potatoes.

I planted barley sprouts yesterday. I've never done this before, and I think I let the barley sprout too long before moving them to the soil. But now they are in soil, and if fungus or mold doesn't take over maybe I'll have some fresh green to feed my senses. If it works, stay tuned for more news. I hope it works.

The seeds are so beautiful with their white roots unfurled.

I have too much faith in nature to reestablish itself. You've seen the grass growing between the sidewalk cracks. You've passed the persisting tree growing through chain link fence. Don't mention the old potatoes in your pantry that you forgot about.

In David Orr's essay "Politics", he discusses how our planet suffers from "a large and growing political crisis that has ecological and other consequences." It is not the lack of research or lack of research funding, he says, that is the limiting factor for the "conservation of biological diversity."

"For all that we do not know, we know without question that we are rapidly unraveling ecosystems and destabilizing the biosphere with consequences that cannot be good, which is to say we know enough to act far more prudently, to conserve, and to restore that which we through carelessness we have destroyed and are destroying."

Wait, you ask, what does this have to do with potatoes?

You tell me. I think it has something to do with the way we see the world. Potatoes sprout in your pantry. Grass grows everywhere. Trees grow through fences and power-lines all the time. Nature succeeds at every turn. The problem is that we see it as a competition. This is an old ethos. We lose when the potatoes sprout before we eat them. Would we win if we put them in the ground and helped them grow? Wouldn't they win?

All the above quotes came from David Orr's essay "Politics", as published in Earth in Mind.