Of all the things I wanted in vain, the most poignant is a garden. Not that I had gardening parents or the proper geography. My first 11 years were spent in a New York City apartment. However, the seed was planted, so to speak, during summers spent with my grandparents in Greensboro, where Granddaddy had a huge plot. Early mornings and late afternoons (after returning from hours of laying bricks in the scorching sun), he grew vegetables for the family table. I trailed along behind . . . “helping.”

Ah, the tomatoes, their shiny skin bursting with juice. The okra, beans, “English” peas. The heavenly corn. The “greens.”

Nanny’s zinnias, equally amazing.

I marveled that every one started as a tiny seed. How did that happen, deep beneath the sodden earth?

My adult years were spent in less garden-worthy climates, part of a family committed to sports, not prized roses. Besides, I had hayfever, made worse by sticking my face into a flower bed. I didn’t derive pleasure from fighting bugs or pulling weeds. They always win.

Still, every spring I would buy a big geranium, which I “planted” in a clay pot and set on the front steps. Driving directions always ended with, “Ours is the house with the red-pink-violet-white geranium on the steps.”

Never orange. Orange-ish geraniums lack elegance.

We moved several times as the children grew up, then left. The late ’80s found me in a little house in Vermont built against a steep hill, which meant an aboveground walk-out basement, with windows and wide sills, finished off as a guest bedroom. At the end of October I brought the geranium in, cut down the stem, put the pot on the sill, closed the curtains and forgot about it.

The basement bedroom got little use that winter. By May it needed a good cleaning. I pulled up the shade . . . and gasped. Out of the shriveled stalk grew a tiny green shoot with one mini-leaf. The soil was dry, hard after no water for six cold, dark months. Only now the sun streaming through the window promised warmth, longer and better days. This tiny kernel of life had received the message and responded.

I recall shedding a tear, then consulting a garden-club friend for instructions on how to proceed: Don’t flood it, she said. Just a spoonful of warm water near the stem, every day — and don’t move it. Nature has found a way.

I was touched and, once again, saddened that I hadn’t made growing part of my life, not because I wanted a house full of fresh flowers, or white eggplant for supper. Rather, to see what a tiny seed can do to survive.

Up North, folks plant or put out flowers around Memorial Day. My geranium, relocated to the front steps, was coming along but nothing like the MiracleGro specimens from the nursery.

A neighbor asked why I hadn’t replaced the scrawny survivor.

No, no, I responded, anthropomorphically. I like this one’s spirit.

I have told the geranium story before, when times were tough. This past winter brought some health challenges that linger. Adjusting isn’t easy. Then, seemingly out of nowhere the spunky little geranium came to mind, symbolizing the garden I never had but also suggesting resilience. 

I haven’t had a front stoop geranium for a while. The clay pot kept getting knocked over by a Southern Pines raccoon. Geraniums are expensive. Ditto clay pots. But, given the mess the world is in, maybe I should head over to the farmers market for a little encouragement.