Ashes to Nutrients
When death calls, keep the carbon cycle going
My father died recently. And then flowers came. “No flowers, please,” said the death announcement. A donation to a charity, instead, please. Still the flowers came. They were nice. They scented the room. They cheered me slightly. They made me think of the friends and family thoughtful enough to send them. And then they too died. As will my friends.
I’m in that kind of mood.
What should we do with life when death intrudes? I’m still working through it. But I will say this. As the summer gets ever more fecund and green, what really stays in my heart is the perennial raspberry bush a friend gave me a decade or so ago. The gift cost him exactly nothing and was given to me after I suffered another loss. I happened to be visiting his farm. On the morning of my departure I sat there admiring his sprawling acres and his fulsome bushes. “Why not take one?” he said. He shoved a spade into the earth, carved out one root ball from the glob of tendrils in the ground and put it all in a container.
According to a 2007 study a single cut rose can cost as much as 6 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.
The brave raspberry survived the seven hour drive home in my trunk and when I planted…
