LITTLE GIRLS IN A GARDEN

I remember when the twins Mitsuki and Miasa were about 4 years old, we were doing garden work and I handed each of them a rake. They looked at the huge objects in their hands the way I would look at a 50-quon Grongorch from the Gas Jungles of Saturn, then their eyes turned to me with a glint of a hint at what a bonehead I was, for assuming that one is born knowing how to use whatever a "rake" is. 

This characteristic of mine doesn't seem to diminish as I get older. The other day I and the twins (now 10 years old) were out in the same garden and I gave each of them a packet of spinach seeds, showed them the new furrows I'd made, asked them to plant the seeds about 2 cm apart, said we could thin them later. 

They started at opposite ends of the long rows and worked toward each other, reaching into their packets and carefully lifting out just one seed at a time, grasping it softly between two fingertips, like a tiny egg, then reaching down and placing it gently upon the soft cushion of soil - just there - like putting a tiny doll to bed, then patting it into place with the end of a loving finger, taking each seed at its true value, even tucking it in with a little earthy blanket, then extracting the next seed in all the same way and placing it, as precisely as possible by eye, about 2 cm down the row. The rows of seeds filled slowly, but perfectly. 

With a row-and-a-half per twin, it took quite a while to get all the seeds arranged in comfort and sleeping softly, but M&M seemed to enjoy it, they were fully absorbed and far away, and I'll bet it was all worth it: that spinach will be the happiest, most nourishing, spiritually balanced and tastiest spinach I've ever grown.

But it was a rarer treasure to watch the twins in those natural moments, of the patient and caring kind that only free-range kids seem able to embody in this fast-forward world; all the more precious to the lucky elder nearby who has to go far back in his own museum to get hold of anything that real anymore, the way real used to be, that now seems to live mainly in fading recollection... 

The pure breath of life, these little girls, who still wear the aura of the eternity whence they came, still live in a when where each new thing is impeccably new, infinite with possibilities and deserving of tenderest care without embarrassment, up to a point; I was a boy, myself...

SYMPHONIES

Before he flies off Crow yaks for a while, likely about me being too near the compost pile for a comfortable visit by his honorable darkness. Then in the last of the gardening light, as I trowel in some lettuces and big beans, the only other is the wood dove-- probably under the eaves, following the litany dove ancestors have perfected over eons...

That familiar ancient incantation sounds soothingly simple to our differently evolved ears, untrained in the deeper aspects of avian taste and striving; yes, simple to our ears, but the longer you listen the less simple it becomes. You begin to sense that that mellow cooing has core densities, intensities and deeper syncopations of the same fundamental kinds that our own great composers are ever seeking in their lifetimes...

Out there upon the cooling air, the song is plain as a gentle hand on a shoulder: simple but uniquely effective, as it was indeed woven over time to be, especially to other wood doves; to them it is as effective as the efforts of Johann, Wolfgang, Ludwig, Igor, Gustav and colleagues are to us, both species seeking the same ancient object: to make a fitting statement into the awesome quiet...

And quiet it is, here in the evening garden, all the more for being the silence that defines those notes, murmured as though to the air itself, an effort begun so long ago and polished all the way to now, when, with the smoothness of time passing, those elegant sounds meet the same need that quickens in seeds...

Pinecone, seeds gone - 

all that’s left 

is beauty

MORE YUZU MAGIC

I’ve posted previously on the flavor magic of yuzukosho and other yuzu culinary possibilities that are wildfiring from chef to chef around the world, as well as yuzu's non-cuisinal uses, but I never knew of the following use for the mystic citrus until a few weeks ago when I got hold of some sun-dried yuzu seeds at Hot Station, where the lady told me I could soak the seeds for a few weeks in mild alcohol (shochu, sake) and make a good organic skin lotion. She had a little jar of it there as a sampler, so I bought some seeds to try...

I used some unfiltered sake I had, left the batch for three weeks, shaking it every now and then as it thickened, the result being a bunch of yuzu seeds in a viscous gel-fluid, sort of like an undecided jelly, but not sticky. Some substance in (or on?) the seeds had semigelatinized the sake, and when shaken and filtered through a sieve, yielded a good quantity of a pleasant thickish gel for skin/face lotion etc. I’m now using the same seeds again to make a second batch, slightly less gelly than the first, it seems.

Echo and I each made our own experimental preparation - she used rose essential oil in hers - and are saving the rest (about a cupful) in the fridge. I added a few drops of apricot oil to mine, plus a drop of lavender essential oil (other good essential oils for the skin are eucalyptus, tea tree, clary sage, lemon, myrrh, patchouli...) to make a little test squidgerful (beside the big jar in the foto) to use on my hands after I’ve been working outdoors.

Echo says it’s great for rough heels and elbows as well, but my rough heels and elbows have never been a bother to me (or others, as far as I know). Anyway, the lotion feels great, is cheap (free if you got a yuzu tree), no artificial additives, preservatives (add some vitamin E for that) or coloring --  it’s smooth, soothing, dries fast, not tacky, goodfeel to rub on, dissipates quickly, seems to fill in some dermal gaps and lubes or something. Feels good later too, slightly astringent perhaps. I'll try a new blend as an aftershave balm and experiment with other formulations.

You can go ahead and make a million with this; I have to go get some firewood with my new hands.

COMING RAIN

The cloud cover was densing yesterday as evening neared, whole slabs of sky moving up slowly and warmly from the south, bearing the hard Spring rains of the next few days of rainy season.

Ahead of time got all the new firewood covered up and the basil sprouts too, shielded from the hammer of torrential rain that debasiled me a few years ago when I was more ignorant than I am now. The straightneck and crookneck squash plants from US seeds are now big enough to do fine under the skybattering. To my surprise, they're feeling right at home, though the scallop squash is a bit cautious.

The US yellow wax beans, though (can't find those seeds here, same for the squashes above), are reticent - most of them anyway - even though they don't have visa problems. They're wary about sprouting, even the few who tentatively poke up, but the ones that do get used to it. Plus I replant, and word gets around, so maybe. The US green beans, on the other hand, recognize the place, to a bean. "Hey, this is Japan, isn't it! I'm from the States! They have soil rain and sun here too! Cool!" (Sprouts talk like teens, as you know.)

The wild ducks are looking forward to the rains though, a duck couple is just now flying down from upmountain paddies, practically holding hands, wings whistling in the dusky silence that is deepest just before the big downpour. They swooped downward over the Lake then climbed and sped south, as together as ever, into the coming rain.

SEEDS

Seeds in their infinite nature are a vast topic, deeper than the oceans of a mind, especially at this time of year when thoughts are beginning to germinate about planting or starting gardens (now moreso than ever) and about appreciating the value of genuine (ergo, slow) food.

Genuine food is best when you grow it yourself, and thus to your own golden standards, the own-grown motives being health, flavor and freshness, as compared to the brassy standards of agribiz, which breeds for efficiency, ship3000milesability, bruise resistance, cosmetic longevity, shelf life. Nutrition and flavor are in the equation by default, the bottom line being profit. An agribiz CEO inquiring as to the worth of a cabbage does not have the health of you or your children in mind. As you put that seed into the ground and nurture it, you do.

I grew up in the city, never had a garden, never even had a lawn (the latter of which was and is ok by me). I did spend some time in the Hudson River countryside though, at my cousins' house, where my uncle had a big vegetable garden (sure wish he was still in this world), in which as a little kid I used to wander enjoying the wondrous sight of bright red globes of tomato deliciousness growing right out of the dirt, of carrots pushing golden down into the ground at my feet, only their shoulders showing, sweet strawberries right there and ready to eat; honeydew melons, and going and picking raspberries, in real life; this was an old familiar language to some ancient in the child I was, this was the way things in life truly were and should always be, beyond the confines of dead-tree education. And so was born my strong ambition to one day have a garden of my own. It's been a long and organic journey, encouraged by the steady advances of paraquat and its pals.

What got me started on this ramble was not only seeds and Spring, when the mind becomes a garden of its own; the catalyst was finding a mention of PureLandMountain.com on CNNGo, in an article about Blogging Japanese Farmers, which led me back to its source on Martin's blog Kurashi - News from Japan, where I am complimented with praise that is way over my head. Wow. Thank you, Martin.

MAYBE SOME DECORATIVE GOURDS

Each year at around this time I start experiencing fantasies that have to do with vegetables - no not like that, get your mind out of there - more like maybe I'll grow some yellow crooknecks this year and order some wax bean seeds, put in some zucchini, some acorn squash and of course a few butternuts, some corn too yes a couple rows of corn, to say nothing of tomatoes and cucumbers and what would really be good would be some of those wait a minute Bob you're getting vegedelerious, get a grip, how many fingers am I holding up, let's not get carried away here you don't have the entire mountainside to plant, it's just a few dozen square meters you got out there, with already spinach and chard in the ground, onions and garlic, turnips as well, and Japanese veggies, get hold of yourself put down that catalog, those catalogs too, and those-- Walk around don't run, take some deep breaths and don't forget there are bugs and monkeys you're supporting out there and -- I don't know who's doing the talking, some inner therapist who's always hanging around trying to keep me on some ridiculously rational path and sure enough, the commonly agreed reality slowly creeps back into my seed-filled brain, I shake my head it seems to rattle like a decorative gourd, I rub my eyes to clear my vision; I look at the calendar and sure enough it's right about the same time as it was last year when this happened, same point every time, just on the cusp of Spring, same sort of thing used to happen when I was a kid, I'd get kind of a groggy fever of unspecified desire that would clarify in those younger, suitably objectiveless years into marbles or yoyos, and since I was regularly fed by others I could care less about things like seeds and planting and growing stuff you could buy right now but instead wait MONTHS for, are you kidding me, and flowers? no way, what would the guys think, you crazy? That was how it was back then, but Spring ever has that effect on the mind and this year now that I'm at the promontory of life with these delightfully chronic views I'll settle for my usual garden stuff plus a little something new, though in addition I think I'll maybe I'll plant some of these and these... sorry can't chat anymore gotta order some seeds now where did I put all those catalogs...

SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY

Pure Land Mountain is seven years old this month. Here's a post from way back then:

SEEDS OF CHANGE

Yesterday, out in the fine gold spring day tilling and planting spinach, I kept being distracted by loud poppings here and there in the sky, thinking them perhaps to be monkeys gathering and eating seeds in the trees or something, or maybe birds, or the trees themselves stretching in the warmth of spring, or...

Here and there the popping continued, catching at my ear like a mosquito, so finally I gave up and went off toward the heart of the matter, where I stood in the road near the nearest of the places whence the popping had come like some slow-motion popcorn, and... POP! POP!! I saw no monkeys, I saw no birds, I saw-- movement only, up in the trees, it was like a big slow stretching, a sudden twitch, a rush of tangle, a thrash, a solid sprinkling--

It was the wisteria pods unleashing their seeds in the warmth of the sun, the rise of the sap and the touch of the spring winds, all come together at the right moment and WHAP!! A pod would unleash, twist like a sling and shoot off its lifebullets--

Just as I was wondering how far they could travel, WHANG! one hard brown flat seed struck the metal fence near me and came to rest by my foot. I picked it up and threw it a good deal farther on, changing the universe forever.

SEED

Kneeling to the garden with a handful of seeds, you can't help but grow, to realize the vastness there is to a seed, each one as linked with all eternity as we ourselves.

Timeless it is, to place one seed into the ground - then another - and so on down the row you've made of your portion of time’s garden, holding an endless secret in the palm of your hand, your hand itself a part of the secret, moving from seed to seed as your forebears have done, as eternity has done, until now here you are, doing as eternity does. There is much to a seed.

SLOW LEARNING

Preparing my garden seed list puts me once again in mind of how much learning there is to be done, if you're out to get an education. The garden is just one example-- maybe the best example, apart from the University of Parenthood, which not everyone attends, though anyone can have a garden.

The most valuable experience the garden imparts - aside from the miraculous lessons of seeds and growth - is the exercising of slow knowledge, which seeds already know and so do you, deep down in your roots, the kind of knowledge that doesn't move before it's time, knowledge you can't recall if hurry is your way of life.

This is the same lesson that children, grandchildren and the face in the mirror teach to whomever takes the time to stop and see. So it is with a garden: you go out to the earth and you genuflect. Like a child, the earth requires that you come to its level.

In fact you are kneeling to your own future roots, where at the moment there may be weeds or bigger things; then you clear and till, seed and tend, then weed and nurture again in the various ways that growth demands, you watch the sky for rain and protect the stalks from wind, much as you do in their ways for those you love and for your regular people relations, except this is between you alone and all the earth and sky.

The big lesson is about time: not what it is or what it means, but what of it is yours and what to do with it, how to fill it and apportion it, how not to yearn to do everything at once, as desire wants. Those remaining unseeded or unweeded rows call to you for tending even at the end of day, but you will do it tomorrow, and you do it tomorrow, and over time you slip into the time of the garden, much as you're slowly growing with the firewood stack.

Slow is the key, slow at the core, a bit of each in its time and its way, as you learn how to advance at just the right pace to achieve continual progress at a healthy measure for body and mind, have everything converge at just the right points along the seasons, and therein discover a new pleasure for your days, one that was never thought of back when you were racing through youth like a tomorrowless comet-- what delight was waiting ahead after all, just beyond the row of carrots...

You've learned what is called slow, to go at the speed of nature, to move naturally at the pace your deeper heart desires, a pace we have forgotten in our virtually advanced societies, but not in our hearts, bones and spirits, a pace and its attendant knowledge that is still and always there, waiting for us each to slow enough to seek and see it, get in deep sync and realize it once more in humanity's long garden-- and how you learn, then!

If you're out to get an education.

DAYSEEDS

The Grandees came over for their final visit yesterday afternoon and soon after their immediate snow frenzy we pulled and hose-washed more large bunches of baby carrots for the gang to take back north with them.

Then I issued small and medium bamboo rakes to my volunteer raking crew and directed the consequent little-girl-powered leafstorm as best I could so as to fill up a whole big tarpful of leaves, which we all four then dragged along between the trees and down the slope and across the terrace and down the stone step and dumped on the compost pile, which at that point became a 2-meter-plus high enclosure of leaves, a sort of vegetal trampoline atop which the leafy trio bounced in extended worship.

Then later when it was getting dark and starting to rain we all went down to the village to polish a bag of whole rice into brown rice for them to take back home. We did this in the village's big noisy polishing machine, some of the polished rice grains being caught in each little hand before going into the big rice bag. We also saved the bran to throw onto the compost pile, which after we got home we did, then we had some waffles, the first waffles the twins ever had, which was interesting: how DOES one handle a first waffle-- and without chopsticks?

Then later on, over by the stove I showed them some actual seeds, which Kaya knew all about but the twins had never seen before - I had some spinach and broccoli seeds left over from last year - and they didn't want to just look into the packets, they insisted on my pouring out some seeds into their hands so they could see them and poke at them. There's a deep magic to seeds in little cupped hands...

I poured the largish spinach seeds first and explained that a whole bunch of spinach grows out of each seed, just like the picture on the front of the packet, at which statement their minds went churning away in the totally weird-fact-processing area; they looked at the seeds in the light, then gently put them all back into the seed packet, careful to pick up any that had fallen to the floor, then I poured out some tiny broccoli seeds and the twins went Ooooohhhh...

As they rolled the tiny orbs between their fingers I explained that one tall broccoli plant grows from each of those teeny things, and that carrots seeds were tiny too, that just one little seed grew a whole carrot into the ground! Then they ran off to select one of their just-picked baby carrots to nibble carefully from the very root end while they spun around with their eyes closed and one arm extended, so as to experience that particular activity.

Now back to routine daily living, seeded with all those moments...

THE OLD TABULA RASA

In the evolution of knowledge, it's a fact that things keep on becoming unknown. I'm not referring here to elective rasafication of the tabula, as for example by creationists, or to the natural misplacement of knowledge, as embodied in where the hell I put my reading glasses, which is sort of a pro tem microrasafication. To get more rapidly to my point here, I'm talking about how each generation is born bearing the somehow surprising absence of such basic knowledge as seeds and how to use a rake.

When you're raising kids, you try to teach them moment-to-moment about all the things they need to understand or at least know about, from the toilet to the stars, so you never really get to comprehend the particulars of it all, just how much and in what detail they have to learn these things, and so you miss a few, especially the things you'd never even think of teaching anything about, such as will dad's favorite fountain pen write on toast, or how many times can you put a ball in a box and take it out again. These details too must be learned. (Bet you didn't know you'd learned somehow about fountain pens writing on toast.) Though it's been dismissed as an ignorant representation of the newborn mind, the old tabula is nonetheless surprisingly rasa in certain respects.

When Kasumi was born in on the island of Ibiza, the first thing I did when we took her home was carry her out into an old grove near our finca in Cala Boix, break off some wild rosemary leaves and hold them to her nose. She was only about three days old, but I still remember the look of awe that came into her eyes; no rasa there at all (three-day olds are experts at awe).

On the other hand, I remember one day in spring a few years later when we lived in Kyoto and only Keech and I were home, when I said Hey Keech - who was then about three years old - let's go water the daffodils! We got a big glass of water and went out there and I let Keech do the watering; he held the glass up to the daffodil's mouth so it could drink. Way cuter and more endearing than knowledge. Imagination is a beautiful thing.

When decades later I became a grandfather I got Kaya started early learning about plants and seeds and gardening - she'd help me plant whatever I was planting while she was here - but I guess that somehow, due to seasonal scheduling and time crowding, Mitsuki and Miasa slipped by in that regard-- they haven't yet gotten to be here at planting time. Then yesterday afternoon I took the three of them out to help me pick some winter carrots-- partly for thinning, but mostly for the major WOW I knew it would be for them to firmly grasp those green stems near to the ground, pull hard and come up with a large bright orange root right out of the dirt! (We filled the carrot basket to overflowing but still it was Me, me, me, I want to pull up the next one! and for the first time in my life I was a grandfather seeking order among carrots.) Then we took the whole basketful of green and orange to the garden hose, where we washed the carrots off, and boy were they bright orange when I held a freshly washed bunch of them up in the air-- it was the roots of impressive.

This was of necessity followed by the eating of cold, crispy, orange-glowing baby carrots in the warm kitchen-- what can be mind-sweeter than new teeth crunching into a carrot just plucked from winter ground and washed with icy water? For some time the kitchen air was filled with carrot snaps and contemplation. The crunching trio wanted to eat all the carrots right there, but agreed to take some home for later.

The surprise I've been getting to all along came when Mitsuki asked me why I had buried all those carrots.

PLANT INFORMATION ONLINE

via

BOB BUNYAN

By now, you kind and discerning visitors to these homely efforts of mine must be growing tired of my recurrent converse about firewood, splitting it, stacking it, all its charm and solid value etc., but when you heat using only a woodstove (catalytic combustor), firewood is a big topic; and because you can only store wood for about three years (especially in this climate) before it begins to lose its firewoodiness, and I've never had a three-year supply since I've lived here - we've been burning pretty much hand to stovemouth for the last 13 years - whereas this year, golden firewood is raining on me from all around and I must strike while the axe is hot, must I not, no time even to straighten out my metaphors, I'm doing pretty much nothing else these non-office days, apart from putting maybe a few spinach seeds in the ground on my way between trees, at odd intervals blowing neighborhood kids' minds with the magnificent menagerie of my humungous compost kabutomushi larvae collection (OK kids, now get ready, I'm gonna lift this used-up shiitake log... OHMIGOD!!) (scroll down to late September for humungolarval pics - they're even bigger now!)... And dealing with firewood, bucking logs, quartering, carrying, stacking, finalsplitting and finalstacking, at the end of the day, before toppling into bed like a felled log, who can keyboard with oaken fingers?

BOBBY CARROTSEED

I can't believe I'm driving home with hundreds of carrot seeds in my workshirt pocket, I just bought them, and have already planted potatoes, spinach, chard, garlic and plan to plant onions-- onions! in a couple of weeks, can you believe it? No, I'm not crazy, nor am I starting a monkey charity - get the hairy marauders on a path by which they can improve their lives? Not! It's no use trying to redeem those onion pirates, those carrot cadgers, no matter how fundamental you are - no, I have a more realistic kind of faith: faith in fences.

It's that new high antimonkey (and deer and wild pig) fence that's gonna go up around my garden as soon as my shoulder heals, it's changed my view of world fertility, my attitude toward seeds, my hopes for a more amenable and vegetable future - a fresh lettuce, tomato and onion sandwich of the spirit, with potato chips and cucumber pickle on the side and strawberries for dessert - and as the day draws closer I feel like a kid again, I can do anything I want, I'm a superman of seed, I can plant just about anything, I can plant watermelons this summer if I want to, and then I can actually have the watermelons!

I can plant zucchini! And cucumbers and tomatoes too! And pumpkins and squashes, eggplant, green peppers, spring onions, purple onions, green beans, snow peas and and and: I dance in my mind through the garden with my hands in the air, seeds falling from my fingers! No longer will I have to censor my garden menu as I look wistfully at the seed rack filled with a rainbow of seed packets at the farm store while monkeyless urbanoids blithely select any vegetable they want; I am vegetably free, I realize as I drive home with the sun on my cheeks and the wind in my hair, singing "Call Any Vegetable," visions of roots and leaves and fruits in my eyes, my pockets full of seeds that I'm going to put in the ground all over the landscape, everywhere is a garden, just call me Bobby Carrotseed!

ORGANIC HEIRLOOM SEEDS

In a can. At Everlasting Seeds

+

And then there's Fedco Seeds...
(Check out the trees,
link found via this great article)

+
And on the Darth end of the spectrum...

TRUE BELIEVERS

Every once in a while, particularly when the weather is nice - like now - we up here on the mountain are visited by clusters of well-dressed folks of vacuous sincerity who come out from the city to walk in their high heels over my raised beds so they can get their spoken routine within earshot and interrupt my labors to hand me some brightly colored tracts outlining God’s plan for humanity and that includes me, their eyes say, as though it were a gift or at least a revelation, but I politely refuse the tracts and after pointing out God’s own asparagus on which they are treading I attempt to talk to them frankly as one being to another but it is always impossible, for true believers are limited in hearing and no longer command certain fields of thought.

Nevertheless I tell them I do not need a middleman to maintain my relations with higherness, nor do I need the conflicting words of God's many secretaries - whose descendants have been killing each other ever since - that anytime I see a sprout rise up out of the ground, hold in my hand a tiny plant with its roots shining, smell the crown of a baby's head, take a deep breath of the scent of lilac, watch a hawk ride the wind, see the stars circle the night sky or behold any other of a thousand daily miracles, I have no doubt that I am as much heaven as earth, as much now as eternity, that I therefore know lowness as well as I know highness, yesterday as well as forever, for I am those aspects embodied, I carry them within me in every cell and heartbeat, indeed as these visitors themselves do; but by then they have drifted off to trample other gardens, leaving me in the ancient company of seeds...

SEED SUICIDE: HOW UNNATURAL CAN WE GET?

"Consumer, farmer, and environmental organizations across the globe are mobilizing to stop the legalization and commercialization of the controversial Terminator Gene Technology, whereby seeds are genetically engineered to become sterile or commit suicide after one growing season.

The Monsanto corporation and the biotech industry support the Terminator Technology, because it will force many of the 1.4 billion farmers around the world to stop saving their seeds and instead to purchase patented seed varieties from the Gene Giants. In addition, scientists are concerned that genetic pollution from Terminator crops will lead to killing off a wide range of crops and plants, as Terminator pollen and seeds are spread by the wind, insect pollinators, and commercial seed co-mingling and transportation.

After a massive international campaign in 1998, Monsanto Corporation announced they were shelving plans to commercialize the Terminator, while the United Nations (UN) called for a global ban. But today (2/11/2005), renewed efforts to overturn the worldwide ban were launched at a UN conference in Bangkok."

Learn more and sign OCA's petition to the UN to terminate the Terminator Gene

OCA home page

SEEDS

Kaya and I were taking a walk to the pond this morning when along the roadside I noticed a locust tree that still had some long felty pods hanging from it. As Kaya watched, I jumped way up high and grabbed a branch and pulled it down to lower another branch that had a big pod on it. I broke off the pod and gave it to Kaya, who, being just two years old a couple of days ago, had never seen such a thing, or anything even remotely resembling it, in her entire life; and here I was giving it to her as a gift. She was dumbfounded at this magical event, and stood there open mouthed for a long time, looking at this strange object in her own hand. Then I took the pod from her and split it neatly into two magical halves, each half nestling four or five large round flat brown hard shiny seeds, like gems in a fitted box. Kaya looked at them in amazement, then at me in amazement. I took one seed out and put it in her hand. She stared at it with two years of intensity. Then we took the other seeds out and she put them carefully in her pocket and went to the pond rich, and went back home rich. The seeds are all now carefully stacked on Kaya's little table, gaining interest.

SEEDS OF CHANGE

Yesterday, out in the fine gold spring day tilling and planting spinach, I kept being distracted by loud poppings here and there in the sky, thinking them perhaps to be monkeys gathering and eating seeds in the trees or something, or maybe birds, or the trees themselves stretching in the warmth of spring, or...

Here and there the popping continued, catching at my ear like a mosquito, so finally I gave up and went off toward the heart of the matter, where I stood in the road near the nearest of the places whence the popping had come like some slow-motion popcorn, and... POP! POP!! I saw no monkeys, I saw no birds, I saw-- movement only, up in the trees, it was like a big slow stretching, a sudden twitch, a rush of tangle, a thrash, a solid sprinkling--

It was the wisteria pods unleashing their seeds in the warmth of the sun, the rise of the sap and the touch of the spring winds, all come together at the right moment and WHAP!! A pod would unleash, twist like a sling and shoot off its lifebullets--

Just as I was wondering how far they could travel, WHANG! one hard brown flat seed struck the metal fence near me and came to rest by my foot. I picked it up and threw it a good deal farther on, changing the universe forever.