Our last two days' readings have generated a few comments, responding to the awareness of the darker side of nature.

On Day 19 Robert M. Hamma invites us to "Enjoy the Mess," observing, "Gardens inspire admiration for the way the gardener has crafted and arranged the natural beauty of flowers, shrubs, and trees. A forest inspires something else again -- awe. Amidst the remnants of the storm's chaos, beauty blooms."

One of us commented, "I like this e-course, and like this day's message far and away the best. It is the deepest, and for a forest-dweller, most meaningful so far."

Day 20 looked at the potentially life-threatening side of "Nature," prompting this comment from another reader, "I especially like yesterday's and today's readings. Both expressed the fullness of nature: It can be beautiful and thrilling in it's rotting, chaotic mess and awesome silent powerful vastness. I love that I already know nature that well."

Actually a classic English gardener, Mirabel Osler, has written, "A Gentle Plea for Chaos," in which she seems to undermine the urge to order: “So when I make a plea for havoc, what would be lost? Merely the pristine appearance of a garden kept highly manicured, which could be squandered for amiable disorder. Just in some places. Just to give a pull at our primeval senses. A mild desire for amorphous confusion which will gently infiltrate and, given time, will one day set the garden singing.”