Almond Tree

I love our almond tree, every time I come into contact with it I am filled with an upsurge of lovely tree-ness. Here it is, in its hour of glory. It took some days for the intense but slight almond-honey scent to develop.

It had been planning to flower some time ago, but kept its buds closed tight against a barrage of hoar frosts, gales and lashing rain.

Then it was really ready to open, it was bursting, it was holding on...I fretted about my beloved almond tree, would it choose the right moment? The weather cleared. Still the tree did not flower, it was waiting, it knew better than me when would be the moment.

I dipped into my biodynamic calender, the next 'flower' day was over a week away. It seemed to me impossible that the tree could avoid bursting forth for another week away. Last year it flowered in mid February, it was already the well into March, and the buds were straining at the leash.

On the eve of the flower day the little buds unleashed the first few flowers, and on the flower day itself, the first glorious sunny day for what seems like months, the tree bloomed. And ever since, it has been blue skies and warm sun. What a wise old tree.

Once upon a time in the 1960s a research chemist called Marcel Vogel was visited by a young woman who claimed an affinity with plants. He invited her to take part in an experiment. He wired up the plants to something similar to a lie detector and she went into a sort of meditative state, here is how she describes her experience:

First I wondered how I would get inside the plant, I made a con scious decision to let my imagination take over and found myself entering the main stem through a doorway in its base...there were no mental pictures, rather a feeling that I was becoming part of, and filling out, a broad expansive surface...there was no sense of time, just a feeling of unity in existence and space. I smiled spontaneously and let myself be one with the plant'.

The lie detector went zany when she 'went in' and died down when she 'came out'. The name of this young woman, I did not make this up, was Debbie Sapp ...

This story comes from a book published by Penguin called 'The Secret Life of Plants' by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It's an extraordinary read. It was published some time ago and it doesn't seem to have been discredited (although some sceptics disagree with it and claim to have discounted it). I'm still trying to get to the root of it...