Survival

Nasturtiums and Us

Lacey has transported Nasturtium seeds from California to Vermont for years. This year she brought some to our new home in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Vermont is growing zone 4, and Newburyport, Zone 6, so she had reason to think they might bloom a little earlier.

At least she hoped so, because they bloomed in Vermont just before the first frost did them in.

When she put them into a whiskey barrel, what she hadn’t figured on was the voracious energy of Basil, our Norfolk Terrier puppy.

Three times, just as the first sprouts broke through, Basil hopped into the barrel and dug them up. After the second uprooting, we put the barrel on a rock, high enough, we hoped, to keep him from being able to jump that high.

After the third debacle, she got some fencing and put it around the mouth of the barrel.

As you can see, some of the plants have miraculously, with determination, kept at it. I almost called it dogged determination, but that, unhappily, belongs to Basil.

At the risk of over identifying with our plant kin, I wonder if those fragile seeds might feel as beleaguered as I can these days in the face of the abject cruelty that is being passed off as government policy?

Will there come another day when the dreams that fed our national dreams, might see new light?

Surely, given the persistence of Basil, a reasonable Nasturtium would pack it in, chalk it up to impossible odds, nestle into the ground, hope for Basil to grow up, and hope to sprout another day.

But they persisted.

Will I?