19/06/2008

Orquídeas da Serra dos Candeeiros (3)


Anacamptis pyramidalis

«The essential idea of Distributism is the idea of Directness. It concerns direct ownership, direct expression, direct creation and control. We do not say we are in favour of entirely abolishing indirect action. We do say that the modern world is entirely abolishing direct action. We do not say there ought to be no such thing as a cactus or an orchid grown in Kew Gardens, at the public expense for the public instruction. We do say that there will soon be no such thing as a cabbage really grown by private enterprise for private use (...) if we continue in our present direction; which might rather be called an indirection, seeing that it is in the direction of everything that is not direct.

It is assumed to be an intrinsic improvement that a man should grow a cabbage, cart a cabbage, sell a cabbage, and then take an omnibus to another town to buy another cabbage, instead of eating the cabbage he has grown. But we say that if everything depends on exchange, everything will depend on the rulers of exchange; and if everything depends on carting, we are putting the cart before the horse and the horse above man. It is only by the permanent potentiality of growing and eating the cabbages, that we may hope that the feeding of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The cabbage is whirled away on a great wheel from the man who has grown it, and returns to him after having gone the whole round of the official process of taxation, public expenditure, and public trade. Some think that the cabbage looks a little forlorn, and even slightly soiled or damaged, when it comes back out of that far-reaching machinery. (...) That sort of thing is inevitable but instructive: the instant a thing moves from home, out of the direct influence of its maker, it accumulates a dust or accretion of slightly alien things; and by the time it reaches its remote destination, it is not the thing that was sent forth.


It is so with the voice; it is so with the vote; it is so with the return in mere money for effort or expenditure; it is so in a comparatively trivial matter like the writing of a book, as compared with the printing or binding of a book. This is not, of course, a reason for not binding books or completing ordinary processes of civilization. (...) It is a reason for preserving deliberately a normal life that shall be more narrow and more genuine; in which we can argue with the men we have really met and enjoy the things we have really made.»

G. K. Chesterton, On Direct Action (1928)

5 comentários :

Paulo disse...

Há oitenta anos, Chesterton já se preocupava com uma questão que nos parece tão recente. Até há pouco tempo, por cá, o carro de que ele fala andava sempre atrás dos bois. Mesmo em Lisboa, ainda há quem mantenha umas hortas de meia-dúzia de metros quadrados nas bermas do eixo Norte-Sul, com couves-galegas e umas batatinhas. São os restos da ruralidade que teima em consumir o que produz.

Já os quintais, antigamente cuidados e verdejantes, a produzir nêsperas, laranjas e feijão-verde, têm-se transformado em matagais ou foram cimentados para permitir uma limpeza eficaz. São os alvores da modernidade.

Paulo disse...

Ah, já me esquecia de dizer que a colecção de orquídeas da Serra dos Candeeiros é linda.

Anónimo disse...

Bela sp. terrestre!

Anónimo disse...

Ainda conseguiram fotografar a pyramidalis em floração?

As duas Anacamptis pyramidalis que trouxe para o meu jardim, vindas do primeiro bosque cársico que recentemente explorei, já terminaram as suas. O aroma desta orquídea e a sua candura extraordinária tornam-na na minha favorita, razão pela qual eu a chamo a "princezinha" das orquídeas nativas.

E temos orquídeas nativas, entre as quais esta ou mesmo a Barlia robertiana ou a Cephalanthera longifolia ou a Orchis italica, que podiam ser divulgadas como plantas de jardim. Existem plantas autóctenes nossas com imenso potencial jardinístico. Por exemplo, neste momento já estou a preparar as encomendas de "Spanish Bluebells" (não para as ilhas britânicas que os odeiam, e com razão...), Hyacinthoides hispanica, para amantes de jardinagem que me os pediram para plantar (os bolbos) no próximo outono.

Anónimo disse...

flores lindas!!! há um blogue com inúmeras fotos de orquideas da serra da arrabida," Flores do meu jardim"