In my Grandmother’s Nebraska garden, hollyhocks (Alcea rosea) towered like church spires. They added vertical relief and color to the horizontal monochromatic flatness of corn and wheat fields. With childhood’s eyes, I can still see their fluffy petals and fuzzy leaves fluttering in a summer breeze. What I never paid attention to, until now, were the seed pods.

Today as I harvest hollyhock seeds from my garden, I notice that a solitary pod looks like a circular version of bank-rolled coins peeking out of a nap-sack wrapper; and a container full of pods, a decorative item in itself.

So this year, instead of tucking the seed pods onto a shelf in the garden shed to await spring planting, I decide to carry my treasures inside and place them on the kitchen table as one might an ornamental collection. I want to teach my grandson that in the fall a garden’s beauty is often found in little things and unusual places.

After all, we’re never too young or too old to learn, “To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower.” [Quotation by English poet William Blake (1757-1827)]