busy hands but my mind visualized a far different scene filled with dust and ashes and tears and flames. I heard a plane’s engine and straightened up, searching the sky until I spotted it, a small propeller aircraft putt-putting across the expanse of blue.

I went to get an empty basket and stopped to look at my stand of Malva verticillata. Curly mallow it is called in the seed catalog. I returned to the house to get a cup in which to put a few seeds, something I had promised myself to do weeks ago.

Picking off one blueberry-sized seedpod after another, I thought about these plants that stood before me.

For the past two years, I had been unable to buy seed for this plant. I know of only one seed company that sells it: Nichols Garden Nursery of Oregon. Each year I had ordered it, and each year I got the return message that they were sold out of this strange plant that the catalog describes as “a rare find.” An old-fashioned salad plant, it says, for mixed salads and for a garnish, with small, edible flowers.

I vaguely remember one stalk of this plant growing in the garden last year, somehow reseeding itself from my last purchase of seed.

And this year, here was a stand of five. The smallest plant is about 5 feet tall, but the largest is near 8 feet high. That one’s base is like a small tree, so large that I can’t wrap my fingers around it. Sturdy branches off the main trunk make the largest of the lot a bushy specimen, vibrant with life.

The stand of five had withstood an attack of Japanese beetles, although the largest had suffered the most damage. I kept saying I would go squash the bugs but never got to it.

Yet there it stood, healthy and lush.

The flowers of curly mallow are dwarfed by the ruffled leaves. From a distance, the white blossoms are invisible and can’t be seen until you stand a yard or so away. The tiny buds are nestled against the main stalks, tucked into the notches from which the leaf stalks grow.

As I picked the light-brown seedpods, I broke back the papery covering to release the dozen or so seeds inside. The more I picked, the more I wanted. I couldn’t imagine not having this plant in my garden, even though I never did much with it except admire it.

For here were five plants that had come on their own. I knew they wouldn’t live much longer, but I could maintain their legacy by doing one small thing, such as picking a few seedpods and saving them. Over and over, I kept reaching for that promise that a seed contains: continuity and familiarity and hope for another day. One by one, I dropped seed after seed into my cup until it was full of seeds and their fragile shells.

That night I struggled with what I would write. I started, only to stop midway when I couldn’t find the words.

Sunday I picked up a book I often use as a reference for the history of plants. Out of curiosity, I looked up mallow to see what it stood for in the language of flowers.

My mind still can barely register the word written under mallow, and I doubt it ever truly will.

That word was humanity.

To be certain I understood, I picked up Webster’s New World College Dictionary and thumbed through to find the word.

1. The fact or quality of being human; human nature;

2. Human qualities or characteristics, especially those considered desirable;

3. The human race; mankind; people;

4. The fact or quality of being humane; kindness, mercy, sympathy, etc.

Humanity.

It says it all.

Janine Pineo is a NEWS systems editor. Her e-mail address is jpineo@bangordailynews.net.