Tasty buds

Just another day being happy to live in one of the world's great cities. Every American should make the trip, visit the museum's on the Mall (The Managing Partner and I recently visited the Museum of Natural History - go already, it's amazing and profound), see the monuments, appreciate the incredible gift our forefathers bequeathed to us, and then go back home dedicated to preserving and protecting our precious heritage. 

Washington Monument through Cherry blossoms

The cruellest month

From the back yard - Dogwood, Cherokee Brave

I initially thought of this coronavirus virus pandemic as somehow antithetical to the lovely Spring weather we're having here in the national capital region. You know, disease and death all around while flowers bloom and abundant life returns to the land. Contradictory, no? Well, no, it isn't contradictory. Just a little egocentric perhaps.

Think about it from the virus' view point. It's just an organism that's trying to perpetuate the survival of its species, like all organisms. Find food, shelter, a cozy place to grow and thrive. Lots of things we don't like are very successful survivors - ants, cancer, reality shows.

Our current coronavirus, the cause of the illness known as Covid-19, seems to have hit upon a pretty successful survival strategy. It has managed to spread around the world in just a few short months, finding a seemingly inexhaustible supply of food and shelter (that is, human bodies). It took our species millennia, even millions of years to do that. Like cockroaches and Asian tourists, this virus looks unstoppable. You've got at least to respect the shear persistence and tenacity of it.

From Today's Washington Post

We're doing more or less the same thing to the planet. We thought our population could just continue to expand and grow indefinitely, devouring the planet's resources as if they were limitless. But the Earth may have some defenses too, just as our bodies do.

Maybe the coronavirus is one the planet's ways of defending itself against a destructive parasite - humanity. Maybe the ecosystem is a self-regulating organism which, though slow, has the ability to adjust to threats and defend against them.

Maybe earth will exterminate us by sending waves of natural disasters and disease at us. Maybe it will just allow the biosphere to become uninhabitable by our execrable, invasive species so that we all die and go away. Or maybe, just maybe, our gorgeous self-correcting system of a planet will find some sort of balance where the virus will kill just enough of us to protect itself from our voracious appetite. Maybe.

I don't believe in grand intent, but I would love to believe there could be undiscovered natural laws that govern such things. Something like the law of conservation of energy that maintains a balance between life and its own tendency to self-destruct. I sure would like to think there's such a thing. I don't see any evidence of it, but who knows? Otherwise, if left to our own devices, it's looking increasingly like our species is gonna have a pretty bad time in the coming days.  

Of course, what seems inexhaustible never is. The virus will eventually run its course, killing some of the hosts and having most of them develop immunity. It will have to mutate and evolve if it wants to survive, adapting to humanity's ability to create antibodies and ultimately medicines that limit its success. I suspect humans will adapt to the earth's limitations and protective capabilities too. At least I'd like to hope so. In both cases, there will probably be a lot of death in the process.

Today's count

Gedanken Spring

The daffodils and tulips are gone, the dogwood bloom is over and the azaleas are fading. And just when I thought the spring's floral display was complete, up jumped a mysterious flower. Delicate little white things with pale yellow/green eyes protruding from a mass of grassy leaves. They're huddled in dark shadows of the flagging tulip leaves and emerging hostas. I didn't plant it and have never seen it in the 12 years I've lived here, but there are two small masses that seem to have come from nowhere. If it keeps up like this, I'll have a glorious flower bed filled with a continual bloom from February to May without having done a lick of work. My kind of gardening.

The mystery white flowers in my beds...

Ericaceae in Regalia

Crocus is long gone. Daffodils too. The tulips are played out and the dogwoods are even starting to look a bit bedraggled. Just when you think the party's over, out come the big guns. Like the final moments of Spring's fireworks display, the azaleas explode with a fury that leaves us breathlessly murmuring ooos, oohs and aahs. They hit you in the solar plexus. The drop kick you in the yarbles. In short, the just know you out.

Azaleas can make even the dullest house come to life.

Then, once they are done with their showstopping, it's time to do some pruning. And this is just about the time a homeowner needs to start the backbreaking chores associated with being a member of the landed gentry. It's a helluva lot of work for the fleeting glory of flowering shrubbery, but for some reason we do it.

Vernal Ephemera

Twice a year the National Capital area becomes a paradise. It happens in the interstices as the climate alternates between being a sweltering, foetid hellscape and being a wretched frozen death zone; and vice versa. These interstices are known as Spring and Fall. This Spring has been particularly lovely, as temperatures have remained stubbornly cool. So the flowers and trees have been preserved like a prom corsage in a refrigerator. Like life itself, the most beautiful things are ephemeral. Enjoy them while you can.

Cornus florida 'Comco No. 1', Cherokee Brave - aka Pink Dogwood

Memory and desire, stirring

So this happened. And every time it does, it takes me by surprise. That brazen trollop Nature, after months of shamelessly torturing us with her icy necrotic pincers, comes suddenly, voluptuously bounding from her hibernation bed and rubs her nectar scented genitals in our faces. How are we to resist her delirious charms? I, for one, will not. I will wrap myself in her warming embrace and trip through her kaleidoscopic fun house, her floral fantasia, and once again be reassured that hope and beauty persist and prevail. Somehow makes you glad to be alive, doesn't it? 

Nectar scented genitals

Spring, schpring

First day of Spring, my ass. That white stuff, for the uninitiated, is snow. On the astronomic first day of Spring. I suppose this will be the final evidence needed by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to completely discount climate change. From now on I guess the sight of snow, once a beloved opportunity for delight and wonderment, will forevermore be associated in my mind with that dipshit Jim Inhofe. I really wish he'd just go back to where he came from and stay among his kind.

The view out the Observatory window here at the MondoBlahBlah North Bethesda Command Center