Going to Seed

I had a couple of frustrating days this week, so I took my complaints out to the Land. I wandered to my Holy Hill, wondering Who would speak, Who would be the voice of the Holy Wild, who would ease my angst? I did not hear the voice of Goldenrod until later. (It was like I responded to her with an unspoken, “NO! I don’t want to talk about that!) I left the Hill almost as frustrated as I’d arrived.

But on later reflection, I saw myself in the fluffy silver of her withered flowers. Some plants were even yet in brilliant yellow bloom. Some had sprigs of blossom on their otherwise grey heads. I touched them as I passed, thinking how they were still beautiful. But I ignored them, essentially, until later, when I stopped to wonder, specifically, how the Wild spoke to me that day.

I’d chosen Goldenrod as an intentional companion for the year, to learn its ways, to recognize its faces – Canada Goldenrod, Wrinkleleaf, Grass Leaf. Goldenrod does not send pollen in the wind. It’s not the allergen people think. Its glorious gold, next to purple aster, gives late season sustenance to bees and other pollinators. I am grateful for that. But I realize I’m not so grateful for the silver wither or the seedheads.

(Left to right – Wrinkleleaf, Grass Leaf, Canada Goldenrod)

I too am a late bloomer. My 50’s and early 60’s felt like the most vibrant and healthy years of my life. But now I see and feel signs of “going to seed.” How much time and attention it takes to keep this body functioning well, and how many days I feel I’m moving toward a losing battle. It is indeed Fall, the Autumn of my life.

Goldenrod says late summer blooms are for the bees, but the seedheads are for the Goldenrod. The seed is the legacy. The seed is the future. The seed is next year’s growth, next year’s promise of green and gold. Goldenrod wonders why I fight it? Going to seed is good!

For a number of years, I’ve had a few Scarlet Runner Beans tucked away. I have no idea who gave them to me. I’d never grown them. Every spring in recent years, I’d ask myself, should I plant them? Finally, this spring, I made a teepee trellis and pushed a half dozen beans gently into the soil.

I looked online this morning for the meaning of “going to seed”. It is ALWAYS negative! It implies leaving things untended, uncared for, and a time of lost vitality.

You see, I’d gone to the Holy Hill with my frustration that no matter what I do, my body has not been recovering the way I want it to. My frustration has been that the hours of care and tending are not enough. In a flurry of finger pointing, some inner voice scolds me for not doing what I need to do, or that I must be doing something wrong, if I have a pain that doesn’t ease, tossing in a good dose of guilt about using alternative health care resources – so much time, so much money, so much effort – and yet this body is STILL going to seed.

Goldenrod whispers, again and again, that this is the true productive time of life, that going to seed is for the sake of the future. What seeds am I producing? What future am I shaping by holding my silvering head high in the Autumn breeze?

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Matthew 6:28-29, KJV).