Freshwater For Flowers Quotes

Landscapes of great wonder and beauty lie under our feet and all around us. They are discovered in tunnels in the ground, the heart of flowers, the hollows of trees, fresh-water ponds, seaweed jungles between tides, and even drops of water. Life in these hidden worlds is more startling in reality than anything we can imagine. How could this earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures?

Today, cardinal-flower is a legally protected species and should never be picked or removed from the wild.

When one is in the woods, on a day like this, one feels altogether connected again to the very fabric of the world. The green, calming canopy of branches and leaves overhead lets sunlight trickle through from above in just the right dose, and the breeze is filtered through miles and miles of trees and bush and carries the scent of every flowering dogwood and every freshwater spring and pond, mingling with every lake and river and stream and every good creature that walks through the halls of the forest. In the woods, one senses there is no evil, no greed, no tyrant, no oppressor, no malady, but indeed a deep wellspring of meaning returns. To be connected to the woods is to be connected to the very art of life itself, and to walk along the stones and mosses, and under the tall trees and over the fallen trees and alongside the wet, rotten stumps is to be reminded of the great circus mystery and magic of being itself.

The earliest relics at Jericho date to an era before humans invented pottery, around 9500 b.c.e., a millennium and a half earlier than the pits of Aberdeenshire’s Warren Field. In antiquity, people came to Jericho for two reasons: a freshwater spring and the Moon. Jericho’s spring, now named Ein es-Sultan, was a popular gathering spot for the hunter-gatherer people called the Natufians. Beyond its life-giving waters, a spring is also a potent symbol for people fixated on human fertility, as we know many Neolithic people were. Like other early hunter-gatherer groups, the Natufians are known by the tiny stone tools they left behind. They are called lunates: small crescent-shaped stones used to cut grasses. Natufian hunter-gatherer groups visited the Jericho spring in warm seasons. Around 9600 b.c.e., a period of droughts and cold called the Younger Dryas finally ended, and the Natufians stayed put in Jericho. The oldest city on Earth grew up around these water seekers. Befitting the spring’s connection to fertility rituals, Jericho became a pilgrimage site for worshippers of the Moon. Scholars have a few theories for the origin of the city’s name—some say it derives from a word meaning “fragrant,” describing its abundant flowers—but the Palestinian government’s tourism office describes Jericho as “the City of the Moon.” Jericho was an early center of worship for a Canaanite god named Yarikh, a god represented by the Moon. People traveled to the city to visit a temple to his honor. This may also explain the origins of other proto-cities of the third millennium b.c.e. The temple probably came first, and a city stirred to life in the buildings erected around it.

It was, as commissioned, an ox-bike wagon: double-decked, chunky-wheeled, ready for adventure. An object of both practicality and inviting aesthetics. A mural decorated the vehicle’s exterior, and its imagery couldn’t have been mistaken for anything but monastic. Depicted large was Allalae’s bear, well fed and at ease in a field of flowers. All of the Sacred Six’s symbols were painted on the wagon’s back end, along with a paraphrased snippet from the Insights, a phrase any Pangan would understand. Find the strength to do both. Each of the wagon’s decks had a playful arrangement of round windows, plus bubbled exterior lights for the darker hours. The roof was capped with shiny thermovoltaic coating, and a pint-sized wind turbine was bolted jauntily to one side. These, Sister Fern explained, were the companions of the hidden sheets of graphene battery sandwiched within the walls, which gave life to varied electronic comforts. On the wagon’s sides, a broad assortment of equipment clung to sturdy racks—storage boxes, tool kits, anything that didn’t mind some rain. Both freshwater tank and greywater filter hugged the wagon’s base, their complicated inner workings tucked away behind pontoon-like casings. There were storage panels, too, and sliding drawers, all of which could be unfolded to conjure a kitchen and a camp shower in no time flat. Dex entered the contraption through its single door, and as they did so, a knot in their neck they hadn’t been aware of let go. The disciples of Chal had built them a tiny sanctuary, a mobile burrow that begged Dex to come in and be still. The interior wood was lacquered but unpainted, so the warm blush of reclaimed cedar could be appreciated in full. The lighting panels were inlaid in curled waves, and bathed the secret space in a candle-like glow. Dex ran a hand along the wall, hardly believing this thing was theirs. “Go on up,” Sister Fern coaxed, leaning against the doorway with a glint in her eye. Dex climbed the small ladder to the second deck. All memory of their neck knot vanished from existence as they viewed the bed. The sheets were creamy, the pillows plentiful, the blankets heavy as a hug. It looked impossibly easy to fall into and equally difficult to get out of. “We used Sibling Ash’s Treatise on Beds as a reference,” Sister Fern said. “How’d we do?” Sibling Dex stroked a pillow with quiet reverence. “It’s perfect,” they said.