Seeds is about my experiences with backyard gardening and nature in Austin, Texas.  My family’s house and garden lie at the border of two natural regions: the Blackland Prairie and the Edwards Plateau.  The soil here is rocky, with a thin layer of topsoil and caliche/limestone beneath.  We experience mild, dry winters, and hot, humid summers.  We get the most rainfall in Spring and Fall.

We moved into our current home in October 2009, and we’re just beginning the process of transforming our yard into a garden, hence the title of this blog. Seeds symbolize hope, new beginnings, and the promise of great things to come.  I think there are few things in life more miraculous than new, green life emerging from a tiny seed.

In addition to gardening, Seeds is a space for me to indulge my interests in writing, science, and the kinds of pretty nature photos that my photography professor in college said I shouldn’t be taking.

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Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

-Henry David Thoreau

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay.

-George Bernard Shaw

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

-Alice Walker