Time for Contemplation

Cloudless sulfur recently emerged
 I do my best thinking in my garden, with an adult beverage or not. I once was married to a woman who didn't understand this - at least she didn't appreciate it. With my hand on the door knob, she'd ask me if I was going to "go out and stare at my garden" once again. Of course I was.
Nearly everything I have learned in life has come from immersing myself in nature. I owe a great debt to those teachers who have shared their knowledge with me, but it has been time alone that has meant the most. Life is often so hectic that we can't really take in all that is occurring around us. Time to contemplate is precious and there is no better place to do that than in nature. In my case, that often means in my garden.
I pity those who don't spend time in their landscapes. For many, there is really no reason to do so, but for those of us that have reduced our sod and replaced it with a living landscape of native plants, there is always something to see and to revel in. I try to find time each morning and early evening in my landscape, watching for the life that I have planned for - life that I am now intrinsically connected to. In my landscape, all of us are equals. We are as Joseph Wood Krutch wrote, connected by that great chain of life.
I am reading a truly amazing book right now by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, that has touched a special place in my heart. As she discusses our place in nature, she makes clear what has always seemed to haunt the back of my mind in a more nebulous way. As she points out so eloquently, the English language has deprived us of our ability to connect with nature in the same way as most indigenous people do. It has made us the center of the universe by giving us "he" and "she" while relegating everything else in nature to "it".  How can we ever understand our real connection to the natural world when we've created such an anthropocentric universe?
As I watch the life that is now around me and have the time to contemplate it, I understand that I am really no more important to this great web of life than the chickadees that flit now to my feeder or the sulfur butterfly that passes overhead to start a new generation on my privet cassia. We are all elements of the same living tapestry. We are partners in this experiment that was somehow triggered more than a billion years ago. We were not created to provide dominion to this experiment, but perhaps to shepherd it a bit. When we place ourselves outside the web, we do it an injustice and we demean its incredible and mysterious beauty.  If we place ourselves inside, we can better contemplate and appreciate the gifts we've been given by having a place there.
Today, I am "social distancing" myself in lieu of what is considered "normal" activity, but truth be told I seek the social distancing model far more often than the other. After all, I have a developing living landscape and I am surrounded by a vast array of contemporaries that are unconcerned. It is a time for our species to readjust our perspective. After all, we have caused the rest of the universe to adjust to us. Now we adjust to us too.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wildflower Meadows - The Importance of Grasses

Image
A Natural Wildflower "Meadow" - Apalachicola National Forest I grew up in the prairie Midwest and was fortunate to have been caught up in the prairie restoration movement that blazed brightly in the last few decades of this past century. Very little of our original prairie ecosystems remain as the rich prairie soils were quickly converted to agricultural uses as European settlers swarmed their way over the continent.  These ecosystems are extremely diverse, regardless of where they occur. From the tall-grass prairies of the Midwest to the rockland prairies of the Mid-South and the true dry prairie systems here in Florida where I now reside, there are several universal characteristics - they are some of the most species diverse systems in the world and they are dominated by grasses. Grasses, in all their many shapes and forms, are what form the foundation of any "meadow." That must also be true for all the "wildflower meadows" I see extolled on s
Read more

Water & Watering

Image
 As I write this, Jane and I have had only one measurable rain event in the past 4 months - 3/4's of an inch about a week ago.  It is no exaggeration to say that our landscape is parched.  Some that I know in the native plant movement decry the use of potable water to assuage their landscape plants; saying things like "if my plants can't make it on their own, they are not appropriate to my landscape."  The idea being that a "native plant" should be able to surive on its own without additional inputs such as water.  While I understand this line of thinking, I would argue otherwise.  It comes down to the question of why we're planting natives in our landscape at all. If our ultimate goal is to create a landscape that survives completely on its own without any assistance, watering during times of extreme and unusual drought makes sense.  It's just not why I plant natives.  My goal here is to create as much plant diversity as possible on my 1/4-acre subu
Read more

The Ethics of Collecting Seed

Image
I've been writing lately about seeds and using them to create what is often called a pollinator meadow. A great many of the plants in my new landscape were grown from seed. Frankly, I have always loved sowing seeds and watching them sprout. I started in early childhood and I've been doing it since. It's rewarding and the anticipation of waiting for seeds to sprout is difficult to match unless you play the lottery. I rarely purchase seeds. I collect them. When I can, I purchase a few plants of a species I wish to add to my landscape and I then collect their seed after they bloom. If a plant doesn't prosper sufficiently to set seed for me, it is not a plant I wish to continue to grow. Over the years, I've tried a great many plants that I've failed to adequately provide for. Today in my landscape, I'm trying a few that I've never tried before. The exceptions come from plants that are not available in the trade. To grow these from seed, I need to collect
Read more