( I just realized I haven't been titling, sorry.)
Well that didn't take long. I started to reread The Secret Life of Plants, and found the experiments I described in my previous entry to be the opening discussion of the book. They were done by a lie-detector expert in 1966, starting when he hooked his machine one day to the corn plant ( aka mass cane and Dracaena massangeana) in his office, just to see what would happen. The story as I told it already was not exact, but close enough, so I'm not going to change it. If you're interested, you can read it yourself sometime.
I spent quite alot of time writing yesterday as it turns out, just none of it on the blog. I subscribe to several houseplant forums, and I try to check in with them once a week, and answer a few questions if there are any that I can contribute to. I spent around 3 hours doing that, and I'm sure that there must be a way to transfer what I write on the forums to my blog, but I don't know what it is. Maybe I'll see if I can google an answer tomorrow. I did figure out how to transfer a picture from Facebook to Pinterest, and my daughter the Pinterest queen didn't even know how to do that. Also, I know, I know, I really need to get some pics onto this blog. It is deadly dull like this.
Trouble is, the first order of business tomorrow has to be packing up the Christmas decorations and cleaning up the debris. And yes, I have 2 blog entries to do if I'm to stay up with my 7/7 challenge. Why do we all feel that we must accomplish so much. (I won't even mention the closets that need cleaning, the cupboards and drawers that need fumigating, the writing that needs to be done, the video that needs to be shot, the plants that need to be repotted, the cuttings that need to be rooted, the yardwork, the 401k, the doctor...) I know, everyone has pretty much the same story. But I realized not too long ago that my time to disembark this lifecraft is coming up, and I've already wasted so much time, I have no more time to waste.
There's a quotation, goes something like this....
The good die young,
But those whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the sockets.
When I was young, I thought this meant that if you were good (in the sense of romantic, meaningful, artistic, passionate, and so on) you were pretty much destined to die an early death, but those old heart-dead dried-out fogeys would just continue on, 'long after the thrill of living is gone.' But as I got older, now I think I understand that it means if you are good, you are forever young, your heart fills up with the juice of beautiful life, and it's only the turning away from the things you know in your heart are your joys that dries up your soul, no matter how young in years you may be.
So my goal is to be as young as possible when I come to the end of the path. And I also know that the important thing is not the destination, but the journey. And what do all these deep musings have to do with plants or social media? Damned if I know, but maybe someone who might read this will. Kind of like the old Japanese nobility and their haiku writing, make a beautiful poem, then toss the paper into the river, to be swept wherever the winds of chance flow.
Good sailing to you, wherever you may be.
(by Marlie Graves)
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