Larkspur

Seed Pods

Next years beautiful beginning look.

                      Larkspur gathering began Halloween, and continues, probably, into the next couple of weeks.

                      Our temperatures are 50s and sixties; there is a bit of misting rain and easy wind.

                                                Many of the darkened pods are ’empty’.  My eyes look for the ones that have an ‘eye’, a small blackish opening that says its interior is near bursting with Black Pepper sized seeds.

(Quantity is a variable based on season, plant, pollinator visits, fertilizer, or lack thereof. Nor do I know ‘size’. I’ve been told mine are
giants by one gardener gal pal, and miniatures by another.)

                         Gathering is done with bare hands.  Although our grandmother would have insisted a bit of muslin be placed on the ground below to catch seeds that  might accidentally fall through and be ‘lost’ to the black soil below.

                            (Immensely wise she was, but I do not agree with ‘accidents’ or anything being ‘lost’. Change is the only constant on this planet, where we feel the caress of the same winds on our cheeks that Cleopatra felt on her cheeks.)

                            Then, in a safe place, on a piece of Bounty paper towel, the black bits will dry and further separate for ‘awhile’.  Then they will be shaken to a smoother paper which will more easily loose them as they are dropped into an envelope labeled with name and year.

                             Early 2014 I will plant them and they will continue to share their beauty in mounting riots of color.