Once upon a time, in a sunny little garden, there lay a tiny seed in the soft earth. As Spring approached and the sun grew warmer, the little seed felt a wonderful feeling inside it.
“I want to wake up!” thought the Silly Seed. “I want to come out from this dark soft earth where I have been sleeping. I want to see the lovely garden that I know lies up above me.”
Then the rain came pouring down, and the seed was doused in water.
“Oh, dear!” it thought. “Now I am very wet. I shall never be able to get up. It is like being at the bottom of a river; I will drown. Oh, dear me!”
But surely that was not true, for the seed only swelled up and cracked its shell. A little white tip appeared on one side of the seed.
“Oh, how silly of me to think that I should drown!” thought the seed.
So the little white tip grew and grew. It made its way through the soft earth and over to the light of the sunshine. When the tiny sprout grew above the earth, all the raindrops that hung on its pretty head and leaves sparkled like jewels in the sunshine.
At last, the Big Warm Sun shone down upon the little plant as it nodded and bowed before the warm, gentle breeze. The little plant felt so happy under the warm sun that it said to itself, “Oh, how lovely it is here! But I wish I were a great tree! How nice and shady it would be to sit under me, thinking about all that I had long ago in my childhood! But I suppose I shall never grow up. I shall always be only a little plant, and I am sure I shall never have a great thick trunk and branches to hold my very heavy green leaves. I had much better stop in bed. I am really unsure if I can ever grow like that huge tree I saw once before growing at the edge of the forest.
Now by chance, when the silly seed folded its little leaves together and went to sleep in the evening, a big gardener passed by. The gardener’s name was Nature, and he said to himself, “What a sweet little plant. Come! You shall go and watch in the green forest the huge old trees with trunks as thick as a barrel, and branches spreading hundreds of miles. You can sleep every night under the blue sky and see the bright stars, just as little shepherd boys do. Yes, you shall go to the green forest.”
And the next day, when the Silly Seed woke up with nothing under it but earth, and no sky or sunshine over it, it was very angry indeed.
“Oh, dear!” it cried. “How stupid I was to fancy the gardener intended to take me to the green forest! He has only put some tiny, small branches under me, and one great long branch right over me that stretches from one side to the other. The detached little tank shall be my prison! Now just look at the two ends of it; they project only a little further than the edge of the earth. Oh, and see what little round holes they have at each end; these are the doors of my tiny house! I could get out of that bit of pipe. I think I shall go out; and even away down into the garden where I came from. But no! I will bear it bravely. I want to see the big gardener again, and I hear him say every night that I am growing faster and faster. I wait and wait every night, but he never comes, How much better it was to be outside in the fresh air!”
Days and nights passed by. When it was day, the little plant stood in the gentle breezes that blew over the land. In the evenings, the big stars twinkled down upon it, but the gardener was nowhere to be found. It felt quite deserted. But look about it! it was certainly growing faster and faster. Its little arms were stretching in all directions upward toward the stars, and downward toward the world.
One day the little plant was standing with its arms stretched high when the gardener came.
“The silly Seed is growing so beautifully that I have not the heart to keep it there any longer,” said the Big Gardener. “Now that coral this on which the plant rests is long enough, I can put it in the big garden once again where it can sleep! However, Silly Seed is tired of the world. Its little arms fell as if incapable of holding above its flower-level. But just look at the fresh green leaves; how well they are growing! You will be surprised to see how big it will soon be! So now I will put it back in the big garden in the sweet-smelling air where its growth can continue.”
So the gardener carried the sleeper back into the lovely garden, where when it opened its eyes again, it thought the Sun was ever so much brighter than before, and blushingly, the Roses smiled and nodded at the little plant.
“O, isn’t it delightful here?” thought Silly Seed. “I will grow and grow, and then I can at last see all that I saw once before when I was in such a stupid condition.”
So Silly Seed grew and grew so much that you would never have fancied what you saw in the garden was the same thing that once went by the name Silly Seed.
All around the whole garden, it was among the oldest, biggest, and most wonderful of trees. Its thick trunk and magnificent branches shaded the whole garden with their thick carpet of green leaves. Now, and when the small dogs, and the big dogs, and all the shepherd boys sat round it told weird old stories about the big elder tree; and a true story it was. The oldest tree in that land was probably no older than Silly Seed—who had once been younger than the smallest and littlest.
The little plant one sleepless evening, was speaking by the sweet-smelling flowers while they pictured their own capital over their faraway native lands, suddenly put their heads out growing over their large bed of pink-colored earth; and asked them, “When do you mean to go?”
They looked on the large trees with their dome of green leaves and said, “We will go over the wonderful sea that the little plant was once set afloat in.”
If Silly Seed who had grown into the Elder Tree heard them—it must have heard them. You would otherwise have seen it.
“Oh,” muttered the large middle-aged tree! “I old now; why I could still remember when…”
Now look here? Silly Seed had become a he. Now all the trees shook their thick furrowed-brows, they nodded from one to another, and then followed each other without closing their ears, and swayed their tops nearly so far as to bump against the Sun’s brassy ball.
And then Silly Seed understood it, and so did the finest, sweetest-flowered, merriest trees in the whole garden with which he had a nod of recollection.