NATURE
How Planting a Garden for Pollinators Helped Heal My Screenbrain
Immersing ourselves in aliveness helps us stay alive
Screenbrain Syndrome
My work is mostly on the computer, writing, editing, uploading or zooming. It got worse with the pandemic. There is nothing like the particular kind of exhaustion screenbrain can create. I began to feel non-human, disconnected and confused. So I asked myself: What can I do that is not on the screen that will feed and nurture my wholeness? What came to me was to plant a garden but not just any old garden: a flower garden and flowers the pollinators will love. For some reason watching and being around pollinators feeds me and gives me hope.
“The greatest Mesozoic creativity in the plant world was the flower in Cretaceous times. The sexuality of the flowering plants (angiosperms) was an order of magnitude more fecund than that of the gymnosperms. Where a conifer would require eighteen months to produce its seeds, a flower could grow from a seed to amateur plant capable of releasing its own seeds all in a few weeks. Added to its fecundity was the symbiotic relationship between the insect world and the flower. Insects drawn to the nectar unknowingly transport pollen from one flower to the next, fertilizing the plants on which they…
