We have a lot of cottonwoods around here. They grow along the creeks or anywhere they can get at some water. Considering the ancient leaky water system that serves our town, that’s just about everywhere. But I digress. It’s cottonwood season in the valley. Female cottonwoods produce a seed surrounded by a tuft of fluff that looks like a cotton ball, and in cottonwood season the air is full of them, millions of them. They drift about on the wind hoping to land on a male cottonwood’s pollen. You can think of them as the cougars of the tree world. But again I digress. The point is that in the blink of an eye they can cease drifting about, coagulate into a single vortex of cotton balls traveling at warp speed with only one goal in mind. That blink of an eye happens when I open my garage door. That single goal: to fill my garage. At that moment, every cotton ball in Walla Walla County travels directly into it at the speed of light, there to remain in hiding from the evil ShopVac monster until, at last, they have each been captured and terminated, sometime around mid September. No doubt there is something theological about this, but I have no idea what it might be.
i look forward to reading your discovery.
i'm pretty sure a few of them traveled across the mountains with me. they were pretty quiet passengers :-)me, too – looking forward to the theological discovery of cottonwoods filling your garage.
Natural Theology: Apparently, contrary to both medieval scholastic theology, and also to Enlightenment Deism, Nature does not operate for the comfort and convenience of humanity, even in the \”long run\” (Leibnitz). For those who have allergies, it is even worse than a nuisance, the cottonwood trees' sexual activity! Dr B
I think Dr. B may have pinpointed my issue with cottonwood – he and my friend, \”Dr. Moerk\” who explained to me that she has a friend who became ill every time at the same time for several years after moving to WW. Finally discovering that an allergy rather than a cold germ was putting her \”under\” each year, her doctor put her on a regimen to avoid the nasty culprit. I'm thinking, hoping that next May I will catch this monster before it is out of control and has me bedridden again!!!