Literary Aspiration: Inspiration for the Next Generation of Gardeners

Punica granatum 'Nana,' dwarf pomegranate at Santa Rosa County Extension Center demo garden

A few months ago I wrote an article for the Earthworm, an on-line publication produced by Santa Rosa County Master Gardeners and, as far as I know, available only to Florida Master Gardeners. I am so glad that I was able to write something to help satisfy my hours-of-service requirement as well as my curiosity about pomegranates and their inclusion in some famous literature (Solomon's Song of Songs, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. When gardening and literature intersect for me, life is pretty darn sweet. One of these days I hope to write a book about gardening that inspires the next generation of gardeners.

The latest issue of The Neighborhood Gardener, an on-line publication produced by UF/IFAS and--as far as I know--available to everyone, contains a lot of interesting information, but something in particular caught my eye. It's an article about the 2012 winners of the "Growing Good Kids Book Award." Aha! Something for me to aim for:

  What about you? Do you aspire to inspire?

Ugly is as Ugly Does--Yellow-Necked Caterpillars Turn Beauty on Its Head

Ugly is as ugly does. Now where have I heard that expression before? Not many days after I encouraged those citrus-loving orange dogs to visit and feed freely in my garden, these strange creatures--yellow-necked caterpillars--reared their yellow-collared heads on our blueberry bushes. Oh, dear! What have I done to deserve this kind of attention? I wouldn't say these youngsters are as ugly as the orange dogs. They look rather dapper actually, as if they're dressed to impress. Those are pin-striped suits covered with a hair shirt worn outwards: "Trust me! I can do penance and look good at the same time." Okay, so maybe that interpretation is a little far out. I lay the credit for awakening my curiosity as to why we attach such abstract ideas as beauty or ugliness to things not human at blogger/writer/artist Sarah Laurence's feet. She directed me to a recent article in the New York Times that takes a stab in the dark at explaining our tendency to anthropomorphize. I do agree that I have some "aesthetic prejudices" toward some things in nature, but I don't agree with the article's overall premise that evolution brought me to this point. What would be the point of evolving so far as to see complex human characteristics in something as simple as a lowly caterpillar, if it is indeed "lowly"? There has to be more to it. Literature, perhaps? Reading too much into things? Or maybe just reading too much. If it's a sin, then I am unrepentant. Take Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, for example. Or maybe you shouldn't. It asks a lot soul-searching questions, and they come from the most unlikely of characters like the hookah-smoking Caterpillar: "'Who are you?'" And "So you think you're changed, do you?" he asks Alice. If you would ask me, I'd say, why yes. I'm not the same person I was in 1960, yesterday, or even 5 minutes ago, in a manner of speaking. And this cute caterpillar won't be as adorable when it grows up. It will look completely different, a plain Jane moth--handmaiden moth. Remember the ugly orange dog? If it survives to become what it's meant to be, it will be nothing short of beautiful, a giant swallowtail butterfly. And there goes that idea of aesthetic prejudice up in smoke. Another blogger, Britta, who is new to me but not to blogging, has recently experienced some prejudice regarding age and beauty, and she has found a creative way to vent her frustration. Hey, if you still got 'em, flaunt 'em. I like her style.

What I don't like is this caterpillar's style. It brings friends to join in the feast. Lots of them. I'll be honest with you. When I spotted these furry critters, of course I had to run and get my camera, tell SAM so he could see for himself, and then quickly find out what they are. Thank goodness for great websites! I wanted to know what kind of damage they could inflict and if it would be fatal to the blueberry bushes. These are still young shrubs and don't have a lot of foliage to spare just yet. I could not get over how many of those pin-striped caterpillars there were! SAM must have picked off at least three dozen of them. Yes, I couldn't stand to see the bushes I've tended so carefully be destroyed. We put the critters on the brush pile in the farthest corner of the backyard. Out of sight, out of mind. Let them fend for themselves, away from the heart of the garden(er). Okay, so I'm a little over-protective when it comes to something I've spent a lot of time on. These bushes have a long way to go before they're finally ready to bear a good crop of berries. Especially now. 

As you can see, they have been robbed--or have they?

A Wetland on Its Knees

"I readily believe that there are more invisible than visible Natures in the universe. But who will explain for us the family of these beings, and the ranks and relations and distinguishing features and functions of each? What do they do? What places do they inhabit? The human mind has always sought the knowledge of these things but never attained it. Meanwhile I do not deny that it is helpful sometimes to contemplate in the mind, as on a tablet, the image of a greater and better world, lest the intellect, habituated to the petty things of daily life, narrow itself and sink wholly into trivial thoughts. But at the same time we must be watchful for the truth and keep a sense of proportion, so that we may distinguish the certain from the uncertain, day from night."
(Epigraph to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Adapted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge from Thomas Burnet's Archaeologiae Philosophicae (1692).

A visit to the Cache River yesterday with hubby left some deep impressions on me. I was struck not only by the beauty of the place (a swamp?) but also by its fragile existence, its importance in keeping the environment healthy, and its unfathomable mysteries.

Though this national treasure was in danger of disappearing forever, various government entities and nature enthusiasts have worked together to purchase farmland and let it return to its natural state. The Cache River was once a meandering waterway that provided a home for countless species of plants and animals and acted as a natural sponge, sopping up flood water in the floodplain of the Ohio River. When people began to settle in this area, they found the soil rich with promise for crops and forage for their livestock. The huge oaks and cypress trees which once covered much of the area were chopped down and hauled away for building towns and cities near and far. To make it easier for the wood to be shipped down the Ohio River, a channel was cut from the Cache to the Ohio. Draining the swamp seemed like a sensible idea to the farmers and lumber companies, and "progress" was the mantra of the day.

We took to the trails at Heron Pond to view the swamp firsthand but not before stopping at the impressive Wetlands Center for a little background information. The park ranger in charge of the operation showed us a short film about the area's history and plans for the future. After the film, I asked her something that I've been curious about for quite some time: What purpose do cypress knees serve, other than calling to mind those mythical creatures known as gnomes? She responded that "no one really knows for sure" and that various theories have been devised but none have been proven conclusive. One theory is that the knees provide stability in the trees' somewhat unstable watery environment. Another theory is that they allow the trees' underwater roots to access more oxygen. A little investigation by me online turned up an interesting but still inconclusive article by Christopher H. Briand, "Cypress Knees: An Enduring Enigma." Briand admits that "after nearly 200 years of speculation and research, the function or functions of the knees of cypresses remain unclear. Darwin referred to the origin of the flowering plants as an 'abominable mystery'; it appears that the function of cypress knees is another. The truth may be that cypress knees evolved in response to past environmental pressures that no longer exist, in which case their function may be lost in the depth of time."

In other words, the discovery of their purpose is still around the bend, submerged in the curious mind of some unknown child. It's just waiting to be picked up and put to good use for solving some problem like cancer or maybe providing some insight into the real causes of global climate change.

As hubby and I strolled along the trail to Heron Pond, we encountered a young couple with an energetic child in tow. We observed him hacking away mercilessly at the trunk of a small tree growing next to the trail. His father was recording the "cute" behavior on a DVR and laughing as the tyke imitated the actions of a lumberjack from the past or maybe those of a modern firefighter in California cutting a fireline (something he had obviously seen in a movie or on an evening news broadcast). I held my tongue until we were out of earshot and then railed loudly to hubby against the lax attitudes of parents today. Instead of recording his son's antics, that young father should have been gently dissuading him and using the moment to teach him a valuable lesson about taking care of nature. Don't get me wrong. I applaud the parents' attempt to immerse the youngster in the midst of an environment in peril. I think this kind of parental effort is sorely lacking today. Most parents would rather recline in air-conditioned comfort while their youngsters sit enthralled in front of the movie screen, getting their life-lessons from Hollywood. Still, I wish that young father had told his son that striking the tree bark could damage the tree's "skin" and perhaps make it sick and unable to grow big and tall like the trees all around it. If parents today don't act as a bridge to the next generation, leading them to love the world they live in, our world is indeed "doomed to destruction," as the media are so fond of insisting.

Knowing More Through Gnomons

After searching for blogs about gardening and writing today, I came across one at http://fairegarden.blogspot.com/ with a posting regarding gnomons. The posting got me to thinking about a student presentation I gave for a math class (for liberal arts majors) in 2007:

What is a Gnomon?

Though gnomon is a Greek term meaning "that which allows one to know," and refers most often to the vertical pin on a sundial, invented by the Greek Anaximander sometime around 575 B.C., it originates from a more ancient and primitive Egyptian instrument, the merkhet, a sun clock first used about 2000 B. C. to measure the passage of time. The ancient Greeks translated merkhet, meaning "instrument of knowledge" to the word gnomon, which also stood for the L-shaped piece of metal that casts a shadow on a sundial. Greek intellectuals were familiar with Egyptian arts and sciences because they traveled frequently to Egypt and studied with Egyptian priests, who had preserved centuries of information on scrolls and stone tablets. The Greeks (according to Midhat Gazale, author of Gnomon: from Pharaohs to Fractals), "stood on the shoulders of Egyptian and Mesopotamian giants" to build on or expand the Egyptians' knowledge of many things, including geometry.

By studying geometric similarities, the ancient Greeks observed some interesting properties about certain numbers. They were obsessed with looking for a theory which could unify different branches of knowledge and thought they had discovered something truly magical about the way geometric shapes can be expanded in a particular way without losing their original structure.

For instance, when observing that 1+3=4, 4+5=9, 9+7=16. . ., they were fascinated by the fact that sequentially adding an odd number to a square number resulted in another square number and so on, and they could depict this phenomenon geometrically by adding an L-shape, or gnomon, to the original square. Mathematicians today like Gazale, following in the footsteps of his Egyptian ancestors in wanting to know the seemingly unknowable, study these and other figurate numbers and apply their properties to such things as the calculation of surds, logarithmic spirals, and silver pentagons.

The gnomon's ambiguity, or alternate meanings, seems to have appealed to other intellectuals, including literary figures such as James Joyce, the author of Dubliners, which is a collection of short stories based on people in his hometown. He introduces the term gnomon in the first story "The Sisters," as something a boy remembers from having studied the Euclid. The boy seems unsure of its meaning, but the very sound of it intrigues him. In the rest of the stories, the gnomon may be seen to represent dead people, who are shades or shadows of the people once alive. They add subtle meaning, texture, and clarity to the text, with its odd and often confusing characters, somehow squaring it up and expanding our understanding of Joyce's perspective.

My interest in the gnomon, I must confess, comes not from its mathematical application but rather a literary one. I learned from reading the Dubliners to look for the oddity in a story, the unexpected, perhaps even just a simple gesture which seems peculiar but speaks volumes about the character displaying it. For example, in recently re-reading Wuthering Heights, a novel I have read many times over the years, I noticed for the first time that, from the outset, the character Heathcliff sticks his hand in his coat, a gesture familiar to us as Napoleon's characteristic pose. I expanded upon that one enigmatic, L-shaped gesture to write a 10-page research paper for a Victorian Lit class. I believe that Emily Bronte's reading audience in the mid-1800s would have instantly recognized that pose and made the connection to Napoleon because, even though dead by that time, his name was constantly in the news and on the minds of many people. His nephew, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, was vying for control of France, and the British were still reeling from the effects of their battles with his uncle's army. The year 1848, when Bronte's book was first published, saw Louis reentering French politics, and four years later he declared himself Emperor Napoleon III. Emily's little book, though originally published under a male pseudonym and after her death, eventually established her credibility among her mostly male peers and critics, perhaps because of her shrewd grasp of how to make the unknowable known.

Finding Evidence of Career Anxiety in Marlowe's Faustus

Anyone anxious about making a career change can learn a lot by reading Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Marlowe himself was probably wondering what to do with the rest of his life when he wrote the drama. (Please see some interesting facts and theories about his life and death at the following website: http://www.marlowe-society.org.)/ He was an accomplished scholar, having been educated at Cambridge, but he evidently did not desire the life of a scholar, holed up in some dusty study. Preferring to cast his lot with other writers of his time (late 1500s), including Thomas Kyd, John Lyly, Thomas Dekker, and other notables, Marlowe hoped to make his fortune with the emerging entertainment industry.

That industry was beginning to reach a broad audience through production of elaborate dramas on stage, and the time was ripe for well-educated, ambitious young writers like Marlowe to break free from the mold society had cast for them. Marlowe and several of his colleagues were, after all, sons of tradesmen and not expected to rise above their stations in life. Previous successful writers were almost without exception members of the nobility. A good education provided Marlowe and others like him the opportunity and the skills necessary to make their marks on the literary world. Still, they had to hone those skills in the religiously/politically censored, yet rough-and-tumble world of commercial theater. They could not expect to receive instant acclaim and fame, let alone fortune, and many of them did not live to reap the benefits of their work. Often, the satisfaction of knowing that they had written something that would cause a critic or colleague to learn something about himself provided the only reward for months or even years of research and labor on some drama. We can be thankful for that remarkable work ethic and love of irony.

Doctor Faustus allows what could be considered a tongue-in-cheek peek at the damage that self-doubt, fostered by others' self-righteous opinions, can wreak on someone's life. Faustus is anything but politically correct in his quest "To sound the depth of that [he would] profess" (1.1.2). He chooses to align himself with the devil rather than God because he fears the punishment of having his flesh torn apart (sarcasm by his peers??). Perhaps Marlowe was similarly fearful of having his career choice sneered at by people who knew him well. I believe that he wrote a remarkable piece of literature aimed directly at making his naysayers at least uncomfortable, if not remorseful, about the havoc their opinions can create in a person's psyche.