| | So I was out in the garden today, pulling up weeds and getting a patch ready to put in more bush beans because I'm enjoying them much more than I expected to this year (they're Royalty purple pod, if anyone wonders, and they're beautiful). It occurred to me that a lot of people on the gardening websites where I hang out say that their gardening makes them more religious, or spiritual or "closer to god" or whatnot. But I think that gardening contributed to making me an atheist.
I've grown things for as long as I can remember (I don't know how my mom put up with me pretending to be a parrot while I "helped" her plant flower seeds, squawking "Rawwwk! Pansy! Rawwwk! Marigold!") and if I've learned one thing from doing it, it's that there doesn't need to be a Sky Guy making it all happen. Living things have their own motivation and mechanics for doing what they do. There are rules it all goes by, but they're not impenetrable and mystical. (Although they are amazing, and this is what baffles me about people who have a need to find mystery and awe in religious myth; the stuff that happens around us every day is so fantastic on its own without having to project magical thinking onto it.)
Humans! They lived
in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose very
day and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impresses them? Weeping statues, and
wine made out of water, a mere quantum-mechanistic-tunnel effect that'd
happen anyway if you were prepared to wait zillions of years. As if the
turning of sunlight into wine, by means of vines and grapes and time and
enzymes wasn't a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time.
- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Anyway, gardening. I'm very pleased with the garden this summer. It's unquestionably looking prettier than it ever has in August before and I've had more energy to maintain it than I've ever had in late summer. The new beds have filled in better than I expected. Unlike last year, the dahlias are blooming.
Nicotiana alata, "Jasmine" flowering tobacco, is a new plant this year and I couldn't be more delighted with it. It got much bigger and more beautiful than I expected and it'll be on my list for next year. (Although N. sylvestris was a failure for me yet again.)
N. alata with Nasturtiums "Creamsicle" and "Spitfire", Salvia "Caradonna" and Colocasia esculenta
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| | Posted 8/18/2008 8:33 PM - 43 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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