Plant a Lot of Seeds

PLANT A LOT OF SEEDS AND PEACE ANd JOY WILL GROW

It’s  the beginning of May—not 2020—more like 1790 and twig pops through the top soil.  Now that twig  was a seed last year and fell from  a tree where the branches and leaves finally matured enough to produce it just a couple years after we had a shiny new constitution.  Well the little twig made it’s way to the status of “sapling” but I don’t think oak trees are saplings because. There is no oak syrup that I know of except for the whiskey that gets aged in. Oak barrels.  That’s a topic for a different  entry or at least  whiskey isn’t needed for this part of the story.  Years pass and the little oak tree—let’s call him Jack.  Why Jack?  Well Herbert or Eugene don’t seem like good names for pioneer. Oak trees.  Now let’s  say that Jack the seed wanted to find a good home someday and be a useful  part of the world.  Jack kept growing every year adding a  leaf here and a branch there and having one more  layer grow on that  marked another year of experiences.  Jack really didn’t feel like he had too much control over things.  He couldn’t control the weather  or the forest where he grew up and he really couldn’t dictate his neighbors the elms and the walnut trees.  Yet he held on to the idea of being useful.  He kept adding. Layers and leaves for years and years —-about  80 and then two big animals with a very nasty metal thing started hurting him way down low and since Jack was all rooted into the ground and  his branches were so far away from the ground Jack just had to sit there until the  men finished  there handy work.  Next Jack knew he was floating down a river with a bunch of other  trees that had met a similar fate.  The next few days wwere a nightmare that Jack has long tried to forget because it involved sharp metal and pieces getting twisted and moved here and there.  finally  jack laid on a dusty floor where pieces were picked up and shaped  and smoothed.  And six months after Jack had been so rudely  uprooted. One of those human animals was making him into a circle and also forming a. Trunk-like thing he thought someone had called a pedi stool .  

Well... these  pieces  got fashioned together  into something  called a “round oak  table and this table thing made it’s way to a little  house on the very edge of West  Burlington and stayed there for years and  years and Jack was happy to have become a useful thing after all these years.  Now some 160 years later I’m sitting  here with my iPad telling you about Jack because the iPad is sitting on Jack and  helping me think about peace and joy and the experiences. That one might seek.  Jack needed to be patient to become  such a valued part of the lives of many.  Jack had to sacrifice quite a bit.  However, on the other hand Jack has become part of the memories of  folks and  will keep. On being the part of these stories now for as long as the  internet keeps this blog.  When  you consider  how the planting or accidental sprouting of one seed has changed the lives of so many for so long, I can’t help but feel like planting seeds is always a good way to  ensure  peace and joy.  Jack didn’t kn ow he was going to be a semi formal dining table.  He could have been a  buggy bench for a horse-drawn carriage and  by now would have probably  been dragged out of the barn and thrown on a bon fire celebrating the  end of harvest or maybe in the cold winter of 31 Jack may have  been broken up for firewood because times were tough.   The point is not that Jack became something better.  The point is Jack didn’t  focus on anything but being helpful and useful to others.  My Mom just pointed out that Jack  is a little cracked after all these years.  To this I answered—Aren’t we all?”  

To summarize plant a lot of seeds in the form of ideas and actions and know that some will  happen  and grow in ways you couldn’t imagine.  With  each seed you plant, know that you are giving the world more choices and both you and the person or project you planted the seed for  will grow.  

So think peaceful thoughts and make these thoughts known to people so that  we all can enjoy the benefits next year...or 10 years or 100 years from now.   

Someone may take your seed and make a table...or a baseball bat that cuts through the air and rips a game-winning hit into the ivy.  

It is incredibly important. That you plant seeds in the right types of soil and you will have to expect that from time to time there will be a spot of rock salt altered  ground in the most unexpected of places.  Of course you will have to be  aware and patient because a seed like Jack can take up to 1000 years to grow in some places and  will in return  leave 10 million  more seeds (acorns) out there.  (Remember that your puppies  shouldn’t eat them as they are toxic to  dogs.) 

Well ... speaking of growing...I’m growing hungry and tired so it’s a nap and then off to lunch... That. Begin the case it’s time for me to make like a  tree and leave.