I write therefore I....

Blogging. I am often driven to wrestle my thoughts onto paper and send them off into the electronic ether. Sometimes, I admit, it simply acts as therapy. It allows me to take hold of random thoughts, to view them at a distance, and to make sense of them. At other times, I think I am clear and decisive about what needs to be said - I feel an urge to say things that need to be expressed, to hopefully inspire or challenge, or to simply share knowledge.

I believe that writing can give people a voice. In a world of six billion people, it is easy to have a false sense of the insignificance of an individual. What effect can one person have? And how many people think like me? For when I see actions and events so contrary to the very core of my being, the frustration is that I can feel alone. But you reading this blog assures me that there are many people, be they in my home country, Russia, Germany, China, or Kenya, that relate to the thoughts I express here. Most of you I have never met, but I want to say I appreciate your readership.

Not that I view myself as perfect by any means of course. I am inconsistent. I can be thoughtless. I  seek reconciliation between who I am and who I want to be, and often I fail. I need to remind myself that I can simply make the best use of who I am to  make this world better. Even if it's just for one person, somehow, somewhere. And part of this journey for me is to write, and hopefully something I write might resonate with a reader.

For I wholeheartedly and firmly believe that everyone is deeply significant. We are all meant to be here and each one of us can achieve good that only we can achieve. We have all been made to be vital, creative, impacting people, who, through a deep and truthful sense of who we are, can change  the world around us.  First think me, then my neighbour, then the world. Person by person, city by city, nation by nation. Grandiose? Maybe. But people are meant to be visionary, it's a part of who we are. Like it or not we are completely and utterly changing our world. The question is, which way will we help it to go?





Love and Freedom

My parents gave me great riches. Not the material kind of course, but an inheritance of far greater intrinsic value. Who I am, they played a key role in nurturing and forming. And that, I think, is a critical part of a parent's love for a child.

I don't think my mother and father raised me with preordained ideas as who I should be. They certainly didn't try to fulfill any of their lost dreams by foisting them on to me - I would have made a very poor nuclear physicist, my father's first academic love. And I wasn't pushed or prodded into any childhood hobbies. There were no piano lessons, no after-school school cricket, no French lessons. But I wasn't ignored or left in want of attention either. Instead, my parents sought to understand my natural leanings, and  then to encourage these to their utmost.

And my natural leanings, to many, were in hindsight a bit odd. I wasn't a typical kid. Sure I occasionally played with action men, blowing them up by strapping fire-crackers to their chests. I even dabbled for one season in rugby, playing for Marist as a rather small and lazy-eyed nine-year old. But my lack of hand-eye coordination, still little improved, probably made it quite a relief that my real passions lay elsewhere. And there began a career that I still have today.

For as far back as primary school, the natural world around me enraptured my attention. My ideal Saturday would be to go to a local drain, so I could traipse through the water and muck finding pond snails, leeches, and water-boatmen. As a young child I didn't roam the neighborhood on my own of course - while other parents watched their kids from the sideline, mine watched me from the stream side. Then I would take them home and study them under a desk lamp, making scientific observations in a notebook on behaviour, habitat, or diet.  And my interests didn't stop at bugs. I remember one day gathering my plant collection together in a row on the deck, then marching my entire family dutifully past them as I staged a "plant exhibition". I guess my sister was long-suffering also.

On a steady diet of "childrens" books, including the authors David Attenborough and Gerald Durrell, I saw myself as a true-blue animal collector. The only bounds my parents placed on this was a rat ban - one family member who can remain anonymous had, and still has, muriphobia. I milked these wide boundaries for all they were worth. I raised tadpoles to frogs in my bedroom, and had multiple fish tanks, axolotyls, rabbits, skinks, ringneck parakeets, finches, and cockatiels. And in addition to these the family pets added, at various points in time, dogs, cats, goats, possums, chickens, and bees. The schools I went to weren't exempt either. I kept a plant collection in my Standard 3 classroom, that I would diligently air outside at lunchtimes for extra light, and at intermediate school I kept a tank of golden bell frogs in the school library. This was probably in hindsight not a good call - I would spend many lunchtimes catching flies by the school compost heap, much to the ridicule of my ball-sport playing peers. Eventually the frog's incessant croaking made the librarian request their removal - "the library is a quiet place". I was not to be deterred. Tanks and their denizens continued to multiply and by the age of 14, I had a dedicated fish-room in the downstairs basement.  I remember having shelves after shelves all stacked with tanks, and breeding creatures to feed to breeding creatures. I had whole food-chains going with predators and prey.

And yet my parent's still encouraged me. Not phased by the prospect of old age without a white-collared son to support them, they fostered this mad love of the living. There was no pressure at high school to take one subject over another - only to make sure I selected the subjects I loved. So I finished my schooling with an eclectic mix of English, Sciences, and Practical Art. I even had their encouragement to pursue a double degree in Fine Arts and Science though, as it turned out, the university couldn't cope with such a disparate conjoint degree. I remember my dad disparagingly discussing what the university would have done if Leonardo da Vinci had wanted to do the same!

And so childhood passions, fostered by loving parents, had the freedom to flourish into the interests of a lifetime. Entering university, I finally found "critical mass"  of like-minded people. My hobbies were no longer strange and I pursued my academic interests unhindered through a BSc, MSc, and PhD. Perhaps my parents knew all along that a child will find success in the working world if they love what they do. Now for work, I sometimes find myself thrown back 30 years. Dredging through a drain to discover what lives there, or catching fish, I sometimes think "I am paid to do this??!!"

So this is a big public "thank you" to my parents for their incredible love and freedom. You allowed me to become who I was meant to be. I await the blossoming of my children's interests with anticipation.


I grew a tree

I grew a tree. Not just any tree, but a Dunn's white gum (Eucalyptus dunnii). Heralding from southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, this spectacular gum tree grows to 50 m tall, with a smooth trunk, coloured white or grey. A friend of mine imported some seed from the Queensland Forestry Department, and knowing that I was plant-mad (even as a teenager), he gave some seed to me. So 19 years ago, at the age of 16, I sowed some seeds.

They were tiny, like short lengths of orangy-red hair. Small and light enough to disperse by simply being blown about in the wind. And after they germinated, I planted three small seedlings on a hillside near a stream, at a place called Takou Bay, Northland. In this far and often neglected corner of the family farm, the young trees grew, fighting through the gorse to reach the Northland sun. And each year, they faithfully converted soil nutrients, the sun's rays,  and rain into an ever accumulating biomass of roots, trunk, branches and leaves. That little seed contained all the templates needed to be a Dunn's white gum. Yes, it's just the growth of a plant, a biological process that occurs in most places, across the globe, day after day. But for some reason I never cease to marvel at this miracle. That something so small can grow to colossal proportions.


 Already, for this Dunn's white gum, the youthful exuberance of rapid  growth is giving way to maturity. It now stands tall in the landscape, providing shade and shelter, and flowers and seeds will soon be forthcoming. Many storms have assailed it, but have only succeeded in adding to its character. Gnarled branches and tree holes mark the location of past wounds, but only add to the tree's beauty.


Unbeknownst to me then,  the place where this tree grows would become deeply rooted as a part of my life. I have sown, planted, harvested, and consumed from this land ever since, the very soils of the place becoming engrained in my skin and psyche. And as I think about the passage of time between then and now, I realise that the growth of trees is an incredibly apt marker for a man's passage of time. The trees and I, we grow old together.




Rain

The rain drenched me. Large drops, falling on my head, slipped down my face and fell to the dirt. It didn't chill me, it warmed me. The first real rain for several months, this drought-breaking rain was a gift, and it lifted my soul. Working alongside me was my son, Shepard, who at only 20 months old would already rather be outside with me, whatever the weather. His little body was soaked, but ever-determined, he wrestled with a full-size garden fork, turning the soil. 

Sensing the opportunity of the moment, I had come outside to plant, and he had followed. The seemingly ever present heat of the sun had made transplanting a difficult task; small seedlings had wilted in the heat, despite judicious watering, their disturbed roots struggling to transport adequate water from roots to xylem  to leaves. But today was different. The heat of the sun was tempered by rain; the water was drops of delightful coolness. A moment to plant.

 So that is what we were doing. A father, a son, six lettuce plants, and a punnet of coriander. And thinking about today, now late at night and my family asleep, I sense something ordinarily mundane had become a lasting memory. Inked deeply into my mind like a cerebral tattoo. A moment of togetherness with a common purpose. And after a summer of parched earth and failing crops its enough to keep me going. The prospect of the autumn rains, a refreshed land, and a deepening relationship between a father and a much loved son.   

Blessings,

Tim 

The Interconnected Garden: A Parable of Community

We all need each other. It doesn't matter our gifts or talents, our faults or failings, we all have a role to play in sustaining each other, and enriching each others lives. Even the small and seemingly insignificant things we do can have ramifications far beyond the immediately tangible outcomes of our actions. Nearly 2000 years ago, Paul, a follower of Christ wrote the following in 1 Corinthians Chapter 12:

"The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ....... If the foot says, "I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand," that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, "I am not part of the body because I am not an eye," would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part! Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, "I don't need you." The head can't say to the feet, "I don't need you." In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary"

Thinking about the high diversity of species within my garden, and the interconnectedness of it all, I can't help but think about it as a thriving community. A healthy garden has parallels with healthy human communities, and further illustrates Paul's thoughts of two millennia ago. How is that you may ask? How is a cabbage dependent on a parsnip, or a tomato on a bean? How is a chaotic and eclectic vegetable garden less prone to catastrophe than an orderly field of potatoes? All things are interrelated, and the answer lies in community. All the fruits and vegetables are part of a greater whole, and each have a role to play. Now before you think I am stretching a point, allow me to illustrate.

Some vegetables and herbs such as parsnip, carrot, coriander, and parsley have value far beyond their edible roots, or the garnish they provide. These plants (all in the family Apiaceae) have umbrella-shaped flowers that attract helpful predators to your garden, such as ladybugs and parasitic wasps. These insects will fly in to visit the flowers and then hunt for pesky caterpillars on adjacent crops. So even if you don't like the the taste of coriander, or crave sweet roasted parsnips in mid winter, these are plants that are beneficial to your garden community.

Other vegetables do well following on from another crop, much like some people are leaders and others are better followers. Potatoes are great at breaking up new soil, and don't mind lumpy soils, or lower amounts of organic matter. Other vegetables, such as carrots, are followers. They need a well-worked fine soil, with manure that was applied before the previous crop. Beans also do well in soils not recently manured, and by fixing atmospheric nitrogen they prepare the way for more nitrogen-hungry vegetables such as sweetcorn. Each vegetable grows bigger, better, and healthier by being part of a greater community.

A true community not only recognizes differences but celebrates them. I am glad the species that comprise my garden community have different needs and yields. That enables me to grow a interdependent  community that is productive and resilient. Each season throws different challenges, such as prolonged summer rain, or plagues of leaf hoppers, but every year I know that some species will thrive and keep home-grown food on the table. And by growing a wide range of crops, I know that one plant disease can't wipe out all of a harvest.

So as we move into 2013, and the joys and challenges it will bring, I will try to foster even greater diversity in the garden. I am currently growing hyssop, galangal, ginger, caper bush, chickpeas, and adzuki beans to add to the mix - I know I will be able to find some space for them somewhere. And I will also strive to cultivate deeper friendship within my community, seeking to encourage and value the overlooked, the weakest, and the supposedly 'least important". And if I do this, I know that my life will be enriched in the process.

All the best for a bountiful 2013

Tim