I Talk To My House Plant

I have a grand total of one house plant now. I used to have more, but now it is just this single vine-type of plant that was given to me many years ago by a sweet lady friend who is now no longer a regular part of my life. It was a birthday present sent to my place of work and I cherished it then and still do now. I desperately need to replant it with some fresh soil. I've been procrastinating for too long about that. I can't really say exactly why I gave up on plants. But the one I have gets my full attention now. So I need to get off my butt and buy a bag of soil and take care of my friend.

 

Scientific American has just published an article that really held my interest, even though it is a bit long. Check out Do Plants Think? and let me know what you think about it. This is about a new book by the director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences at Tel Aviv University, Daniel Chamovitz. The article states:

 

A plant, he [Chamovitz] argues, can see, smell and feel. It can mount a defense when under siege, and warn its neighbors of trouble on the way.    

 

Nature loving Pagan and Pantheist that I am, I am thrilled to think of the implications of this. For some time I have contemplated the notion that mind completely permeates nature. In fact, more and more I lean towards the proposition that mind is all there is, much as expressed by the physicist Arthur Stanley Eddington: "The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind...the stuff of the world is mind-stuff."

 

As one might expect there is a horselaugh contained in the comment section. One reader offered:

 

Reminds me of an episode when one of my sister's boyfriends visited the family and started on the topic of plants being able to "feel." After listening politely for an extended period of time my brother said "Yeah, last week there was a forest fire on television and all the plants got up and ran out of the room." End of conversation.

 

Yawn.

 

The more I study nature the more deeply I am moved in a spiritual sense. I am saddened by the general attitude of neglect and indifference towards the environment so commonly expressed by many moderns as opposed to that of the ancients, who felt embraced and nurtured by her.