Nature's utility

The rain that fell around here last night and this morning gave the new plantings and the transplants a soaking I'm sure was good for them. The fields are about as pretty as they were last year, when we were delighted at how Mother Nature was making The Property look as nice as possible for the upcoming wedding. A larger version of this picture would show the details of the purple vetch and the hoary alyssum, looking as if Mother Nature wanted to be a pointillist painter.

meadow beauty

Photo by J. Harrington

When I was young, I started paying attention to nature because I wanted to learn to fish. My interests were heavily utilitarian. If knowing something wasn't going to help me catch more, bigger or "better" (pan fish to game fish) fish, I had more important things to learn. In hindsight, I can see that the saying "we get too soon old and too late smart" applies to my naturalist education. I'm slowly correcting both my knowledge and my attitude. I hope enough others will learn that nature, at its least utilitarian, offers the gifts of beauty and tranquility. The more I look around these days, the more sure I am we could all use more beauty and tranquility in our lives. Paying more attention to the natural world and how I fit into it also helps me learn to appreciate what's offered instead of being frustrated I can't find what I think I want.

Terminator Too

By Tom Clark 

Poetry, Wordsworth

wrote, will have no

easy time of it when

the discriminating

powers of the mind

are so blunted that

all voluntary

exertion dies, and

the general

public is reduced

to a state of near

savage torpor, morose,

stuporous, with

no attention span

whatsoever; nor will

the tranquil rustling

of the lyric, drowned out

by the heavy, dull

coagulation

of persons in cities,

where a uniformity

of occupations breeds

cravings for sensation

which hourly visual

communication of

instant intelligence

gratifies like crazy,

likely survive this age.

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