Steady rain for near endless days, wet leaves littered like old confetti. I want to do stuff at the allotment, but the ground is still sodden. I am exiled by wet. It’s not that there are many chores – it is November after all. But the red tagetes are soaked and fallen and I want to save the plant’s seed. I have carried it with me for a dozen years now. Maybe more than any other, it feels important to keep it alive.
It came to me almost by accident, in a mixed batch from Lila Towle at the Danish Seed Savers. Originally found at the Danish Agricultural Museum, and thought to be German in origin, it was renamed Ildkongen (Fire King).
I adopted it as a memory seed: a marigold akin to my brother Christopher’s first flowers. I see strains close to it becoming available on small seed sites. Great Dixter has one that’s close. But it is (whisper it) not quite as good. A red velvet face like ceremonial robes, its back is as beautiful and gilded. I have grown it since we first started on the plot.
Seed saves better when the plant is dry, particularly with flowers. But there is little chance of that. I have been hoping for crisp frost. But the wet has been insistent. The flowers flattened. I worry about rot.
I was never one for endless patience, a flaw in a gardener – particularly one with a day job when days have shortened to near dark before and after work. Reduced now to Saturdays and Sundays.
So I am hoping for dry today to pick through flower heads, to gather memories and marigolds. To pack both away in a warm, dry, safe place. To care for them until another year, another spring. To sow them later than my impatience calls, when the soil is again warm and the sun is high.
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