variety in nature

Monoculture

/ Shamanic Healing of Ames / Leave a comment

Nature abhors a monoculture… That can be a planting of one type of plant like potatoes. Or fields of nothing but corn or beans as far as the eye can see.

A monoculture can create a dependence on one kind of food, one source of nutrition to the exclusion of others. These planted monocultures deplete the soil of nutrients and vitality, requiring every more artificial pesticides and fertilizer, further depleting the health of the soil and water.

Dead tree

If the crop fails, so do the humans who depend exclusively on it.

A monoculture can also be planting one kind of tree in a town, such as ash or elm. A disease or pest specific to that type of tree can come along and wipe them all out, leaving a sun bleached and unhappy town behind. In a human created monoculture, the strengths of each plant or tree can become vulnerabilities.

Monoculture is not nature’s way. Nature allows a mass of many different plants that complement and feed each other and the wildlife who live nearby. They are all adapted to the land and soil, the climate, the water supply. Nature, when left to herself creates thriving diverse communities!

A monoculture of thought is like a gated community. Uniformity of beliefs and habits can seem like a strength at first. Keeping those who look, think, and believe differently locked out may give the illusion of strength and safety and power, of rightness.

But these seeming strong points create isolation from new and vibrant ideas, adaptations to changing conditions, evolution in thinking and beliefs that can help individuals, families and groups move forward in life with opportunities for connection and growth.

Instead of getting stuck and dying of the viral infection and malnutrition of hate & fear of the other, bring some variety and newness into your life.

Plant your garden with a profusion and variety of growing things that thrive together. Let your diet be varied in what you eat, Let your mind be rich in interesting new thoughts.

Monarch butterfly and wildflowers

Let your beliefs transform when they are getting stale, stuck and dusty by welcoming new people into your life. Let your acquaintances delight you with their interesting take on life, their intriguing ideas and customs, their different ways of eating and living happily on this planet.

Open your heart and mind to the richness and variety of this earth and all who dwell here and life will thrive with true health and vitality.

We will endure!

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We plant spirits, the spirits of nature, and living plants in our hundreds of billions have endured, persevered, and adapted over the lifetime of our home Mother Earth.

Vine tendril

Some of our number have gone extinct only to be replaced by new plant life forms better adapted to new and different climatic conditions.

We plants adapt and endure even now with the warming oceans, super-storms, human alteration of our valleys, rivers, plains, mountains, and forests.

We will endure into the future as we’ve endured for billions of years trusting our seeds, spores, runners and roots to the future.

We are constantly changing and adapting to our home, interwoven with all life in the vast and complex web of existence.

GCW speaks, continued

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These words of Grandmother Cottonwood’s are continued from the previous post…

This Earth, this home is so very dear to me… Words cannot capture all I know, all I feel…

I know, too the flow of the stream, the flood in spring, the ice in winter, breaking and grinding during a thaw… I know the rocks and sandbars of the creek, the elegant s curves of it’s southward course, the downed trees, uprooted by the current, changing the flow of the water .

I am familiar with the creatures of the water, the tiny silver fishes, the earth hugging turtles, the insects that skate and float…those that come to drink.

Spider web

I know the worms of the soil, the fungus that consumes rot, the spiders patiently weaving their silver webs, the bright butterflies and nodding wildflowers full of nectar, the sharp trilling call of the red winged blackbird in early spring.

My world is made beautiful by the deep shade of my companion trees in summer, the bark of the sycamore, dark and rough near the roots, creamy white and peeling near the crown…I know the cushiony moss, growing in the cool damp places, a green to remember.

GCW and sycamore

From my home, I feel and know the heartbeat of the city, the town, the homes and all those creatures inhabiting this place. I feel the rushing and impatience of some, the peace and contentment of others.

I experience the students who hurry past me on their way to school, their thoughts and attention elsewhere, forgetting the lesson that life is lived in the moment, one breath at a time; that hugging a tree will help them feel better.

Come to school with GCW and you will learn an age-old yet always fresh curriculum – Observe without judgment. Breathe. Notice what you are feeling. Notice what happens in your body.

Be present to what you see, hear, taste, touch feel, smell – be present and allow yourself to know what you know, to be who you are. Become friends with your own self. Listen to your heart – the dreams of your heart.

Now, put the shiny blinking thing down, for if you let it, it will block out everything but itself. Turn it off for a little while and just be.

Know that you too are a part of this magnificent tapestry! Above all, hug a tree.

Grandmother Cottonwood speaks

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Because of my rooted nature, I am by necessity a homebody. I observe and experience my world…and I am never bored!

I am exquisitely tuned to the shifting air currents and breezes, the temperatures that rise and fall, that are different at my crown and my roots.

I know minutely the angle of the sun as it moves through the yearly cycle of seasons, I know patterns of bird migration, seasons of nesting, hatching, fledging, the first flight; the burrowing habits of the fur bearers, the call of the owl, the secret places they drop their feathers, the movements of the deer at dawn and dusk…

I am witness to the patient gliding and flicking tongues of snakes in warm weather as they embrace mother earth with their bodies; the buzz or quiet wing beat of insects as they go about their business of crawling all over me… or nesting in the soil nearby.

I know the prairie grasses, from their first show of green in early spring to the late summer when they’ve grown taller than a man, seed heads heavy and nodding, swaying in the wind.

Prairie grasses

I know the exquisite blue of the sky, sometimes perfectly clear and fathomless, sometimes holding storm clouds that move swiftly to the south, sometimes holding clouds slow and heavy, blotting out the sun, stalling over our valley for days.

From my height, I feel the sunlight gilding my upper branches on clear mornings. I know the gentle swelling and unrolling of my leaf buds in spring, the effortless growth of my bead-like seed pods from tiny and tender to dry and brown and bursting with tiny seeds.

Cottonwood seeds

I know the flight of my cottony seeds on spring winds. I fill the valley with my white fluff. I know them all. I know every leaf on the crowns of my offspring.

From my chosen place on this great planet, I observe the beauty, the variety, the oneness of all things and I am richly blessed!

GCW’s speech is to be continued in the next post…