Seed Furnace - Ancient Memory - Postcard Home

I know Kent is a fair weathered place, but the talking window insisted on taking me back in time. This place glowed hot orange, (much like today @ 43.5 c with acrid smoke in the hot north wind.) yet I was in the greenhouse, searching for appropriate seed packets.

This old packet caught my eye, in an old dusty wooden box, half covered with earth. Inside I found an assortment of age old seeds, their packets only preserved by wood. I think the paper was made out of something I'd never seen before and the writing was primitive and glowed with a volcano's heat. Indeed, when I brushed off the dust, it was volcanic ash, black.

I looked up through the glass greenhouse roof and found the silhouette of a tree mirroring the line of the clouds. The sky was pristine blue like an ancient sea, and the shape was like a strange kind of bay.

When I had finally brushed all the volcanic ash from the seed packet I could see it was a beauty, still aged and browned from the years, but I could see the faded old writing and picture. It was a packet of old Lemurian water lily seeds, from a time that man had long forgot. Hmm...I wondered where to plant these seeds, and wandered toward the lake, back in Kent now, where the manor lay among the trees, its many windows like sleepy eyes, shades half pulled down like eyelids. My dormer window gave a wink, I think, but I might have imagined it...

copyright Monika Roleff 2005.