"Once a century, all of a certain kind of bamboo flower on the same day," writes Chickasaw poet and novelist Linda Hogan in Sisters of the Earth, an anthology of women's reflections on nature edited by Lorraine Anderson. Take a moment to try to imagine all this flowering in far-flung places, intricately and intimately synchronized. What could possibly account for such coordinated timing?  

 

"Whether they are in Malaysia or in a greenhouse in Minnesota makes no difference," Hogan tell us, "nor does the age or size of the plant. They flower. Some current of an inner language passes between them, through space and separation, in ways we cannot explain in our language. They are all, somehow, one plant, each with a share of communal knowledge."

 

Clearly, we tend to underestimate plants. Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Barbara McClintock observed that plants have many sensitivities and "do a lot of responding to their environment ... But just because they sit there, anybody walking down the road considers them just a plastic area to look at, [as if] they're not really alive."  

 

This week, look each day for something marvelous about plants that can lift your spirits. You may even want to thank a plant for the beauty, breath, vitality, or nourishment it's giving you. 

 

Blessings,