My Growing Passion
by Margaret Morgan
Biophilia: To explore and affiliate with life is a deep and complicated process
in mental development. To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion,
our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it,
hope rises on its currents. --Edward O.
Wilson, Biophilia.
CONTENTS My New Pond (Updated!) Small Things (New!) The Gorgeous Things I Did in My Horticulture Courses. Native Ponds (and Swimming Pools Converted to Very Big Native Ponds) and the Amazing Things that Live in Them. Gardening Australia Expo, 2006--Angus Stewart's Native Garden Excellent LinksOne of the Sydney Blue Gums (Eucalyptus saligna) in our old backyard. It's home to a range of birds and marsupials.Throughout
this site and related blog, you can see larger versions of the images by clicking on
them. Photos are taken by me unless otherwise indicated or where they
relate to books or products I recommend, in which case I trust the
copyright holders won't object to my using them. If you'd like to use
my images, feel free, although a credit and a link would be
appreciated. Please don't use the images here taken by others without permission. If you've suggestions for links on this site (preferably non-commercial), please let me know. | Welcome to my Growing Passion Website.
Lambertia formosa We live on Sydney's upper upper North Shore, on the city's very outskirts. Our new back garden adjoins Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. I'm now enrolled at Macquarie University in a B.Sc in Conservation and Biodiversity, and shortly take up a position at the National Herbarium, working on its bryophyte collection and Australia's Virtual Herbarium, a project that provides online access to the country's plant specimen data, using the resources of all the nation's herbaria. My other career is writing. For details of productions, broadcasts, recordings and publications, see my other website, Heliotrope. A CD of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's recording of my last work, "Night and Dreams: the Death of Sigmund Freud" (with composer Andrew Ford) is being released this year. Details closer to the date. My first career was as a lawyer, but that's so dull I won't inflict it on you--or me. As my old mate Rex says, a career path of Law, Letters and Leaf Litter. Hey, it works for me. Cheers, Margaret
"If you would be happy your whole life long, Biophilia is a word I love, but here's another: viriditas. It's first recorded use is apparently by the composer and writer Hildegard von Bingen in C11th CE, but more recently by the author Kim Stanley Robinson. From Green Mars, the second in his trilogy about the colonisation and terraforming of Mars: Look at the pattern this seashell makes. The dappled whorl, curving
inward to infinity. That's the shape of the universe itself. There's a
constant pressure, pushing toward pattern. A tendency in matter to
evolve into ever more complex forms. It's a kind of pattern gravity, a
holy greening power we call viriditas, and it is the driving force in the cosmos. Life, you see. In my terms, mathematics and the fundamental laws of physics, ineluctably leading, whenever possible, to life. Life isn't rare. It's virtually inevitable given the appropriate chemical conditions. I don't need the "holy" bit. But I do believe that if there is anything in my life that might be described as spiritual, it's my sense of humility and awe in the face of the complexity of nature and the poetry of self-replication in all its forms. But enough of the philosophising. I like getting dirt under my fingernails!
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