In article RD3la.5510$qn.510963@localhost, "Queen"
wrote:

It's easy to get anthropomorphic (or rather anthropopathic) about
plants, projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto them!

For example: I had to take out my Santa Rosa plum last year,
and "threatened" the apricot with a similar fate if it didn't get its
act together (bore very little last few years). Whaddyaknow,
the "intimidated" apricot is loaded! Now, if I can only cut a deal
with the squirrels...g

I've felt this way before. I once bought a beautiful japanese maple and
lovingly planted it on my patio in a half barrell container. I loved that
tree like nothing else - it was so lovely. I had searched high and low to
find it.

Unfortunately, it did not come back the following season. Apparently,
its only marginally hardy in my zone, and the container just did it in.

When I took it down, and chopped it up, and disposed of it.....it kinda
felt like murder....like hacking up a dead body after the deed. I got a
creepy feeling about it anyway.

Weird, eh?

Sally


I'm surprised I don't anthropomorphize plants more than I do. I do at
least feel a connection to something BEYOND the garden which is the result
of having lived many years as a kid with a Thai buddhist step-mother. Not
that I'm seriously a believer in anything, but there's definitely
something zen-like & spriitual about gardening, & hard not to imagine
some Bodhi of Verdance, or an Earthmother, bestowing upon bewildered
gardeners surprising successes well beyond actual skill. And I've caught
myself thanking whatever Gaea-like Shekhinah or Tara or Durga must be
helping me out, then feeling a little silly for such thoughts, without
minding being silly.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/