March 21, 2006
Faith in a Seed
Have been reading H.D. Thoreau's Faith in a Seed, edited post-humously. The book reflect's Thoreau's growing interest in scientific endeavors, and the culture's growing interest in the theories of Darwin and others.
Compared to other Thoreau work, it plods. Nevertheless great nuggets await those who work their way through. Just wait till you get to the part about the squirrels. In Faith in a Seed Thoreau observes more systematically and thoroughly and, in some ways, much more explicitly demonstrates how great a teacher Nature can be.
I don't know how an acorn got into our ficus planter. It could have come from me using some compost to mulch the ficus. It could have been the acorn I brought home one day from Schenley Park, subsequently lost, and may have been planted by one of my children. It could have even have been deposited by the mouse that I have seen scurrying about the house. In any case, it is one more example of how seeds and trees have an inexorable will toward covering our planet. Thoreau would have been pleased, I think. I'm not sure he would have had the same designs on the mouse that I do.
March 19, 2006
The Canopy Project
About three months ago I wrote about planting trees in Pittsburgh. Now that the ground has eased up, I think it's time to start actually planting trees. Was just checking out Shade Tree Commission information. Their Tree Keeper data base, which has more than thirty-one thousand trees inventoried, 138 different species. More than a quarter of all street trees are maples. Nearly ten percent are planetrees/sycamores. Have been reading Thoreau's Faith in a Seed. The information gets a little tedious, what squirrel eats what kind of cedar seed, so it seems like a little like gossip. But Thoreau is such a good expository writer that even if he's not talking about the infinite, one feels he's in the hands of a infinitely gifted guide.