Music of the Spheres

Now that my entertainment system is back up and running again, thanks to my son-in-law, Tyler, I have been thinking about adding to it. It is pretty neat to be able to stream movies, listen to my i-pod through some really decent speakers and enjoy all of the bells and whistles I now have. However, for several years I have been thinking about setting up exterior speakers, so that I can enjoy music while I'm working in the garden.

Of course, this brings up the subject of the type of music I will play through those exterior speakers. After all, I'm not the only one listening to the music when it is playing out doors. There are my neighbors, who are all too close, but to tell the truth, I could care less about their preferences in music. I refuse to play Onward Christian Soldiers. I'm more concerned with the wildlife and plants and their reaction to the tunes. Sounds crazy, right? I guess the potential impact on wildlife might be obvious. I am working hard to try to attract wildlife into our yard, or at least some types of wildlife. I would prefer not to have visits from coyotes, although Joyce saw one a couple of weeks ago out back. It's the birds that I don't want to scare away. We've set up feeders and bird baths and have been enjoying an increase in avian traffic ever since. I doubt that hard rock would be appreciated by the chickadees and juncos that flock to the feeders. Any type of loud noise generally scares them off.

However, the plants are a whole other question. Ever since 1966 when a guy in Britain named Clive Backster hooked up a dracena plant to a lie detector, there has been a segment of gardeners who believe that plants are capable of tuning into human emotion. It seems that Backster originally hooked the plants up to monitor the effect of water consumption, but instead found something totally different. He discovered that like humans, who react on a lie detector when they perceive a threat to their well being, plants also reacted. According to his notes, while he was doing his experiement the thought came to him "What if I burn the leaf of the plant" Now, he didn't verbalize this or touch the plant, he merely thought about burning the leaf. When he had the thought, the needle jumped right off the chart! His experiment has been replicated in labs around the world in the years since.

One of the things that came out of that experiment was the discovery that plants respond to music. Apparently, they hate death metal and hard rock, but they love classical music. Of course, this limits my choice quite a bit. What if they are OK with singer songwriters such as James Taylor, but can't stand Ben Harper? What if they like show tunes? You can see the problem. I guess I'll have to do more research into this before I set the speakers up. If I feel like rocking, I may have to use my ipod with headphones. I'd hate to go to all the work of nurturing and pampering my favorite plants only to kill them with the wrong tunes.