Day 5: The Wonder of Tiny Seeds

“Come outside. I have to show you this,” my mom said.

I followed her outside to a little area of dirt next to the sidewalk I hardly ever notice. The patch is shaded and nothing grows there.

“Look closely,” she said.

I bent down and noticed between the coiled hose, a tiny sprout of something green.

“Back in October, after we carved pumpkins, I carried the seeds to the trash. One must have fallen off the plate, and now it has grown here.”

I looked closer, in awe, as there it was: the pumpkin seed still attached to the top of the sprout.

“Isn’t that amazing?”

In life, sometimes we plant seeds, and other times, something grows despite supposedly being “trash.”

Maybe the new year can bring a re-imagining about how we see failures in our own lives. If we open our eyes and look for the unexpected of what was once discarded, we might just find a gift.