Saved by Seedlings
Growing daisies as a hedge against the darkness
The tiny package arrived as a gift. A miniature clay flowerpot, not more than two inches high, stuffed with a compressed pellet of soil the size of a quarter. The pot was encased in a simple cardboard sleeve containing instructions.
This little manufactured assemblage held out a promise, or perhaps a hope, that pierced me like an arrow of warm sun after a season of cold rain.
Daisies, yellow daisies, would sprout from this tiny brick-colored flowerpot if…and the if loomed like yet another gray cloud…if the instructions were followed to the letter.
Living as I do in a high-rise apartment that opens onto air but not soil, any living green thing must be carefully, deliberately tended and nurtured indoors.
I soaked the pellet in water and watched it expand into a magical growing medium. With the tips of my fingernails, I gently pressed at least half a dozen seeds — each one smaller than a sesame seed — into the moistened soil. The seed packet held far more seeds than would reasonably fit in the pot, which worried me because I thought that implied a high likelihood of crop failure.
Almost before I’d begun, I pictured a bleak scenario — a sorry field of teeny, tiny, withered stems as well as seeds that remained stubbornly below ground, refusing to poke up any shoots. A field of death, where life was meant to reign.
Then the miracle unfolded. Within days, green shoots broke through the soil. I bent over the pot, willing these fledglings to grow and thrive despite all odds.
For the odds, these days, are terrible. Violence, mass murder, hatred, vicious lies, indifference to human suffering, and war comprise toxically virile forms of pollution. Beyond the chemistry of pesticides, a harmful miasma brews, invading our psyches, our bodies — a threat to organic life that is designed to thrive on sunlight, clear water, long days of peace, and lazy breezes blowing through tall grasses.
Would daisies really grow — now? Here? In this heavy, weary world, where gravity itself begins to feel like a burden?
Would I, alone, be able to coax them, nurture them, feed them just the right amount of water and fertilizer?
Life, now, is provisional. All guarantees, it seems, have fled; we move through the days hoping things will be okay, but not quite sure they will.
Daisies, yellow daisies. What a promise. What a tease. I want to believe — but I have doubts.
Today, I’ve watered my tiny charges, which have been transplanted to afford their roots freedom to roam.
I wish they would make it. I want them to. I imagine the day when the first buds appear.
But I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know if I have it in me to grow yellow daisies — or if the daisies themselves are eager to be born into such a world. All I can offer them is an indoor life constrained by glass and tap water.
I must believe that will be enough. Until better days come along.
Amy L. Bernstein is writing all over the emotional map, these days. Once in a while, she also gets down to business.
