Global Swarming Honeybees: Mossed in Thought

5.02.2008

Mossed in Thought

I'm an avid moss-lover, so I'm glad to see the small but growing movement toward replacing lawn grass with moss. Humble, sensuous, ancient, and weirdly postmodern—moss is a truly underrated pleasure (a victim of biobigotry?). It's about time it got its due.

The New York Times (whose headquarters now includes an open-air birch-and-moss garden) has an article today about moss gardening. The piece touches upon the ecological benefits of skipping the water-intensive lawn and going with the Buddhist-like serenity of the less-thirsty, no-mow bed of moss.
Gazing at moss in all its intricacy and greenitude evokes a soft, pristine mental state that even the prettiest lawn can't approach. To learn more about moss gardens, check out these resources:

Mossy Acres

Saiho-ji Zen Garden

Moss Gardening—a great book by George Schenk that I've spent many hours happily exploring.
Whatever you do, don't miss this cool how-to site on moss graffiti.
You may also like the moss art of Brooklyn-based Edina Tokodi, as featured on the wonderful Inhabitant blog.

1 comment:

Linda T said...: My backyard is all moss and I love the softness of the green. Sometimes as the summer goes on, grass pops up here or there, but mostly it's moss. I love the moss graffiti site - Gerry, where in the world do you find all of this wonderful stuff? I LOVE your posts.; May 2, 2008 at 5:44 PM

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Quotes of Note

"The cynicism that you have is not your real soul."—Yoko Ono
"The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance."—Gail Collins
"How do you inherit the earth? By being awake."—Joni Mitchell
Causing the right amount of trouble is an art form.”—Judith Coche
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."—Philip K. Dick
"A meddling beekeeper is said to be the bees' worst enemy, and this may be true."—Ormond Aebi, The Art and Adventure of Beekeeping
"For too long we have been locked in an old fashioned, reductionist approach, dealing with bees as if they were mere machines created solely for our benefit, instead of highly evolved, wild creatures, with which we are privileged to work."—Phil Chandler, The Barefoot Beekeeper
"Neither among the bees nor any other animals that have a ray of our intellect, do things happen with the precision our books record. Too many circumstances remain unknown to us."—Maurice Maeterlinck
"In these times, acceleration spoils everything."—Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Musicologist
"Whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt."—Barbara Kingsolver
"Healthy, happy bees don't need any additives."—Dee A. Lusby
"When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird."—Audubon
"There is a certain valid moment for every cloud."—Paul Strand

"For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people—a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance."—Wm. Longgood, The Queen Must Die