In all seasons, things go to seed, both plant and animal. The connotation is usually unflattering, as in calling something "seedy", yet what a sad world we would live in were it not for the going to seed of things--asparagus, for example. Few plants are more glorious in their waning days than tall wispy wands of asparagus all covered with green droplets, each one of which, under the right conditions, could become a new asparagus plant. Alas, the conditions are never right for all of them. Some blow off to become the wild asparagus growing on the roadside. Some feed sparrows. Some fall to the ground and do not germinate. Some germinate and reappear as tiny wispy strands--and are promptly uprooted by greedy weeding hands. Some are uprooted by mistake, when their fragile roots get mixed up with the wrong kind of friends and they are all busted together, despite the gardener's best attempt to hold the baby asparagus on the right path.

Then, too, there is the grape vine which would happily suffocate the whole patch in order to produce its own seeds inside of drupes of indigo fruit. If grape leaves were not so beautiful, if their vines were not so gorgeous, if their healthy profusion were not so elegant, I would be at constant war with grape vines and their seeds, but I am not. A skirmish here and there, yes, but not an all out battle. Like these wonderful plants, some of my gardening energy is now going to seed. Time for a truce--and a new connotation for the word "seedy".