Our Fragile Earth

Day 298: Today a flower is featured not for itself, but as a symbol of the fragility of the environment in which we live. Seen from space, the Earth is a big blue marble, its seas greatly vaster than its land surfaces, a world of water. All living things depend upon water for their existence; pure water, clean water. As would a man, without water, the Earth would die.

It has recently come to light that Mankind is polluting water sources in a heretofore unimagined way. Chemicals added to foodstuffs are not necessarily fully processed by the human body before they are again discharged as waste. The same is true of chemicals dispensed as medicines. It has been theorized that reintroduction of these chemical substances into the biosphere is a factor in the evolution of "super-bugs," disease-causing germs and bacteria which are resistant to antibiotics. Through exposure to low-level dosages now found in ground water, the "bugs" are developing an immunity to previously effective medicines.

Linum narbonense (a garden cultivar of Flax, the plant which gives us fibers for linen) is a delicate little thing. It is as fragile as the Earth on which we live, and as blue as the waters on which we depend.