I love prairie, pastures, gardens and trail walks! So, come on! Let’s take a walk together. Let’s see what we can see? Let’s look for new connections, new plants, new birds, new creatures, new spider webs. Is everything really connected? The longer I am around all this, the more I see and believe it is so!
The great spring and early summer time is almost upon us – Life at every level – everywhere, Beauty, Diversity, Energy, Vigor, the ‘Givers’, the ‘Takers,’ Pride, Peace, – all connecting to become more than each living creature/organisms can be – but oh, yes, all living creatures working together toward heighten goals! A real Community!
And the neatest thing about this very real Community is that WE – You and me – are allowed to be a part of this if we want. So come on, I invite you to journey with me.
About those connections? As we think more kindly of everything we see, the more we learn to respect the basic needs and natural processes of ‘Mama Nature,’ to help her heal more fully, the more we realize there is so much to see, feel, watch in awe. As the soil becomes healthier, as more robust natural processes are enabled, the more connections we will see.
So let’s get started! Let’s go!
We are in a barren field in South Texas – nothing would grow. But we shared/enabled some energy from the sun to the soil, gave it some basic, natural food for nourishment for what we believed that poor soil and soil life needed.
Before the soil became so degraded, before diversity was shunned, great flocks of birds were regularly sighted and their loud voices could not be ignored. What? Loud birds are a connection to healthier soil? Yes, Bird flocks with their voices – keep the leaf stomata open longer –pulling more energy from the sun into the plant.
And there they are, back with their loud ways in our fallowed field! Wonderful!
We become aware of the harmonized happenings, the pull to linger, and before we knew it, the thrill of being able to be a part of this wonderment, the energy we felt and saw begins to fill us with an unusual excitement. We were surrounded by life!
And look, the sour grass with piles of blue mist shrubs and sunflowers – two of the great pollinators that support over 80 butterflies and moths – two really great ‘givers to the soil/ecosystem’. I have never seen such an array of life. And they came to help heal their surroundings.
More great flocks of birds rose up from the ground, seeds from the wildflowers (please don’t call them weeds – they only want to help) dropped to the soil to happily re-seed when it was again their turn, to lay there to provide fall and winter nourishment to all the birds and little critters about. The leaves floated to the soil, and we see the leaves curled and turning gray as our invisible friends, the bacteria and fungi pushed up to decomposing those leaves and broke it apart, releasing the carbon, nitrogen, calcium, traces, phosphors, potassium and even some trace minerals to be available for the next growth cycle. Imagine that! The sun giving us the energy to the plant, who shares with the soil, and the soil taking care of the plants and microbes who in turn take care of the plants, providing the energy to be healthier and stronger.
The vigor and energy we felt, all Mama Nature working in unity – our smiles could not be hidden, our steps were lighter – look, look, at least 40 species of plants that we knew – nibbled on by the deer that jumped into the field. How did we become so blessed to be standing there in the middle of that field of blazing yellow and blue glory? I will remember it forever.
I hope you enjoy your next walk even more than before.
