The Wheel of Life and Promoting Immortality: One Plant at a Time

Children intuitively know that it is important
to protect and preserve life.
Image via Wikipedia

As gardeners and farmers, it's not just planting, growing and harvesting, that we have a responsibility in completing, but also the propagation and preservation of the plants and animals that we tend.

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The best part about life is that it wants to keep living. It wants to reproduce. It wants children. Philisophically, life is immortal so long as the cycle of reproduction, growth, mutation, and death continue. As an avid gardener and a sometimes farmer, I am keenly aware that if one of these parts of the wheel fails, then the others may not be able to take up the slack. The saying that "We become immortal through our children" holds true if you are a person, a plant, an insect, a fungus and even a rock. All systems must follow through and turn the wheel.

• If there were but one wheel, then we would all have the same amount of responsibility in keeping it well oiled and in repair, but the main wheel that we see, is but a smaller wheel of a larger wheel, of an even larger wheel...and on it goes. Within our observable wheel are multitudes of smaller wheels and much smaller wheels...and deeper and deeper it goes. Each is a fractal pattern of a smaller and internal fractal pattern that replicates itself over and over again. 
• Life goes on. 
• Our understanding of life varies within our own species, from the few remaining tribes of humanity whose view of life is nature and survival to the physicist and mathematician and everyone in between. We turn our wheels in relation to how we perceive immortality - always striving to have it in our hands and not understanding that we already do. 
• Tomorrow never comes, today is always here. Is that not immortality?

The Meaning of Life

This morning, at Dragn Rock, I am waxing philosophical. It's chilly outside, overcast, with a slight gusty wind. My morning walkabout produced scads of lists of 'Things To Do' and time to sit a spell on the deck steps to ruminate on life and death. My long lists asked the question: What is this all for? A question that I firmly believe is open-ended and solely dependent upon your own personal views and beliefs.  In other words, it's all relative and the answer (should you find one) is only applicable to you (and only you). It's one of those questions that you could waste your life on and never find the answer that could or would, satisfy your mind. So I shook out my head of such deep thoughts and shook out the very long to-do lists, then went inside to take a nap.

Finding Inspiration in an Old Flower Bed

Not really. Among the list was, moving the children of my (already established) plants, to other areas where they could continue to grow and propagate.  I had dug up a section of an old flower bed and removed all of the daffodil bulbs. I put them in various places around the yard and promptly forgot about them. So, to my surprise and pleasure, my morning walk found wonders of spring color everywhere, especially in the garden where I dug them all out. hmmmm. It seems that the wheel of life for the old flower bed was moving right along. Needless to say, I now have to find more places for the plant children..

As I continued my walk, I found many more wheels, many more children to find homes for: groundcover escaping it's space; wild roses lurking in grass that I go barefoot in; tulips, star of bethlehem and blue flag in the area where the new driveway will go; and peonies, lillies, oregano, chives, lemon balm and other mint, rhubarb, and welsh onions everywhere. Did I forget to mention the horseradish? I am out of breath.

The Work Requirement: Responsibility

At any rate, I could let them all grow where they are and never care if their populations thrive or disappear. But, I am a Gardener, and with that title and job, I bear the responsibility of overseeing and shepherding the flocks within my realm of care. From the tiniest seed to the greatest tree, I understand that my wheel is intrinsically woven with their's, so in a way, I have answered my own personal open-ended question and have grasped the true meaning of immortality - at least that of a gardener. We live on, not just through our own species, but through the assistance that we lend all that encompass our world.

A tiny seed that becomes a milkweed, that houses a butterfly and feeds a bee, that pollinates the vegetable plants that I feed myself and my cattle, that fertilize the fields where the milkweed grows, that harvests the sunshine and drinks the rain, that holds the soil to stop erosion, that keeps our water clean, that evaporates into the atmosphere....

It's surprising what a little walkabout will do for the psyche. 

Image via Wikipedia

Peace

Marlene Hobart

Dragn Rock Farm

Related articles

• How to turn your Wheel? (zentocoach.wordpress.com)
• Plant Breeding (suburbhomestead.wordpress.com)
• A garden of the mind (bbc.co.uk)