Gone to Seed

 Gone to seed. That's an old country saying that means something (or someone) has been let go and fallen to rack and ruin. But as I walked down the dirtroad the other day I kept thinking how beautiful it can be to go to seed...

Fleabane daisy, transformed into magical fairy puffs

Just look at the humble polk plant. It is eaten by some folks as a green with bacon drippings and boiled eggs (very yummy, but only eat it if you know how to cook it- it's poisonous!). The berries/seeds can be crushed and used as a dye. In olden times it was also used in place of ink in scarce times. When the boys were young, we used quills to write letters dipped in polkberry juice. Within weeks the ink had begun to fade away to a sepia brown, and then disappear altogether. Polk is considered a pest and a weed. When it comes up in my flowerbeds I agree, because it has a tap root that reaches to the other side of the world. I swear that when I try to dig it up that someone is hanging onto the other side. But when polk goes through the stages of its life: flowering on delicate candy-pink stems,

the flowers forming fruit,

the fruits bearing seed on scarlet stems, 

it shows a raggedly glorious beauty in its final time before  the frosts.

All along the road are flowers that delighted me and often ended up in Mason jars on my kitchen table. Now the winsome petals are gone, and in their place are monochromatic heads of seeds ripening, each plant unique in its pattern. 

Queen Anne's lace

The very starkness of it is beautiful. And when you think that all the energy that plant has gained, turning it many petals to the sun, baking in drought, and basking in rain, it put its whole being  toward those seeds. It's young, if you will. It's children.

Beggar's Lice

Passionflowers are flowering and fruiting all at the same time in vines along the fence. The tropical looking flowers offer the story of the Crucifixion in their every part, the passion in its name being that of the love of Christ for mankind.

 This picture gives me no end of delight. It is the very life cycle of the passionflower in one glance. To the upper right is an unopened bud. Below is a full flower, and under that is a fading one. Next is one with petals withered. And lastly, at the bottom left- the pollinated flower is growing a green gourd-like fruit that some call a may-pop.

 All evidence of the flower will fade and fall away, leaving the fruit in its place. The seed is held inside oval green husks. 

Break them open when ripe and you can savor the tart, flesh-covered seeds.

 If left to their own devices, the fruits shrivel and dry and fall to the ground to be blow about and soon broken, spreading out the lives of all its future offspring. May-pop, because they may pop open. Yes, the mother plant is gone, and yet she is not. She is forever in all the generations of flowers and fruits that come after her.

In the Bible in Matthew 13:1-23, Jesus tells us that we are to be "good earth" so that when seed (the Word of God) falls upon us, it can take root and grow in us. Later, in 17:20, He says that if we only have faith the size of a mustard seed that nothing will be impossible to us.

I am reminded of how a tiny seed from a dandelion can fall into a crack in a sidewalk, and then break the very cement with the force of its bursting into life. Maybe going to seed isn't such a bad thing. Maybe it's beautiful.