Friday 11 September 2009

The garden of eden?

I am a poor gardener. In fact i am not much good at anything really, but I potter and some things do well despite my efforts. I love plants that thrive on neglect, but when it comes to vegetables there are few that do. My courgettes all grow when i am not looking into monster marrows that have very limited culinary use, my beans tend to mature spasmodically so that there are rarely sufficient in the right state to eat and by the time the others catch up, they have become old and stringy. I give up with onions; i am sure that my onion sets actually shrink rather than grow, and my tomatoes - well does anyone want some - they seem to frow like weeds and I have no control over them at all.
My one big success this year has been my wormery. I have this device into which I put all my kitchen waste - uncooked stuff that is- and the worms feed upon it and out of the bottom comes a rich brown liquid that is supposed to be a good fertilizer. Maybe in more skilled hands it would be, but I am happy that the system works. These worms breed at an incredible rate and if i open the layers, each one is alive with pink wriggly things that seem to have just three real functions in life, to eat, to breed and to crap. They have everything provided for them and seem content with their lot. None seem to have an urge to escape and I am pretty sure that they don't fight among themselves for the supplies that they are given.
How they interrelate is a mystery, and although they do have nervous sytems, i am pretty sure that they do not have the facility to devise philosophy. Were this possible, I suppose that some bright wriggler with nothing better to do would have realised that each time the lid was removed, that abundant delicious treats were provided by a huge entity, and that this entity must be the creator.
Humans are good at anthropomorphisation, and many believe that all animals have the ability to think or to reason. How silly is that? i know some people who are unable to reason, and yet some think that animals can apply thoughts in human style. I am sure that some creatures come close to that but it is a truism that man is the only animal not trapped in the present.
Worms have no memory, no ability to think for themselves and therefore ........................... wow, maybe they do have a religion!

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