"...and even though you're pinned down by a war you've never felt more at peace."

Okay. It's time to make up for all this lost time. Get ready for at least three blog posts in a row full of all the fantastical, majestic, indescribable nature photos I know you've been waiting for. But first, I will start with my own photos and give you a little plant update. As of right now my corn, green beans, potatoes, marigolds, and carrots have all sprouted. My spider plant is still alive, but making little progress. It seems to not want to get bigger, but at the same time, isn't dying or even showing signs of poor health. I'm not really sure what else I can do for it. I might steal some more nutritious soil from the botanical gardens and see if that helps.



These are my pride and joys. My green beans. I have 5 other green bean plants besides this one. At the time this picture was taken I had at least 20 green beans, These were two of the biggest ones. When I went in last week though there were at least 10 big enough to eat. I tried one of them and it was, I kid you not, the best green bean I have ever had. These green beans have no pesticides and are grown with no fertilizer. I think the difference is noticeable.



This is one of my 4 surviving corn plants. One was lost to a botched transplant RIP. This one has grown at least 5 inches taller since this photo was taken.



So far I have four potatoes. Hopefully more to come :)

Sorry these pictures are such poor quality. My camera broke a few months ago and I just got a new canon rebel a few days ago only to realize it didn't come with a memory card. This week I plan to go get one and then I will take pictures of my plants to post on here. For now though, you will have to accept camera phone pictures.

My other interesting information of the week is actually about war. I am in this other class where we are reading war novels and I'm starting to see a lot of parallels between war and nature. Not just the great outdoors sort of nature, but also human nature, and the agent that's controlling the universe sort of nature. The reason war reminds me of this is because in every classic war book I have read so far, the soldiers feel that free will is an illusion and that they are pawns in not only the war, but in the scheme of the universe. Many of them try to make a connection to nature in order to feeler closer to the root of this bigger picture.

In other novels, such as; The Things They Carried, the characters are surrounded by constant destruction and death, but are at the same time surrounded by the beautiful and unfamiliar landscapes of Vietnam. The soldiers will be surrounded by gunfire and dying men one moment and then look up to see a calm, brilliant blue sky over the lush forests on the horizon in the next. To them, this dramatic shift between destruction and creation is almost surreal. Many of the characters use their connections with nature as a way to cope with the terror they witness every day.

"You're pinned down in some filthy hellhole of a paddy, getting your ass delivered to kingdom come, but then for a few seconds everything goes quiet and you look up and see the sun and some puffy white clouds, and the immense serenity flashes against your eyeballs -- the whole world gets rearranged -- and even though you're pinned down by war you've never felt so at peace."