Summer                                                                New (First Harvest) Moon

We just had a gully washer.  We called’em that back in Indiana though I didn’t know what
a gully was for a long time.  The rain was intense, coming down in sheets from a black sky.  Some thunder.  Looked like a hurricane.  Good for the crops.  We said that back in Indiana, too.

Kona, our oldest dog, now 12 years +, has begun a decline due to a cancer lodged in her right shoulder.  I looked outside today, watching the rain pound the orchard and our flower and vegetable gardens, and thought of the close bond between caring for animals and caring for plants.  They go together, and raising a family does, too.  Nurture is part of nature, not separate, as the false dichotomies of science and popular wisdom have it.

There is nature without nurture, but there is never nurture without nature.  And there is never good nurture that is not part of nature, that is, nurture that takes with total seriousness the lived way of another being and attempts to provide some guidance, some aid, some assistance so that that nature might be fulfilled.  At its best nurture leads the other to become the richest and most it can be on its own terms, that is, in its nature.

Kona, like all the sighthounds with whom we’ve shared our lives, has gone her own way, decided what suited her best, and she’s done it with our support:  annual physicals, regular medications, good food, shared naps and nights on the couch, a sister to grow up with (Hilo, who died three years ago) and other dogs to form a pack.  This is, or at least I like to think it is, nurture in support of nature.

When nurture opposes or distorts nature, then terrible things can result.  To stay in the dog world, look at Michael Vick and dog fighting.  In the human world think of the despair of all those students taught to the high stakes tests who fail.  Or, the soils burned and leached and flogged by agriculture methods that nurture only to destroy.