It's good to sit in the garden. Seeds planted last month rise like slowly
engorging erections out of the ground, straining to meet the sinful sun, full
of unrequited desire. Summer has arrived.
When I turned 25 an attorney contacted me regarding news of an inheritance from
my great-grandfather, who'd passed away when I was 11. I remember him best for
his gardens. I hadn't thought about him in years.
I made an appointment with the attorney a week hence. In the meantime I
couldn't help but wonder what the old man left me. If it were money he'd of
left everyone money and the news would have reached me. My family can't keep
secrets. If not money then maybe a house or an old car... I was excited.
When I met with the attorney she handed me a shoe-box sized box and what looked
like a coffee can with no markings on it, just plain silver in color. It didn't
feel like there was anything in the can but the box felt heavy with paper. It
was taped securely shut. I said: is this it? She said: that's it! I could tell
our meeting was over.
Once back in the car, I excitedly took out my pocket knife and cut the tape
holding the box shut. It had to be old antique money worth a fortune, or maybe
stocks and bonds. But when I took off the cover and looked inside, all I found
were a half dozen old hand-written notepads. I thought, what the fuck is this
shit? I took off work and drove all the way up here for this?
Opening the notebook on top I could see it was a type of journal. The last date
entered was in 1962, about three years before my great-grandfather passed away.
I picked up the notepad on the bottom and looked inside. It was very old and
some of the pages had been inserted into protective plastic sleeves to keep
them from deteriorating further. The dates were from the middle 1800s.
I put the notepads back in the box and opened the can. The lid was very tight
and it hurt my fingernails to open it. Inside were packets of seeds, each
packet labeled as to what kind of seeds it contained and the date. I figured
the seeds were no good, what after over fifteen years, and I nearly threw out
the can. On second thought, I kept it.
I remember as a boy I always got motion sickness when we traveled to
great-grandfather's farm. He lived in the hilly part of central Illinois. It
was the hills that did it to me. Looking back though, it really was a magical
place for a young kid. Trails ran everywhere, probably made by deer or other
critters, but tended to by great-grandfather so that the paths didn't become
overgrown by the surrounding forest.
They had 40 acres. Great-grandmother stayed in the main house just off the
county highway and great-grandfather stayed in a shanty at the back of the
farm. It seemed perfectly natural at the time but looking back it does seem
strange that they lived apart like that. Maybe it was just that they couldn't
live with or without each other.
Along the trail to the shanty were various gardens, terraced lovingly out of
scrub soil, the leavings of prairie weeds. We'd always find great-grandfather
in one of the gardens, taking careful notes after measuring each plant in a
cordoned off plot. In his shanty, the walls were lined with jars of dried
herbs, and in the root cellar smelling of sweet sand and cedar were cans of
preserves.
There was only one table in the shanty and it was covered in books and piles of
papers. During the autumn the walls would be festooned with drying plants tied
in bunches. He heated the room with a wood stove and there were chairs by the
stove to keep warm in the winter and to sit and chat during the summer. The
updraft from the chimney would pull cool air in from outdoors.
I started documenting my own experiments that first year. I made my first
journal entry, just below my great-grandfather's last. I'd read all the
journals through many times by then. I had come to deeply appreciate the gift
my great-grandfather had left to me and I had begun my own seed program. I've
since expanded my outlook, but at that time I worked year to year.
I simply picked out the best, most vigorous plants and cross-pollinated them.
Later, I learned to select for certain traits that I valued more highly than
others and how to develop true-breeding seeds... seeds that would result in
plants all sharing the parent plants' traits. I learned to select for local.
Since I started 30 years ago I've had to adjust springtime ahead by over two
weeks. It is all carefully documented in my notebooks, no, in our notebooks.
Everything is documented there, date and time of planting, phase of the moon,
growth rate, days of sun and rain, everything.
The first year, I planted every seed in the canister. Only about 1 in 10 came
up, but I learned how to save the seeds for next year by storing them carefully
away in vacuum-sealed bags. Those were heritage seeds, very valuable in
retrospect, though at the time I didn't know that. They're valuable to
back-cross with future generations to keep the heritage healthily static and
yet allow for Dynamic diversity too.
These days with the Internet there are a great many seed banks where a person
can trade, buy, or sell seeds of all kinds. In my great-grandfather's day
though, it must have been much more difficult to develop great strains. And he
had some great seeds in that canister.
I plant many, many seeds these days. Once in a while, some completely unlooked
for trait will Dynamically emerge. The more seeds I plant, and the greater I
manage the environment, the greater the chance is of a jump in evolution. To an
uneducated observer, it might look like "oops." But it's not. It is the end
result of hundreds and indeed thousands of years of careful selection.
I often wonder why great-grandfather left me the seeds and journals. I don't
remember being particularly close to him. I paid attention when he spoke to me
while the other kids ran and played. But that was more of a case of not wanting
to be rude than it was of any great interest in what he was telling me. I
remember his eyes used to shine when he thought he was imparting some special
knowledge, some little secret known only to aficionados.
I also wonder to whom I will leave the journals. I guess someone will come
along who seems a likely candidate. The kids are all busy with their jobs and
families and the grandkids are all gamers.
The first of the journal entries were from my great-grandfather's grandfather,
way back in 1844. The old man owned a farm; there's a road named after him now
that runs just past where his farm sat. He grew enough to eat and enough to
sell to pay his bills and he was generally happy, from the looks of his
entries. It doesn't seem to have been a bad life to lead. I am very proud to
continue his heritage.
_________________________________________________________________
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