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However, she isn't looking for the sturdiest variety of squash, the biggest watermelon or a double purple petunia. She chooses seeds for their own looks, to "plant" on lovely, originally designed trays. Instead of planting them in the ground, and waiting for weeks for them to bloom, she brings them to quick flowering within a few hours. Under her deft fingers, they form attractive floral pictures on handsome glass framed trays. Although these flowers never have a chance to come into real bloom, she makes them immortal. They never die.

Not only does Mrs. Snyder enjoy browsing through feed stores to find new seeds, but she also saves and stores a great many varieties, and is constantly on the lookout for something different. When she takes an automobile trip, she is as bad as any shutterbug about stopping the car. But instead of collecting snapshots, she is collecting seeds. On a recent visit to California, she made a real "haul." She got pods of the large yucca cactus, or soapweed as it is familiarly known in the West, which open and yield a handful of seeds; some pastel popcorn; and some seeds from an unusually small "apartment sized" watermelon, none of which are found in Oklahoma. Needless to say, the trip was a success, and its pleasure was heightened by her interest in her hobby.

MRS. SNYDER almost never throws away any kind of seed. During summer and fall, especially, she is busy collecting seed as fast as they mature. Petunias, nasturtiums, hollyhocks, marigolds, all yield a different shaped seed; mustard, okra, watermelon, pumpkin, dried peas, pepper seed, etc., from the vegetable garden all have their place in her plans for picture trays.

When the family cuts a cantaloupe, cucumber, pomegranate, orange, or eats a cherry or grape, she quickly salvages the seeds, washes, cleans and dries them to store away.

The seeds will keep for at least a year without losing color or drying out, if properly stored. Watermelon seed, pumpkin, squash, cucumber or any other seed from food must be washed clean, and laid on paper in the sun to dry. Seeds from the flower garden need no washing, but are simply dried, put in clean glass jars with tight lids, and kept in a dry closet until Mrs. Snyder is ready for them. She nearly always has a plentiful supply of all kinds on hand.

In the fall she gathers seeds from chrysanthemums, asters, zinnias, and the shiny brown seed of the wild persimmon. This fruit also yields a star shaped cap on top of the fruit, with a small hole where the stem grows. She fills the little hole with small seeds such as mustard or okra for the center, and she has a ready made floweret which makes a lovely cluster.

THE IDEA of seed-flowers under glass on trays is an original one, as far as Mrs. Snyder knows. The idea developed from a seed picture she saw on a small wall plaque at a neighbor's. The seeds, arranged in a vase of flowers pattern, "germinated" in her imagination and grew into large and elaborate flower designs on wooden backgrounds, glazed over with clear varnish and protected with glass.

Members of her family and numerous friends admired them and asked for them. She gave away over twenty, no two alike, before she decided that she might charge at least for the materials and something for the time. She set a tentative price of $10 per tray, and no one has balked yet. Requests, or rather orders, have continued to come in, and at present she has several orders ahead, and all she wants to do. A gift shop in Ada, Oklahoma, fifteen miles away, handles the trays on consignment, and Mrs. Snyder's grocery man displays and sells them for her without commission. Living in a small town has its advantages in real friendships! Almost everyone who sees the trays remarks about their unusual attractiveness, and the new art form she started as a hobby seems determined to grow into a thriving business.

Mrs. Snyder's materials are simple. Almost any seed has its own part to play, to add variety and scope to the imaginative pictures. Pumpkin seed, the attractive green and white striped seed of the sunflower, grains of corn and oats, mottled purple castor beans, these and many others catch her eye and fit into her patterns in exactly the right place. Somehow it seems that each is perfect, and the only choice possible, in its proper place. The trick, of course, is knowing that very spot and that very shape that the seeds must form.

MRS. SNYDER sets up her equipment on a card table, preferably at night. She likes to begin work in the evening, after the day's housekeeping and preparing meals for her husband and 13-year-old son, Johnny, is finished and there are no outside distractions. A piece of plywood of the selected color wood and chosen size, usually eighteen by twelve inches, forms the background. A muffin pan holds a dozen varieties of many colored seeds and grains. Indian corn of a dark red color, mingled with yellow and black, was an especially nice discovery and will add interest to a design. Even the large "ugly old castor bean seeds," as Mrs. Snyder calls them, are things of beauty when properly placed, usually toward the bottom of a picture. She even tried cloves, and they made a slim, sharp, snowflake-like flower. Nature's plan is perfect; even in seeds she makes flowers in miniature, if only we can see them!

Other materials are simply a pot of glue, a small paddle, and a bottle of nail polish to touch up the centers of the central flower. With these at hand, Mrs. Snyder is ready to begin.

First she picks up a few grains of corn, some pumpkin or squash seed perhaps, and begins to group them in a flower arrangement on the plywood. It is here that the sense of color and form come into play to assemble an imaginative picture.

She works from the center outward, often starting with large grains of corn, making one center flower, or three smaller ones. As the arrangement shapes up in her mind, she adds small flowers around the edges, a stray petal or leaf dropped in casual symmetry here and there, or a final little flourish of leaf spray, as a fern is added to a bouquet.

Fuzzy little oat or wheat grains have their special uses. Mrs. Snyder sprinkles them liberally in a pile and glues them upright in delicate spikes. Cucumber seeds make dainty pointed petals. Pepper, mustard, okra or grape seeds form the centers. Cherry pits look surprisingly pretty when properly grouped; and tapered pumpkin and squash seeds have a natural petal shape. Even the lowly, lumpy crowder pea has a place in the design!

When the loose seeds are arranged and the picture complete, Mrs. Snyder begins to glue them on the board, working from the center outward, as before. When the glue sets, she goes over the whole tray with clear varnish.

The frame, which stands high enough to clear the glass and the "bas-relief" picture, is an important addition. Here her husband, Bill Snyder, helps out by making the frames, of fine woods. Mrs. Snyder likes to match the frames to the seeds, with a contrasting background. For instance, on a dark plywood backing, she would use light colored seeds and a light colored frame.

She treasures a choice and lovely frame of walnut, made from a piece of lumber grown on her husband's family home property in Kentucky, sawed on the place and home cured in the barn. It was given to them when they made a visit there one year.

MRS. SNYDER has sold trays to visitors from various towns in Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky and California. Since each item is personally designed and handmade, she works from orders in advance. The trays almost sell themselves, and orders come from those who have seen a tray on display, or in the home of an owner.

It takes about five or six hours to make one. Mrs. Snyder begins work after dinner, and finishes about midnight or one o'clock in the morning. But she is always up in time to fix her husband's breakfast, get him off to work and Johnny off to school. The Snyders live in an attractive wooded glade in the middle of the oil field where Bill Snyder is employed. There are pumping wells all around them, but after living there for seventeen years, they are used to the atmosphere and will miss it when he retires and they move away.

"The worst of it all was when they drilled a well almost in our front yard," says Mrs. Snyder. "The racket lasted for six weeks, but you got so you could sleep under it, and got used to yelling at each other to drown it out."

Mrs. Snyder has never kept a single tray, and if you want to see one, you can't see one in her own home!