More Than One Guess

Nyra found her at the corner bed one bright forenoon, crouched over the plant with the waxed cord tied about its stem. The girl looked up and asked whether she had judged it well, marking the first to flower as the one to save from. “It bloomed before all the others,” she said, “so I thought it must be the strongest. But now I am not sure that early and strong are the same thing at all.”

Nyra lowered herself to the girl’s side and looked a while at the marked plant before she spoke. “Early is a good thing to note,” she said, “and worth the cord you tied. A plant that flowers soon gives its seed time to ripen before the frost, and that is no small mercy in a short summer. But it is one sign among many, and if you save only for the earliest you may breed a row that hurries and forgets to be hardy.”

She lifted a leaf of the marked plant and turned it, showing the girl its underside. “Look at the whole of it, not the calendar alone. This one flowered first, yes, but see how thick its stem stands and how it keeps its leaves green through the dry spell. Those are the things I would save for. The early bloom drew your eye to it, and that is well, but now that your eye is here, read the rest of what the plant is telling you.”

The girl asked whether she ought to keep the seed of this one plant alone, then, or gather from more. “If I choose wrong,” she said, “I lose the whole of next year’s hope on a single guess.” Nyra laughed at that, a low and easy sound. “You have found the danger of it already,” she said. “No, do not stake it all on one. Save from three or four of the best, the early and the hardy and the one that holds its flowers longest, and let next spring show you which guess was the good one.”

“A gardener saves more seed than she needs,” Nyra went on, “because she cannot know from the outside which of her guesses the ground will bless. You choose as well as your eye allows, and then you give the choosing over to the season, and the season keeps only what deserves to keep. That is not a failing of judgement. That is judgement doing all it can and trusting the rest to soil and weather.” The girl untied nothing and cut nothing; she only fetched more cord, and went along the two beds marking the plants that stood thick and unhurried, saving her hope in more places than one.