White Icicle radish pod opened to show its seeds.
Cate Henderson: We are all familiar with radishes. Whether or not we actually like to eat them, it’s easy to picture a shiny red radish, perhaps in a bunch with leafy greens included.
By the Autumn Equinox, the radish that we normally see no longer exists. Instead a hollowed-out dry brown husk appears with a long dry stalk. But there is life! The seed pods are plump with baby seeds! The radish sacrifices its life, and all its life energies, for its seeds. In turn, each of those seeds is itself prepared to go through the same transformation from fat shiny root to empty, hollowed-out husk. How wonderful to have a vision of the future that inspires us to give our “all”: all our energy and resources given freely away to a strongly and lovingly imagined future that we will never actually see realized!
