While working in my garage today, I noticed several packages of seeds for various types of vegetables and flowers. They were lying on the clothes dryer, dormant, as life carried on around them.
I paid about half a fistful of coins for the whole lot of them. I was beginning to think that it was rather a waste of perfectly good pocket change, but then I had a thought (rare as that may sound).
Every year I buy several packets of seeds with a fistful of coins. Every year one thing piles upon another, and time makes it's usual escape from my grasp. Before long, the planting season has passed. There is a hole in the sod in my lawn, and several packages of seeds avoid their final destiny. Why do I continue to do this? Surely someone could put the seeds to better use, and my lawn could be spared for a year.
I have come to realise that, when I buy seeds, I am not buying future vegetables or flowers. I am buying the fantasy that I have time to garden. For a fistful of coins, I can buy the idea that I can actually grow a plant from a seed, and participate in, at the risk of sounding cliche, the miracle of life. It is true that only God can make a vegetable, but He occasionally allows us to participate.
All in all, it seems a remarkable bargain.
I wonder what I won't plant next year ...