Seeding?
“Energy that hasn’t existed before?”
Uncle Thomas seemed confused and he didn’t even have white hair yet. My parents named me after him but everyone called me Tommy. When I grew up, I wanted to be called Thomas. I thought I was pretty grown up already because I would be seven years old on my birthday this month. But people keep asking me what I want to be ‘when I grew up?’ Don’t they know I want to be a farmer like Uncle Thomas, and I kind of am already. I guess I got pretty confused too about the energy thing so when I asked Uncle Thomas, the best farmer in the world, and he just asked me back I was worried. See, I was going to plant beans in the spring when it was time. The ones that climb on bean poles - I guess that’s why they call the poles ‘bean poles’ - and they have red flowers. But the beans I had for seeds looked dead. Like there was no growing kind of energy in them at all. I didn’t want to plant a bunch of dead seeds and be the worst farmer in the world when I was just starting out. Uncle Thomas gave me the bean seeds and a little patch of his garden for my farm! Well, I guess it’s not really a farm yet, but you have to start somewhere, you know. Uncle Thomas isn’t mean. So I decided to ask him the energy question that made his forehead wrinkle up.
“Tommy, do you remember where those beans came from? Remember we talked about it last fall harvest. We talked about all kinds of seeds. Wheat, oats and beans and peas and all the things your aunt and I plant in our garden and in the fields.”
“Now, I remember! The plants get energy from the sun and the rain. Nitrogen and oxygen from the rain. And the sun……is the word photo….something?”
“You’ve got a pretty good memory, Tommy. The word you want is photosynthesis. All that energy goes into growing the plants and making the seeds so a new plant can grow in the next year.”
“But why do the seeds all look like they’re dead?”
“Well, they look dead but they are dormant. Being dormant is rather like keeping a secret or maybe sleeping. Their secret is that they are alive. When you’re sound asleep, you are still breathing and your heart is still beating. Sleep lets your energy build up at the end of a day. When seeds are dormant they are doing the same thing, except they can stay asleep for a long time. It’s up to us farmers to wake them up. With beans, we wake them up gently by soaking them in the house before putting them in the ground. But why all the questions about planting? Spring is too far off to get your garden growing.”
“I think every farmer should know this stuff and I didn’t want to wait until spring to ask. What if I forgot my question or you were already in the field and I couldn’t ask you? So I’m glad we had this talk now.”
“So am I. Let’s go out to the kitchen and work on my new jigsaw puzzle. Aunt Marg has some hot cocoa and cookies for us. When it’s not planting time but feels like it should be, it’s almost a sad thing. I think we could use just a little cheering up - don’t you?”
“Kids don’t remember what you teach them. They remember what you are.”
~ Jim Henson
