My Family of Plants

 Another day in our frozen world. The temperature has gotten clear up to 5 above zero this morning, but it is supposed to fall back to 15 below zero tonight. It's a time for quiet, for inside activities, for contemplation. Fortunately, my family of plants keep me company. Many of them have been with me for ten or fifteen years, some much longer. When it gets so cold outside, my first concern is for the plants. I want to make sure that it doesn't freeze inside! I can put on warm clothes but my plants can't. So far, though, our electricity has not gone out during this long frozen spell and the temperature has stayed well above freezing inside. 

This morning as I was doing my yoga routine, I felt a companionable closeness to the tall plants that surrounded my exercise mat. There is the 120-year-old fern that was first given to my grandmother at her wedding, thriving green fronds curving over to grace the wooden table it lives on. Beside it, a huge night-blooming cereus is reaching up to the light, fairly pulsing with energy, light-green long tendrils growing astonishingly fast. A week ago the asparagus fern was getting so gangly that I trimmed it clear to the soil, hoping that those roots would be able to start again. And already there are 18 thin, delicate new branches coming up from the bare ground. On the window sill there are two succulents that were given to me awhile back, and they are both blooming in the sun, beside the "Moses-in-the-Bulrushes" with its purple leaves and small boats full of flowers. These are the plants that grace my morning exercises, and there are many more in other rooms. They are my companions. 

This morning I was especially aware of their aliveness, the life running through their veins, the different ways in which they each experience the world. Being confined in pots of soil is not the natural environment for any of them. Yet the ones that inhabit my home have found ways to accommodate to this constriction. They have been resilient in the face of change, living in an unnatural environment and finding ways to grow and sometimes bloom. I remember all the studies in the '80's about the ability of plants to communicate, their long distance perceptions, their responses to their human care-takers. And now we know much more about how they communicate to other plants in their natural environments.  As I raised my arms in a yoga stance this morning, I felt a kinship to those close branches raising to the sunlight. And I was awed by the realization that I was standing among so many other life stories, each plant with a history, with its own accumulation of experiences, and its own perceptions. It felt like I was standing in sacred space.

In the dead of winter, it's especially meaningful to be reminded like this that we humans are a small part of the incredible life all around us. Outside the windows here, there are eagles flying over, and rabbits cavorting in the cleared spaces. We have at least 2 feet of snow on the ground just now, and I like to think what a wonderful protective blanket it is providing for the life below the surface of the soil. This reminds me that in a couple of months, the snow will be gone and green will begin to cover everything. So I have been going through the seeds I've saved from last year, and making plans to sow seed in many flats. These will be put outside on my south stoop to "stratify" so they can come up in April. I've even decided to buy a new Mantis tiller to replace the one that died last year. And that is indeed exciting!! Looking ahead toward spring is invigorating, seeing beyond the frozen present.

I'm grateful to Jeanette, a Prairie Hill friend, for sending me something about the resilience of weeds this morning. And it has reminded me of how much I admire the resilience of weeds, even though they might be growing in the "wrong" place in my garden. I can't help but be interested in them, in their strength and adaptability, in their determination to thrive. We might need these qualities in the years to come! Here's a poem I wrote about them years ago:

Thank Heavens for Weeds!

Thank heavens they are not always mowing the roadsides anymore
Or spraying to remove unwanted vegetation.
The earth is too manicured as it is,
Every hill and valley planted with crops.
Lawns cultivated to grow only grass
Kept clipped so it can never mature.

When I drive down the highway and
Come across an area too steep for the big mowers,
Or too damp, or too rough,
I feel like shouting hallelujah!
Here the rightful residents are allowed to flourish,
Shooting up tall in their natural life cycle,
Flowering, seeding, and then sending sun energy
Back to roots for another season.
Free enterprise of the plant world!

What a smorgasbord of color, size, texture.
Here creativity can get a toehold.
A treasure chest of life and growth,
And source of food for other lives:
Seeds for birds, leaves for insects and animals,
Wonderful and vast root networks in which
Microorganisms flourish underground.
Nature set free, if only peripherally,
only in hard-to-manage areas.

Watching the wind blow through roadside botanical landscapes
Sets my spirit free.
I would like to pattern myself after these beautiful feral plants,
Learn from their free expression of self,
Resist clipping and trimming of my less cultivated qualities.