There Are No Squares in Nature

What comes around is usually round

The squirrels have been eating the sunflowers.  We have a tall sunflower plant/bush with multiple flowers growing next to the deck.  I don’t know the name of it.  My husband is the gardener.  I’m just the admirer.

Sunflowers at sunrise.

Over the summer, I’ve watched it grow tall and strong, then dozens of flowers turned their yellow faces to the sun.  Bees swarmed – honeybees, bumblebees, other bees I can’t identify.  Hummingbirds flocked around the flowers as well.  The plant produced a popular pollen, turning into a pollinator saloon.  A yellow-legged spider has spun an intricate web among the branches, hoping to snare one the many visitors.

Now fall is here, and the flowers are disappearing as quickly as they bloom.  Squirrels shimmy up the sturdy branches to feast on the sunflower seeds.  They aren’t shy about it.  At any given time, I can open the back door and find a fat little squirrel lounging on the deck rail with a de-petaled flower in his grip, stuffing his chubby cheeks full of seeds.  If Bruce is with me, they drop their prize and scamper away while Bruce moves as fast as he can on his stubby little legs in hot pursuit. (Bruce is my dog, not my husband, to help you form an accurate mental image.)

Bruce Wayne, aka "Batman" aka "Doc McStubbins" aka "Mr. Stubby Nubbins"

I pick up the remains of the dropped flower and marvel at the symmetry of the seed distribution across the flower’s face.  Spiraling out from the center, the seeds form a Fibonacci spiral, although I’m not a mathematician and cannot confirm the accuracy of that observation.

My fingertips holding the flower have whorls and swirls in their prints.  The wood of the deck railing, although milled into straight boards with square edges, has knots and waves in the wood grain.  Trees grow straight but have rings when cut through their trunks. 

The spiral of seeds at the sunflower's center.

From my vantage point, I can see the house and garage are both square and straight.  The bricks in the garden walkway are square.  All things man-made have hard edges.  But nature has curves.  The fallen petals from the flower are tapered.  The stems of the sunflower plant are round, as are the seeds the squirrels covet.  So are the sun and moon.

Brick garden pavers, brick chimney, patterns in the wood of the deck railing, a sun ornament on the garage.

Stones found on the beach are round, their edges softened over time through the endless caresses of the waves.  I think of my own body which has become softer and rounder throughout the years, as if aging has brought its own series of waves to gently slough off the rough outer shell of youth.  Time carves each of us like a master sculptor releasing our true form from a block of marble. 

Each passing year strengthens the pull of the earth on my flesh.  Gravity intensifies with age.  How else do you explain why it gets harder and harder to get up from sitting on the floor?

Someday, the pull will become too great and each of us will be pulled under, to be buried in the ground.  But the earth itself will continue to spin around.  And all things in nature will continue to be round – an eye, a seed, the egg from which you will be reborn.  There is nothing square in nature.

Blueberries

What round things will you find in nature today?  Count the petals on a flower.  Pick up stones on the beach.  Roll the juicy globe of a berry between your fingertips.  Admire the shape of a well-formed cloud.  Feel the curve of your own hips under the weight of your palms. 

Today only comes once.  Make it a good one.

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