LIFE!

I am amazed at how life is continued for creatures on this "blue marble."  Humans reproduce. Dogs and cats and hamsters reproduce.  Giant bulls help cows reproduce. Tiny brine shrimp reproduce.

Everywhere, males and females meet to assist in the life-giving process even in plants that flower. (Remember: The "Birds and Bees" lesson that you may or may not have heard from an embarrassed parent.)

Pollen is made in the stamen, the "male" part of a flower.  When pollen enters the ovule, the "female" part (thanks to the wind, bees, other friendly insects, and humming-birds) fertilization occurs, and the life process begins.

Master Shakespeare wrote in the Tempest:

"Where the bee sucks, there suck I;

In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I crouch when owls do cry,

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."

It is a very cold day in February, but in 4 or 5 weeks it will be Spring and I can see again my favorite flower: the dandelion. 

When I lived in Gamber, Maryland my "God's Little Acre" was filled with beautiful yellow dandelion flowers. I refused to mow until after the blossoms turned to gossamer parachutes merrily impregnating the soil.

 

My outlook on "leisure gardening echoes that which Marya Mannes wrote in the poem that begins:

"Lie down and listen to the crabgrass grow,

The faucet leak,

And learn to leave them so."

The poem later reminds me that at my Gamber home, I was "master of all I surveyed" and I did not have to destroy life in any form.  I still feel that way.  All life is important to me!

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