Poduction

Growing up my older sister, to whom I've always looked up to and believe to be the coolest person I know (for no reason other than she's my big sister), had a poster on her bedroom door of a pea pod, opened revealing different colored peas and it read "Categorizing is not something we do here." I loved that poster, both for the message and image. You see, I love plants' pods, the fruit of the plant that forms after the bloom that holds the hope for the next generation.

Every morning Rowan and I take a walk in our neighborhood. Most of our fellow walkers, take the route around the park, but we merely skirt the park's top edge and then head left to the residential streets where we can see who's growing what and admire the old homes. One neighbor trains a Wisteria Floribunda, the Japanese form and a Southern favorite, on a low, horizontal metal trellis on the front edge of their property (I could insert a mention of the exotic vs. the native version of this most glorious vine, but I'll save that for another post. Besides, can one imagine this low region of ours without the occasional site and vigor of this lovely lady Wisteria that's been here for over one hundred years? I, for one, can not). Our neighbor's choice location of the planting is particularly kind to us passersby. Earlier this spring, I breathed in the lush scent of it's grape flower. Today, I could not help but to stop and pet it's velvety lobe-like pods that dangle the vine. How can one resist caressing a pod? At The Camp this Sunday I was reminded of how much I love a plant's pod upon seeing a huge bulbous shiny green one atop an iris- I wanted to reach out and cup my palm around the globe.

I love watching a pod mellow on the vine, dried papery and yellow or sometimes rubbery and black as is the case of Hyacinth bean also known as confederate vine. Autumn is the appropriate time to capture seeds from the pod, and in doing so, I feel powerful, a link to the ancient past of botanical propagation. I place the little gems in an envelope, seal the fold then place the envelope in a Mason jar where it remains, awaiting the winter seed starting season.

The pod has an alien appearance to me. Its contents secret, unknowable but when parted and opened, the gardener finds matching little pearls. Perhaps, I've seen too many sci-fi movies from the 1950's where the Martians come down from the sky emerging out of a pod like vessel and incubate the human in a pod spun from alien silk. It's no accident that these symbolic classics, made during a time when nature was seen as alien or 'dangerous' to the upwardly mobile folks moving as far away as possible from the family farm and into pods, otherwise known as suburbs or, as Robert calls them, barracks, fore shadow the unfortunate results the mass migration to the 'burbs, destroying the natural world and our relationship to it along the way, would have.

At the risk of sounding a bit corny and/or preachy in our cynical culture, I say thank goodness & halleulujah! for the green movements of today, reacquainting us with the Earth and teaching the pod people how to share our planet's bounty.


Find another nice blog post with cool images here.