This chapter is about gardens and gardening and the beauty of the natural world. I'd like to simply show you some pictures after a few brief quotes from the chapter.
"Ecology is a subject that everyone is now discussing in a worried sort of frenzy. [note: this was written in 1971] But it is one thing to sit around talking about how the balance of nature is being upset and how black the future looks because of this, to sit and discuss the tragic felling of age old trees, the hacking of chunks out of majestic mountains so that unspoiled beauty is becoming rapidly a thing of past memory; it is quite another to ask ourselves what we are doing about our own plot of ground, whether it is a little four by four square, or an acre, or a whole farm or forest. This is where we should be doing some original landscape architecture which combines art with preservation and conservation, which produces a growing beauty, and which inspires other 'artists' to do the same thing." (p. 87-88)
"Certainly we who have a logical base for beauty, as well as morals, should be the ones to be fitting our landscape gardening into artistically beautiful and ecologically 'sound' treatment of land and plants." p. 89
"Dig [the seed] up and see the discouraging 'first appearances' after a day or so - but wait, watch - with water and warmth of sun, with the life within ready to burst, suddenly the first sprouts appear, and you can watch day by day, week by week and begin really to feel the reality of what Jesus said as that one grain multiplies itself. 'He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.' One sighs as one gradually realizes that there is simplicity here, and great and complicated depth all at one time. To come to a place where one is really wanting to 'die' to self and ambition, to come to a place of seeming to 'lose' one's life by handing it over to God's plan is, it seems to me, more vivid for a person living in the setting of seed-plant-fruit process, rather than always in the midst of the mechanical machine processes." p. 94
Pictures from my current garden:
The beauty of a tomato blossom
Columbines - aren't their spiky petals beautiful!
I was in BC last week on Shuswap Lake. The wildflowers are so beautiful this time of year - and so are the flowers in the yards. This poppy had obviously planted itself on the side of the road beside the lake. I only had my camera phone and I just missed the best light of the evening but it's still beautiful to see.
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