It's About Time : April 2019

Adam and Eve in The Garden pf Edem Eating the Forbidden Fruit (detail), by Willem Vrelant, early 1460s

About My Obsession with People & Plants

Initially ancient mankind tried to gain some control over the constantly changing & often threatening natural surroundings by creating spaces to meet basic needs for shelter, family, food, healing, & safety.

The prehistoric discovery that some plants harm & others heal led man to search for & eventually grow life-sustaining food & healing plants. At the same time, mankind created myths about people & plants & events it just did not understand.

A garden became a planned space set aside for the practical cultivation of edible & medicinal plants, and/or for the display of decorative plants + garden ornaments & architecture.

As centuries passed, many "elite" transformed the landscape near their personal living space into the latest "garden-art" hoping to project to passers-by a powerful image of themselves - their wealth, refinement, & overall importance.

In General...

I am usually searching for WHY mankind's society changes & what those living before us declare in their own words and in their images of themselves & of the world around them.

Posting on the worldwide internet makes history less intimidating, more easily accessible, & available for most living in free societies.

Traditional historians rely on man's written & drawn records to interpret past progress & myths. The artifacts & science of archaeologists dig deeper to teach us more about our relative recent centuries & the hundreds of thousand years preceding it.

Their growing science forms the basis of our knowledge of civilizations before written & drawn records, most of which seem to be in Africa, Europe, & Asia. We don't know much about ancient cultures here in North America, but we need to.

Focusing mostly on the history of mankind's relationship with plants & gardens, on the history of Native Americans, and on the history of women, I put together several blogs, different in the particulars but similar in the essentials. Many are listed in the blogroll below.

Honored to have you here. Welcome! -

Barbara Wells Sarudy

It's About Time

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Adam & Eve in The Garden of Eden - Illuminated Manuscripts