A to Z Challenge

A Tribute to the letter N

This afternoon, we were listening to the radio and "Circle of Life" was playing. My husband said that the voice sounded very familiar and like it was a well known artist. I didn't know who it was.  Then my daughter said that it was Elton John. She said that if it's Circle of Life, it has to be Elton John. To me the term circle of life brings back memories of my father working in our backyard and talking to the man who delivered the dirt and the mulch and discussing the circle of life. They would discuss how nature works, how every year they plant vegetable plants and vines and every year the same plants start becoming part of earth and dirt. I always used to get upset over all that.
In Sunday school we learned that nature is a servant of man (human beings.) I felt sad about the fact that nature has to be our servant. Then I was told by a friend of my grandmother that sometimes Sunday school teachers do not know how to best teach the realities of life. She always used to help me with solving mind boggling issues. I loved plants and flowers and fruits and vegetables hanging from the plants. I could not imagine them to be our servants. So when I was told that we are just as much servants and caretakers of nature as it is of us, it made me feel better. It made my mom feel better too.There was only fifteen years of an age difference between my mom and me. So the talk would be for both of us.
In college, in our Botany lecture we were told that "Nature in its ministry to man is not only the material, but is also the process and the result."  We generally would jot down things and elaborate. I had a lot of help with that. My parents, my grandmother and our housekeeper taught me about how water evaporates from the seas and falls back on the Earth as rain, how plants use the rainwater and sometime the same rain would travel in clouds to distant lands and fall off as snow. It was hard to believe but I see it here in New York every winter.
My thirst of wanting to learn about Nature will probably be in me until my last breath. Today I read nature blogs, (Especially Desert Canyon Living), and thanks to the internet, I learn and enjoy so much. We did get the National Geographic for sometime but when we got to see the same people who work for the magazine presenting shows on the television we stopped buying the magazine.
Some old fashioned apothecaries say that  the healing powers of  nature are only limited by man's idleness. My mom told us that meditation is a natural way of healing and repairing our body's wear and tear. Appreciating nature is a way of meditation. Baby animals, flowers, seagulls, oceans, birds flying in an order, mountains - the sources are unlimited. She said that it gives our mind a break as well.
I like to listen to what William Wordsworth said  "Let Nature be your teacher."