It's less about green skin or unusual greetings ... and more about allowing trees to 'Live Long and Prosper'.
One needn't look far to spy red today, Valentines Day, the official lovers holiday.
It's interesting to me that the color
red inspires visions of love,
Did you hear it? That was the sound of the first flowers bursting forth here in north central Florida. The white flatwoods plums were quickly followed by the electric magenta of redbud blooms. Oh yes, and don't forget the ultimate showman: the Japanese magnolia.
I'm beginning to see a couple red maples turn, well, red, and fully expect to see the white flowers of black cherry, peach, and pear within the next two weeks. And then in March dogwoods will be racing the azalea, cherry laurel, wisteria, among others for center stage in the landscape. How do I know? Experience. And notes.
A couple years ago I carried a legal pad in my truck and every time I saw a new flowering species bloom, I made note of it. Now I have a spreadsheet with months across the top heading up columns of flowering trees, shrubs, and vines. While February and March are especially busy blooming months, a couple other species will wait until April, May, and June to show off. Then we have to wait until September or October for the golden rain tree to break the green monochrome of summer.
Why do we long for flowers, to experience the beauty of nature in all it's forms? E. O. Williams put forth the hypothesis that there is an instinctive bond between
humans and other living systems, a bond that he called biophillia. He proposed the possibility that the deep affiliations humans have with nature are rooted in our biology. Wilson thought of himself as a "scientific humanist," rather than spiritual or religious, and felt that science could be used to investigate religion. Because of our biophillia, our natural love for other life forms helps to sustain life. Why else, he argued, does mankind so enjoy the domestication of animals or planting a garden or gain such a positive emotional response to activities that might be described as "enjoying nature?"
The Bible answers that question in many ways. Since we are spiritual creations, we naturally seek a link to the Creator. Romans 1:20 explains this link in that God's "fingerprints" are all over His work and in plain sight for us to discover. Scientific discoveries can bring us to a closer understanding of God's Wisdom and amazing creativity.
And so I enjoy the discoveries an outdoor hike can bring: a solitary wild bloom; the gnarled trunk of an ancient oak; the heady perfume of yellow jasmine; a white wave of herons heading to roost; the nano-scale moss forest on a rotting log. Yes, even the strait towering rows of a pine plantation can form the cathedral for a worshipful walk in the woods. Wonder at the blooms of spring and enjoy the Creator in His creation.
I've got a weird feeling. It's like the feeling you get after watching a couple hours of "Battlestar Galactica" and the Cylons have just pulverized the humans down to one last ship. Then you go outside and, while walking the dog, you look up at the stars and shudder. Cross that with the feeling I got after the Isalmists attacked America on September 11th, the feeling that the world would never be the same again, in a bad way.
That's how I feel when I think that Hilary Clinton could be the next President of the United States.
OK, so it's not a tree-related topic, but if it comes true, the landscape of North America and all the creatures therein will change forever. Government will be much bigger; money will be much scarcer; people will be much less in control of their own destiny; and around the world socialists will cheer the victory because millions more soon-to-be-miserable people will be joining their ranks.
