PLANTS AND PEOPLE, SICKNESS AND HEALTH, LIFE AND SEASONALITY

As summer winds down, I wanted to write once more about this most lively and evocative season.

From early March through early December, I’m outside in gardens nearly every day. Through a growing season, the cycle of life plays out very clearly. Nature’s vital force can be awesome. Plants start as tiny seeds, sprout and then boom as the days lengthen, the soil warms and some rain falls. Beginning in mid-May, plants become noticeably bigger each day than they were the day before.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Alongside the burgeoning plants that one grows intentionally, weeds fill every void. Many weeds are not only edible, but nutritious. I often eat such “weeds” as dandelion greens and flowers, purslane, lamb’s quarter, clover and, occasionally, sunflower seeds, wild berries and mushrooms. I drink tea from stinging nettle, mint and other wild plants. Plants that can grow well without care must have, and impart, vigor.

Relatedly, I eat other stuff that some people deem waste, e.g., the greens atop carrots, beets and sweet potatoes and the stems of vegetables as kale, collards and chard. In order to grow, all of these plant parts process water, sunlight, carbon dioxide and heat. Thus, all of a plant’s parts have vital energy or, to be reductionist or technical, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, probiotics and fiber.

Healthy plants tend to resist disease and repel insects. You can boost plant health by putting plants in good soil, supplemented with some small quantities of rock dust, to provide such essential trace minerals as manganese, copper, boron and molybdenum. Healthy plants not only take nutrients from the soil; they exude some of the glucose created by photosynthesis back into soil to feed the bacteria and fungi, which, in turn, enable plants to take up nutrients and perform essential plant functions. Plants react more favorably to rainwater than to irrigation with chlorinated public water that kills these beneficial soil microbes. Healthy plants don’t need chemical inputs.

As Dylan Thomas observed, “The same force that drives the green fuse of the flower also drives my red blood.” This same lifeforce also drives vegetables, which capture energy from their environment. This energy is transferred to humans who eat vegetables, thus driving our red blood. When people are prevented, or prevent themselves, from witnessing spring and summer plant growth, humans don’t see the vitality and self-protective power of living things.