Tag: Nature

Nature and Change

About four weeks ago, epidemiology was a word in a book, spelling & meaning unknown. The last few days, there’s a surge in the number of expert epidemiologists – those epidemiology universities must have been exceptionally busy churning them out.

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Working from home the second day in a row, thanks to the virus. I sit at this table every morning at dawn, reading a few pages, writing out a quote that resonates with me. When I look out the window, I rarely see things because what’s on my mind takes over all cognitive abilities.  This morning, mulling over the quote from Mr. Aurelius, Marcus, as light filled & stirred the world, my eye went to the one yellow flower amid the green.  My wife, an avid gardener, planted a few seeds a while ago. And Nature, doing her thing, one day at a time, helped along by my wife watering the dry ground twice every day, seems to have exploded the seeds into this beast of a pumpkin vine, using the other plant (find out what it’s called!) as scaffolding as it takes over the world.

A first world problem, Outgrowing the Traditional Grass Lawn [Article]

Ferris Jabr pays attention to the life in  his little backyard, and realises, while outlining the its history, why the traditional lawn is completely out of tune with nature:

To keep our grass lawns green year-round, we continuously douse them with water and fertilizer, forcing the plants to grow nonstop. But we don’t want them to grow too tall, of course. By mowing down grass before it has the chance to produce flowers and seeds, we effectively trap the plants in perpetual sexual immaturity—although many are still able to reproduce asexually, cloning themselves and spreading laterally with creeping roots. Mowing also requires grass to devote a lot of energy and resources to healing itself by sealing off all wounds. The smell of freshly cut grass—so often comforting and nostalgic—is a chemical alarm call: a bouquet of fragrant volatile organic compounds that plants release when under attack.