Cool to cold, mid January to mid June……snow to rain, more rain, and a helluva lot more rain, mid January to mid June in the year of our Lord, 2013, Northland USA.
What has this cooling and wetting meant for those of us oriented to the beauty of life living outside brick, concrete, asphalt, and flourescent lighting?
For plants, the overwhelming number of them from an inch to 100 feet of stature, this has to be nearly the best chapter in their genetic history ever experienced.
Regular, reliable moisture…..not too little, not too much, twice a day, three times a night….more the quiet stuff rather than the huff and puff of a thunder storm, tornado, or volcano eruption or an avalanche.
Nature itself, unknown perhaps to the New Yorker cement and concrete people who might have missed Earth’s outdoor life thus far in their lives, is an eternal battle between order and disorder……harmony and disharmony.
Each environment is in a constant state of war…..or competition, if you prefer, to stay alive….to defend its form and being from the everlasting threat of invaders.
Culturally, we Northlanders along with our pals from coast to coast, live in social disharmony where beauty is disdained. If something is beautiful, it is dicated politically and educationally, in newsprint and authorship, that something is NOT beautiful. We are better people, they preach, if we make everyone and things around us equal so as not to hurt feelings.
If beauty by sight and feelings, thought and action is noticed rather than disdained or ignored, the human animal might be moved, as in the past, to do better than merely exist, but to seek understanding of beauty, if for no other reason, to be shocked by its power to make the day more beautiful no matter the opposition.
Beauty is most penetrating through sight and hearing. Beethoven should never be allowed by any literate, civilized, Godfearing society to go deaf among its peoples.
More animal in us humans is our drive to witness the beautiful. Millions, perhaps billions of dollars are spent annually by people reaching out to view beauties of nature……yet they remain ingnorant, nearly void of any hint that beauty BEGINS AT HOME, whereever home may be.
Moreover it begins with the soul of the individual, not to be memorized at school, but to be led into an experience when each individual can radiate when they begin to understand the various basic rules, steps, reasons, and results of why some things, despite political and certain religious propaganda that all things are equally beautiful.
IF ALL THINGS ARE EQUALLY BEAUTIFUL, THEY ARE EQUALLY UGLY!
Spring 2013 in our Minnesotaland has been unusually beautiful in nature’s plantworld. It has been spoiled by the cool, the unthreatening, the reliable, which has allowed its color, textures, stature, and fragrance to radiate and therefore inspire all who are lucky enough to notice and enjoy….especially for those skilled enough to create beauty and work in the midst of doing so for an occupation in life.
Economically?……well, Spring, 2013 hasn’t been very good for an outdoor business. It’s hard to work in the constant mud.