My kind of gardening

This year it's petunias; last year it was geraniums. There are two hanging hooks on either side of my minuscule patio. The pots of flowers were a mother's day present. They flourish, I tend them with attention. This is the total of gardening I want to do. I love the bright pink.

Doing some introspecting, I think I like the petunias better than the geraniums because they give me wilted blossoms to pick off every day and new ones just keep coming along every day. Their life force is absolutely amazing. So much so I'm thinking of actually doing some research to find out if they grow wild someplace in the kind of abundance they show here by my door. What a sight that must be, if it exists. Like the proliferation of day lilies in the previous post. I think petunias play to an even more primitive impulse, way beyond intellectual curiosity. It's occurred to me that my daily habit of picking off the dead blossoms is like the habit of all the various apes to pick lice off one another -- grooming. A deeply ingrained satisfaction. If I were in a poetry writing mood I think I'd write a meditative poem on that subject -- I'm not in the mood so it's merely part of this blog post. Look beneath out veneer of civilization and not all those early impulses are negative. Some scientists are even looking for an "altruism gene".