Extras page 6 of 7

Mary, Mary, quite contrary
This is the version that we tend to know
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells, and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.

Anyone at any time in history would wonder how flowers come to be.

This though below is the earliest that we know of the rhyme , published in 1745 in a nursery rhyme book. It is not known if there was an earlier version. If this was adapted from an earlier version then there is no way to interpret the meaning of it. But lets say that it is the original.

Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells,
And so my garden grows.

The interpretations of its meaning include connotations to religion and past Queens. There is no consensus of course as it was written over 250 years ago and nothing is known of it’s origin other than it was in that book.
Taking it at face value , we could though concentrate on the question mark that follows how does your garden grow.
Photosynthesis was not known about until 30 years after the writing of this version of the rhyme. Therefore anyone in 1745 would be wondering how plants and flowers and trees grow and where they get their substance from. We still of course are wondering today about it even with the knowledge of photosynthesis.
But in 1745 it could have been that throwing that question at someone who is being quite contrary , simply tells another person to stop being contrary as they don’t , like anyone else , have a clue about anything , especially like how the garden produces flowers. To call someone contrary is often to sum up another person as being less than honest and telling them that they are more interested in their own contrariness than the essence of a subject.
Then it might be considered as sarcasm that follows.
With Silver Bells, And Cockle Shells,
And so my garden grows.
The ‘my’ could be the writer saying that they now know the understanding of the others how their garden grows and it’s lets move on as we don’t know how our garden grows.

Could it have been personal or gobbledygook and nothing more.
It could have been about anything of course , so if there was any meaning in it , that is never going to be known. But it was common knowledge at this time that the earth was round and anyone thinking about how plants grow , would have been wondering about how a seed produces roots that go down and the stem with it’s flower goes up.
People at the time would of course like us today be wondering how a seed in the first place comes about to be able to do what it does.
But they would also have had a think and would have planted seeds in any position in the soil and found that the plant still grows with roots going down and the stem with it’s flower goes up. Today , no matter how we manipulate a seeds environment to try and find out how a seed does what it does , we just don’t know if all of the outcome is held in the seed. We just can’t apply any of our science to it.
What they did discover though is that it doesn’t require a seed to grow another plant or a tree. A plant or tree can be cloned by cutting off a part of it and planting it. It’s called propagation. A leaf or even a part of a leaf can be planted and can grow as a copy of whatever plant it came from. It happens in the wild too. They can develop roots and everything. Hard to think about , but it would mean that the initial seed has given all of it’s abilities to every single leaf.
To say that that happening evolved would require some quite extraordinary evidence, the kind of evidence that won’t be found in fossils or DNA. It won’t be found anywhere else because that kind of happening couldn’t evolve. You’d have to have a principal before the leaves on the plant could propagate. That is , the leaves would have the property of being able to propagate as soon as they existed born out of the phenomena of being able to do it.

On roots going down and the stem going up in gravity , it’s been tried in space ships and so far no understanding has been gained about it. The plant in space gets totally confused and our thoughts on it all take on different realms of understanding to this. Not sure if any plant in space has produced any seeds , but if they have , ( update , they have ) then those seeds might have new properties that allow it to grow better in a gravity free environment. Having said that though , we havn’t produced a plant that likes sunlight to grow with no sunlight.

So, we can’t make the roots grow up or the flower stem to grow down , unless we take it to the other side of the planet where the up or down is in a different direction because of gravity. We ourselves stand up against gravity in a logical position with two feet on the ground and could walk around the earth always with feet on the ground. To do that seems to require the us in us to do it , and there isn’t an animal on earth that can’t do it. Although we don’t understand how we do it , we do do it. Could it be that trees and flowers and plants also in some way possess that ability to do it in their own or similar way.
Maybe there is some inner will to move or grow , but nothing of course explains how the phenomena of anything physical exists for that inner will to move or grow in. Ultimately though is that we humans have what we call thinking about these things , and even if thought is a thing like moving or growing , the thoughts could be just a side line to the reality. That is that to stand up from a sitting position takes something. Is it a singular thing to do that or is it multi.
But is it though comparable to think that plants and flowers and trees have in them the abilities like thought that we have to do that standing up in gravity.

If we had some sort of mathematics to look at the spread of leaves on a tree or a bush , we might just find that all of those leaves are positioned one hundred percent to get the maximum from the sun in the situation that they find themselves growing. How would they get that maximum. We ourselves could not put those leaves in the best position to capture the light from the sun that rises and falls throughout the day and year.
The possibilities for that maximum to occur would be that either that the sun causes the leaves to be placed in their spread or that the plant and leaves themselves move themselves into the maximum positions to get the sun. Either way , it’s quite something.
Ultimately though , it is quite bizarre how a seed exists and does what it does. It is of course amongst all the other bizarreness , but just on the seed , we just can’t put sentences together to talk about it. Yes , we can say that it needs water and soil and sun , but for purpose here , what is the evidence that points to it having evolved.
In straight forward thinking , seeds have never been less than what they are. If they were less than what they are then there would have to be the evolution of what they do. That is , the tree seed makes another tree and has never done anything else in the past. That’s what seeds do.
It’s the idea that they evolved. Nothing more.
No wonder we wonder how the garden grows.

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