RATTLE THE SEED PACKAGES AND WATCH LIFE GO ON

Rounding the end of a high-shelved store aisle a day or two after the war's end, I ran into an old friend, the revolving seed rack. My mind has been so recently full of war thoughts and concerns, early planting time had slipped up on me.

I was unprepared for this encounter, but it was so good. All the pretty little packages seemed to wink at me in the shifting shadows caused by the overhead fan. I parked my shopping cart and laid a hand on the seed rack as one would on some sweet instrument of order, peace, and new beginning. Visions of old gardens, new gardens and future gardens seemed to swirl through my mind in time with the slow-motion fan blades.

I removed a package of tomato seeds. The fat, lacquer-red, perfect tomato pictured on the package was a masterpiece of color printing that never fails to beguile the gardener, no matter if he never has grown a tomato so picture perfect. I shook the package so that the seeds rattled softly inside. I knew exactly what they would look like if emptied into my hand little creamy-white dots.

Wishing to hear a more pronounced rattle and maybe, in some infinitesimal way, join other noise makers to celebrate the end of the war and trumpet the fact that life goes on, I lifted a package of sweet peas. These little hard, round, brown promises of things to come provided a more suitable noise.

A woman, rolling a baby carriage by me, paused to let shopping-cart traffic untangle. The wide-eyed baby, hearing the rattle of my seeds, looked up at me. It (boy or girl, I didn't know) bestowed on me the most beautiful, glorious innocent baby smile. Sparkling laughter and everything-in-this-world-is-good radiated from his or her eyes. For a precious moment there was no one else in the world except the baby and me.

The baby carriage rolled on and we lost eye contact, but the sense of on-going life was strong within me the seeds and the happy baby. Almost reluctantly I put my sweet pea "rattle" back on the rack. Still I tarried, looking at the marigold package, the zinnia, cucumber, squash, four o'clock. Perhaps I would have fondled every package on the rack had not a clerk walked up and asked if I needed help. I started to say, "No, thank you, I'm just feeling." Happily I said, "Yes, I'd like this package of sweet peas."

Back home, I readied my pot for planting. And as I pushed the little seeds down into the dark, rich soil, I experienced again the wonder, almost reverence for seeds. When I hold such a little dry thing in my hand, I feel that I am close to knowing the secret of the universe. I know that inside it is the tiny blueprint of life. Yet no microscope can search it out. No chemical, no laser beam, or atom splitter can lay it open and enable one to see and say, "This is it. This is what makes the corn, corn, the sweet pea the sweet pea."

With profound awe, I look at a small seed and know that I am holding the evidence of an ancient decree, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."

When the time is right, I shall watch every day for that little green sprout to appear. It will come up, all crooked over, but as the moisture is supplied and the sun warms the soil, the little green crook will straighten out and spread two green leaves to the world. Tiny tendrils, almost fine as hair will later come out and cling to anything in order to grow upward. Later come the multi-colored flowers, with the sweetest scent this side of heaven, providing you have been careful to purchase the seeds that say the flower will be fragrant.

Contrary to package directions that say, "Sow in open ground," I will leave mine to grown in the large hanging pot where I have planted them. The tendrils will be trained up the chains of the hangers. When in full bloom, the sweet pea blossoms look something like miniature butterflies. Should a hummingbird come to sip nectar from the blossoms streaked with rose or cherry, I will wonder, idly, why the disturbed "butterflies" just don't flutter away.

REJOICE!