A legacy of seeds - Terry

I wrote on Father's Day about my father's gardening prowess. Today I pulled all the nasturtiums up that I had planted, in spite of the fact that my father is now in town and will be visiting soon. I couldn't bear for him to see my dying pile of nasturtiums, covered in aphids, messy and forlorn. He will have to take my word for it, studying the pictures I produce to be sure they aren't last year's crop.
As I was about to toss the dead flowers, however, I couldn't help noticing the multitude of new seeds that I was about to discard. How could I throw them out, after all of the years of my father harvesting the seeds and packaging them into his hand-made seed packets? So I retrieved the dead flowers from the bin and painstakingly harvested the seeds for next year's crop.
My father is not well. He moves more slowly, gets tired more quickly, doesn't want to do much. I fear this may be his last visit to the Northwest. He has been recently diagnosed with an abdominal aneurysm -- a ticking time bomb his doctor said. He is in the process of waiting -- for antibiotics to take effect so that he can then make the decisions that he will need to make regarding his next options. We say goodbye, wondering if this is the last time we will see him.

I must handle the nasturtium seeds with great care. Sort them, dry them out, put them into little seed packets for future generations to plant.
(Photo from LightSpectral, shared by Flickr)