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I speak to my
plants when I’m watering them
or weeding them. I babble to them, I prize them, I complain, I
encourage them to fight for life when they are in bad shape. And
they respond in their own way, I’m sure. Take, for instance,
that datura on the photos below. When I arrived in late June, it
was a weed (datura is a native plant on the island of Brač) by one
of our laurel plants; it had only three or four small leaves.
Well, it was a weed but I didn’t compost it, I transplanted it
to the bare grounds (reserved for the future vegetable garden). I
have a "natural" weakness for daturas as they were among
my mother’s favorable flowers.
I
took a good care of the plant, communicating a lot. By late July
it was already a small blossoming bush (upper photo) and now, in
mid-September, it dominates the grounds with an impressive blossom
(lower photo). |
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There’s
something very important to me about having a kind of
relationship, with plants and animals, that can be
transacted wholly without language. The warmth of one’s
body is a form of communication. The stroke of one’s
hand is a means of communication. In the garden those
forms are heightened. I have a tendency when I’m walking
in the garden to brush the flowers as I go by,
anticipating the fragrant eloquence of their response. I
get a sense of reciprocity that is very comforting,
consoling.
There
are forms of communication beyond language that have to do
not only with the body, but with the spirit itself, a
permeation of one’s being.
Stanley
Kunitz, with Genine Lentine: The wild braid, A poet
reflections on a century in the garden, Norton &
Co., New York, 2005. |
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