With my bike barely leaving the garden this year and in the spirit of almost-spring-cleaning, I decided to wash my cycling jacket. It’s one of those grey to reflective ones that glitters in the rain and positively radiates in headlights, and has rarely seen the washing machine in its years of use.
Feeling through the pockets something pointed, I turned the mesh out onto the table to a dusting of seeds. Flat, mid brown and tissue paper thin, they had happily escaped from a hard twist of a pod now coiling on the table, the two halves separated to reveal the seeds’ scooped out former resting place. There were other mystery pods too, miniature pomegranates opening flower-like to reveal misshapen corn kernel seeds, flattened walls from their close proximity.
I have no recollection of the seeing and gathering of these little casements, veering from the cycle path to scoop them up from the ground or gently twisting from a low-hanging branch. And no idea how long their pocket-based dormancy has been, but I’ll give them a go, if only in celebration of their avoiding the washing machine.
a year in the garden 