Grow-Blossom-Prune and Clip-Return to the Earth

Apropos of my last blog, I want to add some more comments on mulching. But first, I must say without being  too prissy that the word "blog" is an unfortunate one, vulgar sounding, as though connotative of some blockage for which one calls the rotorooter man.  Elemental, Eh? That said, however, without blogs, neither I nor you would be participating in this creative interchange.
   If you hear the sound of my clippers clicking off in my garden, it is a signal that I am grooming plants and shrubs and trees, and clipping up the twigs and branches into little piece that I in turn spread on the earth of the plant-island beds. I see now, in the midst of summer, that the beds are being fertilized naturally and holding water as a result of this. That which grows, blossoms and dies was nourished by water, fertilizer, and care, and why should the plant leafiage and such be dumped in the landfill?  It shoudn't! It is a Naural cycle that it be returned to the earth as the nourishing Mater that will always sprout grasses and flowers in spring, even after atomic disasters as occurred at Chernobyl and Fukushima. Have you seen the wonderful TV documentary about the vibrant (yet  still relatively radioactive) life that is returning ever more vigorously to the environs of Chernobyl?  Eight foot catfish breeding in radioactive sediment ponds and birds singing and raising young. It is a reassuring thing to see this ressurrection, and may we all hope and pray that mankind gets his act in order and that such destruction does not happen again. A lot remains to be seen in the future at these sites, but at least Nature is healing itself within the rich detritus of plant and animal life.
   Nature has a way of decomposing and regenerating itself into a fecundating substrate that helps seeds to sprout, and in the case of Chernobyl, for wolves to frolic and breed pups; a less chemical path than that of Miracle-Gro. This is the quintessential Eternal Return that I stand in awe of. It will take a very long time for all of Nature to heal at these places, and for mankind to return but in our own gardens we can mitigate the polluting dusts and gases and toxins by growing "Our Own Gardens" as Voltaire, that smiling philospher of wit, intelligence, insight and joyful irascibilty stated in the last sentences of "Candide." Both Voltaire's "Candide" and Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" are required for a possible but not probable short quizz on my next  ----.