In the springtime a middle-aged man’s thoughts often revolve around getting some yard work done. When the man has a brain as strange as mine, even around-the-house chores can take on more meaning than is really conducive to getting any work done.
For example, every May the yard around my house is strewn with seeds from the five tall maple trees that surround the lot. If I don’t pick them up while they’re seeds, they sink into the ground and soon become little maple trees. Lots and lots of little maple trees. It’s as though a corner lot in Chicago is trying to become a primeval maple forest.
While I’m picking up the seeds (they’re those helicopter-y things that drift kind of gently from the high tree-tops to deposit themselves on the soil without breaking apart. Quite an amazing natural adaptation) I can’t help but notice how much they resemble sperm cells, in form and in function; each is a packet of DNA with a tail to provide mobility. One thing is looking for a place to grow into a maple tree and the other is looking for a place where it can grow into a mammal. The sperm swims to an egg. The seed floats to the soil: its version of a growth-habitat.
But this is just my mind wandering while I’m doing yard work. No biologists draw any connection between seeds and semen. Life is diverse. Plants and people actually have very little in common other than being living things, beginning as small bits of genetic material that need a place to grow, growing to be a renewed version of their parents, going on to reproduce in kind once they’ve reached maturity. Um, That’s about it. Oh, and plants and animals are each made up of cells. But they’re different kinds of cells.
Other than that, humans have nothing whatsoever in common with the rest of life on earth. We just happen to be living beings.
Right?
There’s a small photo story about a small adventure I had yesterday while I was picking up maple semen.
I mean SEEDS.
Trouble is, at this time I don’t know how to get photos to show full-size on this page and I’ll have to figure that out before the photo story can be posted here the way I want it to post. Maybe tomorrow…
