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In Hebrew, the word zera means both “seed” and “semen,” and indeed semen is referred to in the Bible as “seed.” But a plant seed is not a male cell but a body that contains a fetus and all the nutrients needed at its inception. Animal fetuses develop and are nourished within eggs and wombs until either hatched or born. Many of them continue to be cared for and protected and nourished long after that time. In the case of humans, this may even continue past the age of thirty. Plant seeds, on the other hand, have no one to look after them, show concern for them or feed them as they ripen and germinate, nor as they grow. They are dumped into the world together with a personal Spartan survival kit: some kind of a protective shell, a living tissue that will produce roots and cotyledons—as the first leaflets are known—and nutrients for the beginning of their lives, until the roots begin to absorb and the leaflets to photosynthesize and produce glucose. They are further endowed with incredible resilience, unsurpassed patience and a capability that many attribute to animals: to sense environmental conditions and to behave and respond in accordance with them.

To this end, the plant seed possesses sensors and measuring devices: a thermometer, hygrometer, a rain gauge, and in my humble opinion, a clock as well. The seed sprouts only after the measurements have convinced it that there is a chance of completing an entire cycle of life: to germinate and grow and blossom and multiply and produce new seeds. And there is another manifestation of prudent planning: even in good conditions, not all seeds in the soil will sprout. Even someone who lacks a botanic education knows that not all lupines planted as seeds in the garden will sprout, nor every hollyhock. As though they are thinking ahead, these plants save reserve duty seeds in the soil. This is the sperm bank I mentioned in one of the earlier chapters.

The seeds undergo a period of waiting between their ripening and the first rain. Anemone seeds, for example, wait a few months, whereas squill seeds only wait a few weeks. Both the anemone and the squill lie exactly where they fall, regardless of whether this is the ideal spot for growing and sprouting. They are subject to the vagaries of heat and cold, gusts of wind, fluxes of water, trampling feet, voracious mouths or beaks, and many of them perish during this period of time. But in my garden, despite the fact that I proudly refer to it as “wild,” the seeds enjoy a shelter and protection that they would never receive in the real wild—me.

Every year I gather the seeds of my wildflowers and put them aside in my house until autumn, in either a paper envelope or an open jar—which is crucial—since seeds go moldy when kept in closed containers. After the first decent rains have fallen, I sow the seeds in what seems like a good place. It is possible, indeed, to let nature take its course and, like the seeds themselves, hope for divine providence. But when I choose the exact spot, secreting them away under the soil properly, the sprouting percentage and success rate increase, and the relationship between the seeds and me deepens and ameliorates.

In order for all this to happen, the seeds must be gathered and stored before they fall to the ground or fly through the air, attach themselves to fur or socks, or get eaten and excreted somewhere else. There are plants, such as the lupine or great snapdragon, whose fruit must be scrutinized on a daily basis and quickly gathered the moment it ripens; otherwise the seeds will swiftly scatter. There are plants whose seeds remain a part of them for much longer, such as Agrostemma, hollyhock, sea squill, hyacinth squill, gladiolus, crocus, and, particularly, the buttercup. And there are plants somewhere in the middle of all these, such as the Syrian cornflower-thistle and the anemone.

The most demanding of all is the poppy. Its minuscule seeds develop within flower capsules, the likes of which I have already described. Capsules of different plants have different shapes—the flower capsule of the poppy looks like an inverted bell with a circular lid that seals its inner compartments. As the poppy capsules mature, their outer layer turns from greenish to yellowish and even light brown, and consequently tiny vents develop under and around the rim, and when the poppy stalks sway in the wind, the seeds spill out through the vents, spilling onto the ground the same way salt pours from a saltshaker, close to the parent plant. This is how the poppy creates those wonderful red fields in the countryside.

The poppy fruit does not ripen all at the same time. On any one poppy plant, green buds that have not yet bloomed can be seen alongside red blossoms (each flower blossoms for a single day), withered flowers whose petals have fallen, and the green capsules whose seeds have yet to mature, and the yellowing ones whose vents are already exposed. This is why the poppy grower must scour his garden on a daily basis and harvest any capsules that have ripened.

Harvesting the poppies is a delicate task. Every touch to the plant disperses seeds, and they are so tiny that some of them spill like water, overflowing on every slope like water, slippery as water, and—again like water—if the seeds fall to the ground, they cannot be gathered, in exactly the way the wise woman of Tekoa described another irreversible process in Samuel 2: “For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again.”

This is why I equip myself with scissors, grasp the capsule gently, cut the stem, taking care it does not incline either to the left or right, and definitely not downward, and place it in a bucket, where it can scatter seeds to its heart’s content. The problem is that this only works if you have two or three poppies in your garden, but when you have tens or even hundreds of them—we all want brides and grooms having their photos taken in our garden—you must visit them daily, search out the ripened fruits, grasp them, cut them, take care, and then return the next day to see if any more have ripened, an activity that wastes much time. Perhaps this is more suited to the offspring of nobility, lacking purpose, surrounded by chambermaids and servants, rather than those who have work to do.

I finally found a solution: when the poppies begin to ripen, I roll out nylon sheets over several square feet and place a few stones at the edges to keep the sheets from flying away. Whenever I notice plants whose flowers have already wilted and whose fruit has mostly mellowed, I carefully uproot them, neither shaking nor tilting. Then, with bated breath, I go over to the nylon sheet and place the plant there as though it were a newborn in a cradle.

In this way, a whole host of poppy plants accumulates and dries on the sheet. From time to time I turn them over gently, and finally I remove them, folding and gathering the corners of the sheet and pouring the seeds and dry leaves and particles of soil that have accumulated upon it into a large plastic bathtub. I then put them through a kevara, and then a naffa, and finally transfer them to a jar using a strainer and a funnel, and there the seeds will lie through summer, until they are sowed the following autumn.

The cyclamen also stores its seeds inside a capsule, but it resembles a ball in shape. It similarly ripens over several weeks, forcing me to visit frequently and to harvest each capsule precisely before it opens. By now I have learned to recognize the early signs of this: the capsule becomes soft to the touch, the pedicel is thin and flaccid. I pick it, along with the entire stipe, so that it will continue providing nutrients for a few more days. I place it in a flat, open container to enable the capsule to open and the seeds to fall away.

The Syrian cornflower-thistle does not ripen all at once either. Unlike the poppy, its seeds are in no hurry to fall, and they need not be handled with such care, but still it is better to harvest them before they drop to the ground. The Syrian cornflower-thistle ripens spores of fruit that resemble delicate pine cones in hues of yellow and gray, padded with a variety of stalks and husks. To separate the husk from the seeds, I crush them under a large wooden rolling pin: I scatter the dry spores on the marble kitchen counter, pass the rolling pin over them until the seeds pop out, and then drop them into a bowl.

The Agrostemma is more user-friendly. It stores its seeds for an extended period of time in capsules, and harvesting can wait until all the capsules have ripened. Its stems are strong; pulling at the capsule might rip out the entire plant. It is better to snip them with scissors and place them in a bucket. Once—I swear this happened—I was asked by a guest if the same scissors used to cut Agrostemma might also be used to cut poppy stalks. Out of concern that someone else may be worried by this question, I will answer it here: Yes. Poppy and Agrostemma stalks may be cut with the same pair of scissors. They can also be used to cut buttercups, packets of Turkish coffee, pearl barley, and pasta, as well as raffia cord and small cable ties. The larger type of cable tie is best cut with pruning shears, which can also be used to cut the branches of all kinds of trees and sprinkler pipes. Gardening is not a religion. It is all right to use common sense, to improvise, to update, to avoid ridiculous measures, and primarily to enjoy it.

The Agrostemma, meaning “field garland”—and I wonder why this beauty was never given a Hebrew name—is a spectacular perennial that has almost vanished from the Israeli landscape due to the expansion of agriculture. It has a long and delicate stalk and reaches a height of more than thirty inches, ending in two or three purple-pink flowers. When the first Agrostemma plants ripened in my garden I emptied their capsules into a bowl, one by one, with careful fingers. Under the rough outer shell, I discovered a fragile inner sac containing the seeds. I exposed the sac and then removed it; I rubbed it between thumb and finger, and the seeds dropped into the bowl.

I smiled to myself: I got my first Agrostemma seeds from the Botanical Gardens of the Hebrew University. The workers counted a dozen seeds into the palm of my hand; for me it was as if they were counting diamonds. Wonderfully, this rare and endangered plant has given me back a hundredfold, and I quickly realized that if I were to continue giving personal attention to every single capsule, I would have no time for anything other than seeds of Agrostemma, cyclamen, and poppy. After some thought and a modicum of experimentation, I discovered that the rolling pin works well here, too. I scatter the dry capsules on a marble slab and roll the rolling pin over them (hereby announcing that the same rolling pin can be used to roll pizza dough and Syrian cornflower-thistle), activating moderate physical strength. The seeds pop out with alacrity.

Buttercup seeds are the easiest. They are not trapped inside the fruit but exposed and are well aligned to their stems most of the summer. In their honor I wear rough work gloves to rub the spores forcefully between my hands, and they break loose and fall into a bowl that awaits them on the table.

I try to carry out all these strange tasks when there is no one else in the vicinity. Through the years, I have discovered that they arouse curiosity in others, but after their curiosity is piqued, only criticism and ridicule follow. People always have something to say, not just about the waste of time—Why don’t you do something instead of messing about with those dry thorns of yours?—but also about how primitive this task is. It is true that compared with advanced and sophisticated Israeli agriculture, I work in the garden using methods that even Chalcolithic farmers would term outdated.

“When I was a young girl” (I have put this in quotation marks because this is a family saying used by us all, even the males), when milking was done with bare hands, and on Nahalal primary-school trips to neighboring Arab villages, we could still see peasant farmers separating the grain from the chaff with a threshing board, and winnowing with a wooden pitchfork like Araunah the Jebusite in the Book of Samuel and Boaz in the Book of Ruth. I went back to see this after the Six-Day War in villages in the West Bank, and here and there it continues in Eastern Europe to this day. I am not, however, a farmer, but rather a modest grower of wildflowers that are not intended for sale or consumption. I enjoy the extended manual labor, the simplicity and monotony of harvesting, threshing, storing in the granary, and sowing. It fills my head with thoughts and plans, my fingers with memories and knowledge, my heart with hope and confidence. In truth, my seeds will not save me from hunger, nor will they feed me a bounty of bread. They will not fill my granary, larder, or wallet, but there is something relaxing and pleasant in jars full of seeds that may be less than purposeful but tell me that next year my garden will bloom with flowers. That, too, is important.