Nasturtium Harvesting

It was nasturtium harvesting day.

First I snipped the cords with scissors then stopped and smelled fear. The drops collecting at the cut made me think hard.

I had failed to talk to the plant as I often do when I'm nervous. So I told the plant everything I had to say. Then I did some more thinking. Then I put away the scissors and furled the fruits away from the stalks with my fingers.

I separated the fruits thus - those are the orange fruits: these are the yellow.

They line the marble sill below the window until they dry and I can put them in envelopes until next spring.

As I pinch-held the fat, green bodies I asked myself, now what makes these fruits? Am I going to eat them like a fruit? They say you can - they say you can eat the whole plant. But no, even though they look good enough to eat, I'm not going to eat these ones.

Well, why aren't they seeds, then? Are you going to use them as seeds?

Yes, I'm going to plant as many as I can take care of in the spring.

So, why aren't these ones seeds?

I don't know, but I wanted to write about it.

There are two nasturtium plants this year. They are the result of four seeds from last year.

The year before, the mother plant came up an orphan out of someone else's soil - a petunia's, I think. I recognized it right away - those dime-shaped leaves, like the leaves of a lily pad, succulent and all grown up, already at the age of three days.

Save it or throw it away?

Save it, I thought and placing a spoon in the soil, pulled gently at the stalk.

The stalk snapped off in my fingers.

Horrors.

Save it, or throw it away?

Save it, I thought and placed the stalk with its pretty leaves in a glass of water in the window.

Four days later, there were roots and several weeks after that, roots to plant, so I planted it.

It gave me yellow flowers and orange flowers - my orphan nasturtium. And in the fall, it gave me four fat, round, juicy fruits that fell one after the other onto the balcony carpeting.

The two plants resulting from that have just delivered over fourty plump, promising,juicy fruits and I am agape.

I'm a grape.

I wonder why I wasn't agape before? I've planted carrots from 'invisible' seeds. And seen a handful of tomatoe seeds explode into a ruby fruit forest jungle.

What was it with this nasturtium?

I think it might have been the fact that it came from nowhere. Not from a paper envelope I bought at the gardening centre. It was just there, still warm, or so I thought of it. This whisper of the possibility of life turns my lights on - gets me going, gets me involved.

I think it might have been the fact that I got involved.

The destiny of the orphan nasturtium plant made a difference.

So I watched with more than just passing interest.

I was invested.

Engaged, you might say, in the matrimonial sense.

Blended, mixed, nasturtium blood in mine.

And above all, I was happy. I stepped into the sphere of my orphan nasturtium and knew happiness.

A "fruit" is so much more than a "seed". It's the culmination of a full season filled with hope. It's food until you get to the woody outer shell and the bitter inner explosion of next season's life. It's the pride and glory of any farmer.

And ain't I a farmer??

So I say fruit.