Coming back from the cabin last week, I stopped for a hike at Hall Ranch, a valley surrounded by red rock hills. It’s a dry place with creek beds in which I’ve never seen water, and yet every spring nature puts on a show, with all the bushes flowering and the short-grass fields turning green (though some of last year's brown grasses, right, hang on).
Even after three months of little precipitation, most of the plants were making valiant attempts to put on their best faces. And yet when I looked closely, I could see that the showy flowers disguised the fact that the plant was struggling. The bitterbrush were flowering, but on some plants there were only flowers and almost no leaves, as if the bush had gone into survival mode and the bush was focusing on its most important task: to produce flowers so seeds would carry on the plant’s survival for the next generation.
The rabbit bush that grow here in huge numbers, sprawling in every direction, have become more circumspect, keeping their branches in check. Even in my backyard, where I often water my trees, this spring most of the trees have produced only a few leaves per branch, while waiting and hoping for more rain.
In times of stress, when nature produces less than optimal conditions for growth, nature does what it has to do to survive, conserving resources and energy.
I want to respond in kind, curtail my water use, eat less food, reduce the amount of lawn at my home, take shorter showers, and drive less. We just got a day of rain, which seemed like a blessing, but the previous lack of substantial moisture for at least three months and the unnatural heat seems like a crisis. Yet the human world goes on as if everything is normal. Only nature is smart enough to know to pull back in times of hardship.
"In times of stress, when nature produces less than optimal conditions for growth, nature does what it has to do to survive, conserving resources and energy".....thank you for your wise piece, I think we could do well by following nature's lead in times of stress [and in abundance make apple pie and bring in vases of blooms].
Posted by: shoney | May 12, 2012 at 08:25 AM
And we are part of nature. So how are we able to remain so clueless?!
Posted by: Julene Bair | May 12, 2012 at 10:20 AM