The whole idea that a towering sequoia can be sprung from a single, minute seed is preposterous. It’s not that I think this operation is analogous to those amusing party-trick capsules one can buy for kids, where once the pill-like mite is submerged in water, out springs a dinosaur: a sequoia is not masterfully compressed as a whole, living, full-sized tree into its seed to wow us with its razzle-dazzle emergence.

This is a much subtler, more complex, and truly far more astonishing thing, a seed containing all of the raw material and instructions for growing a full-scale, magnificent conifer. It’s more as if a very small package arrived on the front porch, seemingly from IKEA, yet containing every bolt, panel, screw and window, every necessary iota, for making the whole Empire State Building, and when the box was slit open for a peek inside, the building proceeded to assemble itself carefully and perfectly, over a few years, without any intervention from the recipient. Furthermore, if left to its own devices, it will tend to its own growth and maintenance without any aid from humans at all. Repair and beautification and renewal are included in the package with a tree-lifetime guarantee at no extra cost.

This wonder is replicated uncountable times not only in the massive and miraculous evergreen forests but in every growing thing in the earth that emerges at its birth from a seed. And that’s how, despite my impressive impatience and legendary laziness–which in combination would seemingly guarantee my gardening only with the most mature plants I can finagle onto my property and into the soil, I became enamored of gardening from seed. Oh, I still love the instant gratification of transplants and bedding plants and bare-root behemoths and all of that, but to watch this scarcely-believable process of the infinitesimal exploding (in slow motion, mind you) into the impressively complex is, well, intoxicating.

So I have built up a stash of both collected and purchased seeds that I will attempt to nurture into something more substantial over the seasons, and will play the frivolous farmer, the mad scientist of the weed-patch and the proud parent of whatever scrawny or stupendous growing things I can coax out of those jewel cases, their seeds. I will fuss and fume and furrow both the garden and my brow as I try to conjure their beauties out of those weird and fantastical little lock-boxes of seed and I will talk sternly to the reluctant and coo at the flourishing as though I really had anything at all to do with their excellence when in fact I’m just unleashing them to do what comes naturally in the first place. With appropriate respect for their admirable powers, and love for their bloom and fruitfulness, of course. Of course.