Thanks to the Obliquity of Ecliptic, our mid-latitude Northern Hemisphere world is tilting back towards the Sun, and everything is coming back to life. Jubilant swallows have returned. Nuthatches are plastering tree holes to make suitable nest sites. Lesser celandine carpet the woodland floor. Wood Sorrel and Wood Anemone sparkle white among ancient horsetails. Marsh marigolds glow in boggy streamside mud.
“This Cartesian attitude of an insentient, nonvolitional, unminded natural world […] owes something to the Platonic-Aristotelian backgrounding of plants”.
“Darwin not only put forward the idea of relatedness between humans and the natural world, but his work was the first to demonstrate and articulate the idea that plants are capable of movement and sensations – providing the basis for the discipline of plant signalling […] scholars in this discipline have begun to recognize many points of continuity in the natures and capabilities of plants and human beings.”
“Working closely in collaboration with plants on a restoration project can allow many Westerners the opportunity to directly encounter the autonomous qualities that plants possess”.
Matthew Hall, Plants as Persons, A Philosphical Botany, SUNY, 2011.
The images are of: lesser celandine, horsetail and wood anenome, marsh marigold, wild cherry (two images), a primrose/cowslip hybrid, new beech leaves, and cuckoo pint. The celandine were in our local wood, the rest were taken in North Lancashire and South Cumbria.
animist jottings 