There’s an amazing plant known as “Boston ivy”, or “False Vine”, which grows up the largest, old stone wall on one border of my garden. Actually the wall has fallen down now, but the vine is still growing, and has in fact made the gaping wound of the collapse considerably more beautiful.
I’ve had great pleasure from this vine over the last five and half years. It changes SO much with each season. This particular photo is taken in early Spring when the dormant, rather bare, plant is waking up and emerging from the Winter.
The first sign of its awakening is the appearance of the these bright red buds which look like pen tips, or the beaks of tiny finch-like birds. If you look carefully, maybe especially at the one which is most “top right” of the group, the woody part of the stem even looks like it has created an eye, which with the red bud bursting forth, makes this look even more like the head of a little bird with a bright red beak.
One of the things I find most attractive about a phenomenon like this in Nature is how it demonstrates symmetries and echoes of other parts of the world. As far as I am aware, there are no little finches with bright red beaks in this part of the world, so it’s only my awareness of them from other experiences that allows me to see these buds as suggestive of something else.
I think a lot of symmetries, echoes and resonances are like that. We have to have the other prior experiences and knowledge, we have to have an open mind, really paying attention to the detail of what is right before our eyes, but we also need imagination.
Without imagination could these resonances exist?
That question, suddenly, reminds me of the old “Does a tree falling in a forest make a noise if there is nobody there to hear it?”
Well, does it?
Heroes Not Zombies 
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