Gardeners will find plenty to pore over in Scott Chaskey's Seedtime, a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary look at the humble seed. Chaskey moves deftly from Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA's double helix and the idea that every seed "contains a story" to the first global seed bank, established in Norway in 2008. (The idea of a "Doomsday vault" to protect the earth's plant life against human-generated disasters is a relatively recent one--but, as one scientist notes, "because extinction is forever, conservation must be forever.")
Not all of our eggs are in the basket of science, though. Chaskey also discusses artists working on innovative ideas to promote and preserve seed integrity. Basia Irland, for example, carves ice "books" with seeds lodged in the ice as a "text." As the books travel down streams and rivers, they melt, releasing their seeds into the shores and the riverbanks; the absorbed seeds slow erosion as they build up the riverbank soil.
Chaskey's passion for the soil and seeds shines throughout Seedtime, which draws as much on his experience working to preserve soil integrity while operating a farm with more than 500 varieties of plant life as his work as a poet--at its best, channeling the agrarian voice of Wendell Berry. --Matthew Tiffany, counselor, writer for Condalmo