Going to Seed: Essays on Idleness, Nature, and Sustainable Work

An abandoned place, a disheveled person, a shabby or deteriorating state: we describe such ruin colloquially as "going to seed."

But gardeners will protest: going to seed as idle? No, plants are sending out compressed packets filled with the energy needed to sow new life. A pause from flowering gives a chance for the seeds to form.

In a time of urgent environmental change, of pressing social injustice, and of ever-advancing technologies and global connections, we often respond with accelera...