Cheer The Weed

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Lao Tzu
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Hello Sandy
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I was out walking yesterday and I noticed how small tufts of green were peeking up from the cracks in the side walk and parking lots. Give Nature a chance and it will find a way to flourish even in the midst of a concrete and asphalt world.

Next to the street at the last place I lived there was a tree. I loved that tree. It was very tall and healthy. Every Spring it got a bit taller, increased the size of its branches and put out some more twigs. I knew that once upon a time that tree was part of a forest. The forest had been leveled to make way for the town, but a few trees here and there were left standing. Those other trees were simply cut down and pulled up. Deep in the earth are the remnants of the relatives of my tree.

I pondered the fact that many of our manifestations of civilization, our roads, parking lots, buildings and bridges are intrusions on primeval landscape. And all that Nature wants to grow here is still underground waiting for the opportunity and the right conditions to begin the process. In fact those small patches of green, which we call "weeds," are the first hardy steps, (the advance guard you might say) of Nature's campaign to reclaim its own, original, slowly evolving design.

If this town was totally and permanently abandoned by all human life it may take hundreds, perhaps thousands of years but Nature would eventually break apart all the pavements, tear down all the buildings, swallow them all up and digest them. The grass would grow, the bushes would flourish, the meadows would stretch out and the forest would reappear.

So why the intrusion? Because there's another kind of Nature, called Human Nature. It is out nature to build shelter, to grow crops, to educate ourselves, to conduct commerce and transportation. And so we bend Nature to our will, leave a few trees and some bushes still standing, maybe we even plant a few, but the rest of it we tear down and replace with our roads. parking lots, buildings and bridges.

But the next time you see a small patch of green peeking up from a crack in the side walk admire its courage and brave but futile attempt to reclaim the world.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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