Thursday, August 2, 2007

new feature

I just added a new feature, titled "curiosities", because I stumbled upon a site with cucurbit postage stamps. Squashes and gourds around the world. I could not resist adding a link.

The garden continues to amaze me. I find reasons to go by even on days when I don't have to water. There is something about growing things. Lately I have been musing about how the pumpkins and gourds change shape as they get bigger. What gene interactions are causing that development? (I'm also wondering if they cross pollinated, because some of the shapes aren't shown on either seed packet. Near as I can tell they are all Cucurbita pepo, so this is quite possible.)

In an anthology of Thomas Merton's writing on nature, When the Trees Say Nothing, he marvels at the growth of the corn in the monastery garden. "I know the joy and worship the Indians must have felt, and the Eucharistic rightness of it!" he says.

He continued
"The irreligious mind is simply the unreal mind, the zombie, abstracted mind, that does not see the things that grow in the earth and feel glad about them, but only knows prices and figures and statistics."
This captures how I feel about the garden. But I would add that even when I find myself asking scientific questions, I can still experience deep awe. Science and communion are compatible, but commodification and communion aren't.

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