‘The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way… As a man is, so he sees.’
William Blake
Category: Wildlife and Nature
Picture: Free digital photos.net
Here’s another extract from the book ‘Noah’s Children’ by Sara Stein. Here she reflects on how adolescence for many is not a transition to adulthood, but an increasingly inward-looking culture of it’s own:
‘We have experienced an emphatic turning of children towards their peers. We have seen the emergence of idols not yet beyond their teens. We watch our children withdraw into other worlds along the malls and behind computer screens where we don’t – and they don’t let us – follow.
This is taking a great leap into the unprovable, but I would guess that the interminable stage of life we call adoloscence is, in fact, a halting of development in cultures where childhood endeavor is not rewarded by adulthood as children imagined it would be.’
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and the wider issues raised…
Old School Gardener
One more extract from a book I bought in a charity shop in the summer (apologies for the gender stereotyping)…..
The Basic law of Weedlock:
The best training for gardening is marriage.
corollaries;
1. Behind every successful gardener is an astonished woman.
2. About the only way to get a gardener nowadays is to marry one.
3. Gardening is a process by which a man finds out what sort of husband his wife thinks she ought to have married.
Every Wife’s Lament:
Gardening expands to exclude all more interesting possibilities.
Law of The Unwelcome Arrival of Spring:
There is nothing so harrowing to the soul of the average married man as the first growth of lawn grass.
From : ‘Mrs. Murphy’s Laws of Gardening’ – Faith Hines (Temple House books, 1992)
Old School Gardener
‘A wind sways the pines,
And below
Not a breath of wild air:
Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and under the lines
Of the roots here and there.
The pine-tree drops its dead;
They are quiet as under the sea.
Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
Even we,
Even so.’
George Meredith
Here’s another extract from a book I bought in a charity shop in the summer…..
Mrs. Brown’s All- Encompassing Law of Gardening:
Gardening is like pregnancy: it is nothing like the book.
Mrs. Murphy’s Literary View:
Gardening books should not be set aside lightly: they should be hurled with great force.
Four Laws of Obfuscation:
1. There are no real secrets to cultivation- only plots.
2. For counter-instructions read every good Gardening Authority.
3. For subtle distinctions (pinched from every good Gardening Authority) read the Sunday newspaper supplements.
4. For contrary advice, listen to ‘her indoors’s’ interpretation of the plagiarism in the Sunday supplements.
‘Sunday Supplement’ by Sarah Boardman
From : ‘Mrs. Murphy’s Laws of Gardening’ – Faith Hines (Temple House books, 1992)
Old School Gardener
Here’s my sixth extract from the book ‘Noah’s Children’ by Sara Stein. Here she talks about the decline of communities where people (including children) feel that they belong and experience a sense of common purpose:
‘Several times I’ve run into an interesting statistic in the books I read: the people we count as friends- those with whom we comfortably share meals and other forms of visiting- number no more than 150 (and usually fewer)…we seem to be biologically limited to a smallish circle of those whom we can know in a more familiar sense and who we feel know us. The number is about the upper limit of any group that can be sustained by a hunting/gathering economy and not much less than can be sustained by a subistence farming community.
So it may be that, in addition to the fact that residents of a tract development or a block of apartment houses are not assembled in common purpose, the sheer scale of the community may stand in the way of our sense of belonging to it. We seem to realize the importance of social scale for children when we call for smaller classes and smaller schools within the neighbourhood. The trend to gated communities, neighborhood gardens, pocket parks, and local streets closed to traffic indicate our urge to safely congregate where we can consult the social mirror. But for many of us, and possibly for most, the urge is thwarted or was extinguished before it had much chance to grow.
Aware of that difficulty, many have proposed that we teach community and family values in school. The proposal is as hopeless as teaching children what an apple tree is without their experiencing the tree or instructing them on how to fish without going fishing. A sense of community is absorbed through experience of the actual community, just as family values are incorporated within the actual family. So we are left with our good nature flapping raggedly without the pole that once lifted it aloft, and we are lonely…’
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and the wider issues raised…
Old School Gardener
The view from Old School Garden, Norfolk at sunset today, the shortest day of the year…
Here’s yet another extract from a book I bought in a charity shop in the summer…..
Gnomic Pondering:
The astonishing anthropomorphic success of garden gnomes is based on the simple British proposition that dirty old men are lovable if they wear red hats.
Another Couple of Inches Law:
Any fool who thinks a pool is simply a hole in the ground, filled with water, has never tried to make water level with the surrounding ground.
Corollary- No pool looks aslant until it has been filled with water.
Kite’s Fundamentals Relating to the Preservation of Fences:
1. If the paint or preservative is harmless to plants, it will kill the goldfish.
2. If it is clean, quick and simple to use, the large-sized brush recommended won’t fit the pot.
3. If the brush fits the pot and the paint doesn’t write off the goldfish, the plants will probably die anyway.
From : ‘Mrs. Murphy’s Laws of Gardening’ – Faith Hines (Temple House books, 1992)
Old School Gardener
My fifth extract from the book ‘Noah’s Children’ by Sara Stein challenges some notions of what education should be about for young children. She compares the needs of these ‘tinies’ with those of wandering vines…
‘Most vines…germinate, grow tendrils, and wave about (clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on the species) until they engage support. Then…they climb upward toward the light, where, in sunlit maturity, they are able to bloom and fruit….Random exploration is essential to fulfillment of the vine’s biological program. So are the wanderings of children….
…you have experienced the wanderings of a child, and how it feels when what you have come upon suddenly makes sense. First, you wander the kames and kettles, kick sand and sink in mud, climb up and down the abruptly steep terrain, find fringed gentians, suffer poison ivy: then you reach for the fabulous coherence of glacial geography. Nothing is wrong with formal education except that we have got it backward. Children need experiences to make sense of before what we teach them can make sense. In this view, education is not something imposed from outside, but arises in children’s need for adults to arrange coherently the chaos of their perceptions.’
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and the wider issues raised…
Old School Gardener
Here’s another extract from a book I bought in a charity shop in the summer…..
Taint’s Law:
The compost bin guaranteed to quickly rot waste will:
1. Rot or disintegrate before the compost is mature.
2. Overflow on the first day of use.
3. Harbour the largest hornets’ nest in Christendom.
Law of Chance is a Fine Thing:
It is possible to leave a plant or shrub unwatered and unfed with no effect on its growth or flavour or flowers whatsoever. No gardener will believe you.
Dung Roamin’:
Some people think manure makes plants grow. It does. The plants are trying to escape the smell.
From : ‘Mrs. Murphy’s Laws of Gardening’ – Faith Hines (Temple House books, 1992)
Old School Gardener
Old School Garden 