Dandelions & Wood Pigeons
and quoting Jeff Goldblum at any opportunity
As long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated with humankind's attempts at controlling nature.
And I get it, I do. We need our homes not to let in the rain, to shade us from the sun, and we need our crops to grow unencumbered by weeds or pests. We need clothes, fuel and food. Otherwise, that would be the end of us, right? Literally, everything comes from the earth in one way or another.
It’s this semblance of control, this veneer of authority that I wonder at.
It’s such a fragile thing, this relationship we have with the planet we live on. We pillage and plunder and claim things as our own. We create borders and say them and us. We grab, grab, grab.
As a child, I remember my dad getting stupidly angry at the dandelions on our lawn. Pulling them up on a crazed midsummer evening. Lawns, they just seem so quaint now, don’t they? Even back then the amateur herbalist within me knew dandelions were something special, magical even. Nature wouldn't make something so hardy and so persistent without reason.
Side note- yes, I still have a lawn, and one day I’ll get rid. Go here for some inspiration and more about the reasons why.
The other day I was at my parent’s house and my dad (again- hi Dad!) had put some bird seed out in the feeders they have. Every time a wood pigeon came along he would attempt to frighten them off. Was he going to sit there all day and only allow the birds he thought were more deserving access to the food? No, of course not. Although perhaps he’d have liked to.
Side note- my dad is brilliant and not as irrational as how I’m painting him here.
When I attended art college in the late nineties, much of the work I created was related to our attempts at controlling nature and how, “Life Finds A Way” (Jurassic Park, 1993). This topic is still my jam, twenty years on. A lot of my fiction deals with this theme, along with human bodies and their individual relationships with the flora and fauna of this world. Like the mycelium under our feet, we are all networks within networks.
This weekend I pulled back the cover of one of the veg beds I prepared in November last year. I’m doing No Dig, so layers of shredded card and then manure on top. I was just about to add a load of compost and plant out some seedlings when I saw there was something already growing, thriving in fact. It felt like a scene from my novel, Earthly Bodies. These fungi had flourished and taken over the bed. According to Google Lens, the fungi are Wood Ear mushrooms. It started to release dust/spores and oh my, it was kind of magical. Click here for a clip.
And this is what I mean about nature. It just is, it will be here long after we are not.
Soon, I think/hope humanity will re-understand that we are an extension of the Earth rather than something foreign to it. We have to understand that the earth can, and does, call in that debt. Mother Nature is the Main Character in the story of the planet.
What do you think?
Further reading (longreads)
The Ecofeminism Wiki page
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
If you’d like to support me, please check out my books.
Earthly Bodies (eco horror #sporror)
Dark Is The Water (a pocketbook of 13 short horrors)
"I think/hope humanity will re-understand that we are an extension of the Earth rather than something foreign to it. We have to understand that the earth can, and does, call in that debt. Mother Nature is the Main Character in the story of the planet." - Absolutely agree, and I do hope that humankind will find a way to reconnect to nature and respect it.
'I think/hope humanity will re-understand that we are an extension of the Earth rather than something foreign to it.' - I hope so too! What an enjoyable read - do you still have your art degree work? Your wood ear mushrooms are magical - how very Earthly Bodies!