SAVE THE SEEDS: WE MAY HAVE TO START ALL OVER

There are countless persons like me who love to plant a seed, almost any old seed, watch for it to come up, see the tiny leaves unfold, feed it, water it, and just generally give it tender loving care. Somehow it seems you've performed a miracle. The miracle, of course, is in the seed. You've only helped it to become all it could be.

Once I stood in the middle of one of those huge Bootheel soybean fields just as the beans were emerging from the rich soil, and I was almost overwhelmed by the little miracles that stretched away on all sides for what seemed like miles. Probably was. The emerging plants were in that little, bent stage leaves still in the ground, stems appearing to be pale green staples trying to tack down the good earth. But the soil, sunshine and rain had their way, and two days later the field was striped with a rich dark green. Every seed must have germinated.

If a gardener has no other joys of the day, there is that big one which is going out early every morning to see what has happened to the seeds he has sown or plants he has set. Maybe there's that first surprisingly big blossom on the squash vine, or where yesterday there was no sign of even a hump in the soil, this morning a two-leaved zinnia has sprung forth.

Maybe something has appeared above ground you don't recognize as anything you sowed, but it looks interesting. Several times this has happened in my tiny plot. Once it was a sunflower. Another time it was a stalk of milo. Both, no doubt, blown from the bird feeder. Yet another time it was a Four O'clock from who knows where.

Even now there is an interesting little plant coming up too close to a zinnia. But I have to let it grow a while before I decide which one has to go, or if there is enough good soil for both to thrive. Who knows, it may be a bluebonnet come a'visitin' from Texas or a nutmeg seed riding the trade winds all the way from the Moluccas? It is hard for me to disrupt any growing thing that has found a toe hold. If it is something that spreads by roots I don't seem to be so vulnerable.

Last year our local paper ran a series of articles on the almost alarming plight of our national seed vaults that are scattered about our nation. I believe there are five with the main one being in Denver. The purpose of the vaults is to preserve seeds in case there would be some horrendous disaster a gigantic lava flow, a new ice age, an implosive earthquake, etc. Some of the preserved seeds were tested and found wanting, that is, had not been sufficiently renewed. The test is whether a certain percentage of the stored seeds will germinate at any given time.

There is even a sort of seed war going on among nations, as if there weren't enough other things to quarrel or fight about. We took plants that were native to other countries, for example, Peru, and with our technical expertise improved them greatly but won't share our secrets with Peru, or any other country from which we secured a native plant. Is that fair? Unfair? Something to contemplate when you quit being horrified by the Kuwait burning oil fields and oil-drowned birds and beasts?

Mama and Grandma saved seeds, I suspect long before the idea of the seed vaults came into being. A certain section of the lettuce bed, the radish rows, the onion tops, etc. were allowed to go to seed. At the proper time these fluffs were picked off and put into small cardboard boxes, stored on top the pantry shelf, ready for next spring's sowing. For a long time I thought lettuce seeds came no other way than with a lot of extraneous fluff.

I'm going to let a couple stalks of lettuce go to seed this year, store them, sow them next spring and see if the hybridizers have been monkeying around with good old stable Black Seeded Simpson.

Of course if my strange plant turns out to be a nutmeg tree or shrub, I'll be so startled I'll probably forget all about the lettuce seed, unless the lava flow and the glaciers meet and we have to hurry to get the seeds into space!

REJOICE!