I’ve invested seed money,
believing in the ABC’s:
asters yield deep purple;
balloon flowers top charts;
cosmos caps capture interest.
Incented, content, I sniff,
blessed by return kindness.
My shareholder butterfly straw
glugs from milkweed constellations.
Wreaths, bouquets, cinnamon fields
of carnations — priceless wealth.
Today when I dropped off borrowed materials and picked up the new batch, I decided to take a few packets of seeds from my library branch’ seed bank. Usually I go for the vegetables but this year am going for the flowers. Merril’s prompt is a perfect synchronicity!
Merril is today’s host of dVerse’ Quadrille. Merril says:
Write a poem of exactly 44 words, using the word seed.
Tao Talk 
I love the thought of having those seeds… the parallels to startup and venture cap jargon made me smile.
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🙂 Thank you very much, Bjorn, glad it pleased you.
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Love milkweed constellations.
How wonderful to have that seed bank. I love the synchronicity! Somehow that seems a special connection with seeds and planting. 😀
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Thank you. Glad you like it, Merril. This will be the first time trying to cultivate milkweed, it just grows here on its own but no harm in planting more. Very cool and I agree on the special connection 🙂
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Good luck. We planted some milkweed, but not from seed. I wonder if any that we planted last year will come back?
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“milkweed constellations,” is such a wondrous image! Love the idea of having a seed bank, Lisa 😀 Let us plant hope. 💝💝
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Sanaa yes, planting seeds is planting hope for sure. Thanks for reading and your comment 🙂
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Lovely images
Happy Monday
much 💗 love
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Thanks, Gillena!
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Your weave the descriptions of the flowers into a garden of words. Can’t wait to see this flower garden grow.
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Thank you! This year I’m buying veggie plants with a plan for mulch and staking. If I can keep them watered, the flowers should be beautiful 🙂
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Lovely poem Li. Happy gardening.
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Thank you, Sadje!
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You’re welcome my friend
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I love it! Yes, priceless!! I love this line…
My shareholder butterfly straw
glugs from milkweed constellations.
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Dwight, so glad you enjoyed that line, I’d love to turn a whole field into milkweed!
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You might end up with a field full of butterflies!! :>)
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you painted a joyful garden of bobbing colour … hope they all bloom joyfully!
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I will try to be a good cultivator of these flowers to-be. Hoping to have pics at some point 🙂
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the joy of your grandchild has brightened your heart Lisa … I feel your love and light radiating out!
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Kate I’m still floating with happiness after seeing and holding her yesterday. She fell asleep on my chest and was out like a light. I could feel her little heart beating ❤
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how delightful, I am so pleased for you … a girl at last!
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Goodness me, I loved the colorful flower language you’ve tossed about. You took a prompt and really pushed it to a place where reality somehow seems more modernist and wild than I expected. Delightful.
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Masa, thank you for reading and your glowing comment 🙂
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great line “milkweed constellations” but did need to look up milkweed thanks have added another plant to my knowledge.
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Thank you, Rog! Milkweed are monarch butterflies favorite food.
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i have poem somewhere about the monarch butterfly. i will find out and post it on my blog. thanks for reminding me of it
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🙂
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Financially beautiful Lisa… 🙂
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🙂
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This makes me want to do a Little Free Library, but for seeds and plants!
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Do it! The intent is to give seeds back from whatever grows to the library to keep it going. The reality is very few give seeds back. Luckily they have seeds donated from seed companies — good ones! heirlooms! — so they keep up their supplies. Limit of 5 packs PER DAY but there are only 10 seeds per pack.
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I grow a lot of seedlings for my little farm, and every year I do a plant sale with the ones I don’t use. I donate the proceeds to local nonprofits (this year Good Kids Mad City). I stopped going to seed swaps because seed swap people are weird. lots of little rules that are easy to get wrong.
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I love what you are doing! A seed swap is something the library was going to try last year — before covid. Maybe they’ll do it next year…
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It sounds like you’re in store for some floral abundance.
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I have beds that have room so it should be nice.
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I like how you used the ABC’s in the first stanza! My father has a huge garden and doesn’t live too far from me. I’m thinking I will go plant something in his yard where I know he will water it, haha!
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Tricia that is an EXCELLENT idea! Thanks and glad you enjoyed it.
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Gardening, nurturing and watching things grow is so rewarding isn’t it? I know you love your garden Lisa ☺️ This is a lovely quadrille. Do you have peonies again this year?
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Yes it is. Yes I do. Thanks. I have peonies every year but right now they are just beautiful deep purple stalks. We need rain and more warm days. I also have booby trapped my Asiatic lilies so the deer won’t get them this year!
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Oh that’s so funny. Things we have to do to protect our precious blooms ☺️
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You said it! I turn tomato cages upside down so the spikes keep them away 🙂
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To plant flowers is definitely enriching 😉
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🙂 lol
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Great use of assonance in these lines:
‘cosmos caps capture interest.
Incented, content, I sniff,’
It sounds like you know your stuff when it comes to seeds! May your garden bloom 🙂
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I play at it. It’s one of those things where the journey is the best part. Thank you very much, Ingrid.
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What a great idea, to have a library branch seed bank. I haven’t completely given up on vegetables (yet) but I would like to encourage more butterflies and add a bit of colour to the wild garden. I love the ‘milkweed constellations’ too!
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Thank you, Kim. My cousin is one of the librarians and she has come up with a lot of good ideas since she’s been there. I hear you about the butterflies — and the bees!
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The garden looks picture perfect, happy gardening, Li. Loved the idea of a seed bank. 🙂
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Thank you very much, Kitty! Yes it is a great idea, and all of the seeds are donated so no cost.
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You are welcome, Li. And that’s a wonderful initiative. 🙂
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Love, love, love.
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Thanks much, David 🙂
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I’d quite forgotten about cosmos, which was prominent in my mother’s garden. Thanks for the reminder. Your garden will be lovely!
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I love cosmos. Haven’t grown them here but my mom grows them. I love those frilly leaves. I hope they grow well, thank you. Glad they remind you of your mom 🙂
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May your investment bring you bountiful returns! (Love this song) 🙂
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Thank you, Chris. I feel Joni is singing to Mother Nature — a plea for mercy for us poor idiots that don’t honor her gifts.
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Here’s hoping you score BIG!!!!!! A most creative poem about seeds I might add.
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Helen, thank you, I do too.
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The best kind of bank! (K)
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How perfect! I love it when things like that happen; it reinforces my faith in the universe and the mysterious way it works. I have cosmos and butterfly milkweed growing too! and today, I found a purple aster among my wildflowers.
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Very cool, Linda! I see synchronicity here 🙂
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A seed bank! What a wonderful idea! So much better than stocks and shares;
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When they started it up a few years ago they had a “seed saver” come in and do a lecture on how to properly save seeds. It really came in handy when I saved tomato seeds.
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I wouldn’t know where to start!
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You put the seeds, as cleaned off as you can get them, in a canning jar with water and a permeable top. Wild fermentation actually “eats” the gel that attaches to the seeds. After a few days you rinse them off and dry them on coffee filters.
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We got the best tomatoes ever grow from some odd squidgy one’s that we’d put in the compost. They were from a variety ordinary folk can’t buy apparently.
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I love this so much! “Butterfly straw glugs from milkweed constellation.” Fabulous words and you’re right—priceless!
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🙂 So happy to hear you like the poem, thank you.
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I love how you set the stage with “I’ve invested seed money” and then wrote about a totally different investment. I love a good twist!
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Thank you and glad you enjoyed my twist 🙂
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