The Sense of The Seasons

Have you ever noticed how just when the winter cold and 'flu' season comes on strong, the orange and lemon trees are bursting with ripe juicy fruit full of vitamin C, just what people need to help protect us from virus infections and recover more quickly if we catch one?

Co-incidence? No. Nature is intelligent. If we imagine the vitamin C story repeated across thousands of different plants, nutrients and areas of the earth, we start to get a glimpse into the magnitude of that intelligence. But how does nature "know"?

The fact that we even need to ask this question points to a gap in what we have been taught: you are you, I am I, the tree is the tree, we each go our own ways, lead our own lives, are separate beings. But this is only true in a very limited way.

Have you heard of homeostasis? How about just "balance" or "equilibrium"? Is it a co-incidence when in the cold of winter our bodies burn more calories to keep warm and we eat more to supply those calories, many of us even putting on a bit of extra fat? Or when you are frightened and your adrenal glands release adrenalin to increase your blood pressure so more blood gets to your muscles to help you run fast, and once the danger is over your body breaks down the excess adrenalin and you return to a calm state?

Not co-incidences at all. This is homeostasis in operation. These are examples of our whole body sensing the environment and working all of its various parts and systems to respond appropriately at any moment, to restore balance and keep all the cells and organs working optimally as the outside environment continually changes.

If we let go of the idea that we are all separate, and see ourselves and the plants as parts ("cells" and "organs") of a bigger body, the Earth, then it makes sense that this seasonal cycle of nutrients "custom-made" for us is part of the planet's homeostasis, part of its intelligence just like on the smaller scale within each of our human bodies.

Modern science hardly knows a tiny fraction of the ways this system of the whole Earth's eco-physiology, including us, works at such a detailed level. But we don't need to wait for scientists to discover it all for us first (a long, expensive and very difficult journey, I can say from personal experience!). We can get really simple and natural about it, realize that we are part of the whole and eat fresh foods that grow where we live, when they naturally ripen, and let nature's intelligence take care of us as part of its maintenance of equilibrium.