Howdy, readers! Here is my attempt at writing a sequel to Paul Fleischman's amazingly compact book, Seedfolks.
The chapters will be short, but hopefully that shouldn't be too much of a problem!
I hope you enjoy it!
The New Seeds
Chapter One: No Longer Just Watching
Be Not Solitary, Be Not Idle. That's what my wife's grandmother's sampler says. I used to spend time just staring at it, wondering what I could do to prevent myself from becoming what the sampler warns against. I was never very outgoing, but it has gotten harder ever since my wife passed nearly four years ago. During those days, she couldn't go out for her walks so she could not watch the garden, which made her feel blue.
To be honest, I never saw the appeal of gardening back then. Florence's stories of her childhood growing up in the country sounded fine, but eating things off their vines sounded gross to me.
I can tell you who it doesn't sound gross to, and that's my grandson. He and my wife would talk about the garden and they would say someday, they'll go in and plant something. I can imagine the regret at not being able to do that weighs on my grandson sometimes. Then it hits me: I could plant something in that garden with him! I stand up and fetch my coat. There's a hardware store in town that I'm sure sells seeds of some sort. I'll go and buy some and then scoop out a place where the two of us can plant...whichever of the seeds I buy he wants to plant (I'm gonna let him pick!).
Florence loved watching that garden as much as the people who grew things in there did. But because of her arthritis, she would not able to do much to maintain it. I'm going to make sure that place keeps going, and with my grandson's help, I won't be just watching anymore.