Seeds

Seeds and berries are Mama Gaia's storage system to keep the means of getting Spring started again preserved through the cold months of the Winter sleep. Below are White Wood Aster seed heads and Winterberries in Ballard Park.

These things always remind me of the old harvest hymn, "We Plough the Fields and Scatter", especially the first verse:

We plow the fields, and scatter the good seed on the land,
But it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand;
He sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain,
The breezes and the sunshine, and soft refreshing rain.

This describes so well the cyclical nature of the growth process, with the swelling of the grain in the Spring, growing and coming to fruition in Summer, the harvest in Autumn, and rest in Winter. Here's the original hymn.

Of course, if you're a child of the '60s you probably recognize the words but remember a different tune to them. John-Michael Tebelak used the old hymn in his musical Godspell, and his collaborator Stephen Schwarz set the words to haunting, evocative new music.

Hmmm... Sometimes a simple picture can take me to some far-flung places!

Photos & text © 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger