It’s seed catalog time again. This means nothing to most people, and everything to those of us who can’t wait to breathe in the heady smell of watered soil and eventually eat a tomato straight off the vine. We’re not weird — just produce focused.

My earliest gardening memories don’t stem from the dirt, though. They’re rooted long ago in a musty, wood-beamed farm implement store where gardeners and farmers bought everything from hay bales to overalls to baby chicks. And seeds. Wonderful, mysterious seeds.

The atmosphere was wizardly. My dad would sidle up to the tall wooden counter to talk with MayBeth, the woman I used to believe just lived right there behind the counter whose hands deftly distributed the tiny bits of life that would become food for our stomachs.

The conversation was seed driven. “I want some carrots, but not those Danvers half-longs you sold me last year. I’d call them quarter-longs, and a lot of work for a little bit of carrot,” Dad said.

MayBeth’s calm reply, “I’ve heard these Nantes are good. How much do you want?”

This is where the mystery really began. It was never a weight amount — it was a length amount. “Twenty feet,” Dad said.

MayBeth placed a small brass cylinder on one side of a balanced brass scale, causing that side to dip down. She opened a small wooden drawer among a wall of small wooden drawers, put her hand inside, and drew out what looked like chaff. She sifted the chaff onto the other side of the scale, slowly raising the cylinder side up until the two scales were even. She picked up a small yellow envelope from a nearby pile, wrote “Nantes” on it, carefully poured the chaff into it, licked the envelope flap glue and sealed it.

The whole process was magical to a young me. How did MayBeth know which drawer to open? How did Dad know his carrot row was 20 feet? How did MayBeth know which little brass cylinder would measure out the right amount of seed?

And, of course, what would ever persuade MayBeth to let me peek into some of those other drawers?

Dad and MayBeth continued their conversation, discussing the merits of Detroit red beets over Globes, the benefits of Blue Lake pole beans over regular bush beans, and whether or not Dad should try planting some red potatoes instead of just the same old brown Russets.

MayBeth’s hand reached into this drawer and that as Dad picked his way through the garden mapped out in his mind, selecting seeds with MayBeth’s input. The pile of yellow envelopes grew, ending with a big, brown paper bag of “Sugar Bun” corn seed weighed on a large scale, enough to plant Dad’s entire south field. MayBeth knew how much he needed because she remembered from last year. And the year before.

The common thread running between the unlikely trio of MayBeth, Dad and a young me were the seeds — the tiny bits of promise that just needed planting, water, sunshine and cultivation to complete their miracle.

Gardeners and farmers are either the most faith-filled people in the world or the craziest. Maybe a little of both. But the reason they plant remains the same: Somewhere at the other end of the experiment is a reward, a harvest that makes all the fussing, fretting and effort worth it.

The law of the harvest is not just about seeds and sunshine. A mystery is woven into the process, a ritual that combines faith with work to produce a reward — an elementary, yet consistent principle that governs most everything we do.

It’s the secret that Dad and MayBeth and I and every other gardener harbors: When you plant a seed, you grow yourself.

D. Louise Brown lives in Layton. She writes a biweekly column for the Standard-Examiner.

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