Prairie Garden Coaching Right Here

I'm looking to help you plant natives. No job is too big or too small, too messy or too clean of a slate. Give me your tired lawns and overgrown hedges, your wildlife yearning for sanctuary in a chem-free environment. Give me your new build, your deck pots, your cRaZy landscape, your right of ways and school grounds. Link on over.

L.A.W.N. -- Lusty Advocate for Wayward Nihilism

It has begun weeks early. As I type my walls are vibrating, and my neighbor is dripping sweat about to fall over, pushing his slave-driving mechanism back and forth over a chemically-dependent lawn, green unnaturally early. He must love it, because the instant the lawn turned this week he's out there.

The guy across the street mowed last weekend before his lawn was 50% green. Now that it's 75% he made sure to get up at 9 this morning and let everyone know 6 months of sheer hell was upon us like some starving grizzly bear looking for a mate.

I really, really must know what's with this ritual, why people enjoy this, what they get out of it, why these lawns are so important, what it does for them, what drives them. If I walked around the neighborhood taking an informal survey, I'd just end up getting punched in the face. But it beats hearing lawnmowers, smelling that exhaust, thinking about the greenhouse effect and all the money we give to petro-chemical corporations, imagining fields of wildflowers paved over with rolls of sod, watching birds flee to trees like ghosts.

The only wildlife I see in lawns around here are dogs squatting over brown patches laying chocolate eggs. 

We need an acronym, so if you come up with a good one, let me know. Here are some:

L.A.W.N.

Likely A Wonky Nationalism

Leaping Anally While Needy

Look, A-holes Waking Neighborhood

Lacking Any Wisdom (about) Nature

Lusty Advocate for Wayward Nihilism

Lusciously Against Wildlife & Nature

Sandhill Cranes in Flight

We went and saw the cranes again last Sunday, but unlike 2011, it was hard to find them. They seemed more scattered and skittish, maybe because the wind was coming out of the south at 40mph. Last year the weather was foggy and 45, this year sunny and 80.

The photos from last year have the cranes at a distance and mostly standing, but this year I got many in flight. Hence the post title. If you want to HEAR the haunting call of this ten million year old bird, migrating 500,000 at a time in the only mass crane migration of its kind in the world, link to the crane cam around 7:30 am and pm cst.

Crane on the right looks hurt.

Forms of flight?

As usual, they don't like cars.

Largest group we found, maybe 1,000 here along a hill.

Cranes, center pivot, and corn. An uneasy truce.

This is not a crane.

Prairie Dog Executions--LB473

“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior, 1890

Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, Oklahoma

Today the Nebraska state senate is, most likely, passing a bill--LB473--that will allow the government to go on to private land and poison prairie dogs, which are being classified as noxious weeds (don't ask, you know how government works). If pdogs on your land spread to adjacent land, then the government has the right to go poison your animals and then bill you later. Not only is private property being disregarded, but more importantly, so is the health of a keystone Great Plains species.

Prairie dogs once numbered 3-5 billion across the mixed and short grass prairies. One town in Texas was estimated to be 100 x 250 miles, or 16 million acres and 400 million pdogs. Meriwether Lewis called them barking squirrels.

Historic Range of all Prairie Dog Species

Since pdogs constantly clip plants and flowers in their towns in order to keep an eye out for predators, their towns were prime grazing land for bison, as fresh forage was always guaranteed. Prairie dogs also improve the soil, constantly turning it over, bringing up minerals for plants. In fact, prairie dog towns increase biodiversity and stabilization across a range of species--grasshoppers love the towns and feed birds, vacant holes provide nesting sites and shelter for all sorts of amphibians and owls and rodents and insects, and all that prey feeds endangered hawks and foxes and ferrets. My favorite childhood toad in Oklahoma, the Texas horned lizard, has seen its population fall over 50% in the last few decades as ant colonies, their primary food source, vanish. Ants love prairie dog towns.

Prairie dogs are what biologists call a keystone species, much like the bison were--that is, such a large number of other species depend on their existence that without them whole vast ranges of the ecosystem simply vanish. Gone. Gone. Gone.

If we poison prairie dogs, we poison the health of the land we depend upon, and we erode our very own culture. This is a tired argument no one listens to, though. Certainly not ranchers, whose major claims against pdogs is that they destroy the grazing land by eating forage and creating holes for cattle to fall into. I have yet to drive by a prairie dog town strewn with fallen cattle, crying out into the void, starving with their legs broken. If anything, cattle should be poisoned--they foul fresh water streams, erode those stream banks, and trample away grass and wildflowers. The amount of water, drugs, and fattening corn they demand in a beef culture severely taxes our environment in ways we can't even begin to address here. We've been duped.

All of this reminds me of the anecdote where a rancher caught a coyote he thought was preying on his sheep, tied a stick of dynamite to it, lit the stick, and let the coyote run off to explode. The coyote ran for cover under the rancher's new truck.

I'm so disgusted by our society and our culture, to the blindness of our governments established to protect us, to watch out for us, to correct the blindness of our greed and set a higher example, to hold us to our most basic moral and ethical beliefs even when we turn a blind eye to them. Pipe dreams that maybe never existed. Right now lobbyists for ranchers are cashing their checks, and life on this planet continues to be manipulated in ways that simply dwarf the genocide we commit on our own species (our oceans are near death being over harvested, soon we will grow chicken breasts in petri dishes). Yet there will be no books, no speeches, no monuments to the fallen prairie dogs, to the blowout penstemon of the sand hills, to the salt creek tiger beetle. What difference is there, in the end, to a pile of emaciated humans in a concentration camp and bodies of poisoned prairie dogs spelling out the word "US Biological Survey?"

1933

What we do to life "beneath" us we will do to ourselves, and often worse. It's an indicator. A warning. A keystone signal that we should go in for psychiatric evaluation.  

Here's a piece by Paul Johnsgard noting in what ways the prairie dog is morally superior to humans, and so should be placed on the state flag. It's tongue in cheek. Or is it. 

(Stats and figures taken from Prairie Dog Empire by Paul Johnsgard and Great Plains: America's Lingering Wild by Michael Forsberg)

Certain Uncertainty

Over the last six months I've been feeling an overwhelming pressure on my bones, muscle, and blood. I think I've felt this before--in periods of my life of stagnation and fear. I've let it go too far this time and it's hell getting back. Usually, the way to overcome such invisible weight is to do something, but I feel like I don't know what to do. But I also feel like I do, and that's what scares me the most. The older we get, the higher the stakes it seems, the more we have to risk, the more we have to lose and we forget what it is we can gain by risking everything. And I'm talking in vague abstractions, something I tell my students to never do. This was an introduction to upheaval.

Yesterday my last grandparent, my grandmother, was moved into assisted living. The only idea I have of what this place looks like is the one my other grandmother died in nearly 6 years ago in Oklahoma, a woman who would be 90 tomorrow (2/22/22). The physical distance I've had from both events, both places--nursing homes in Oklahoma and now Minnesota--are reliefs and forms of torture. There is nothing any of us can do about tomorrow, it's true, and I've been a poor example of carpe diem. But to me, in the face of such changes in my family, and at 35 and unsecure in employment or even place, the only real answer to living in the present seems like a giving up and cashing in. That is, thinking seriously about risking everything--home, car, everything we are taught we need to be happy, and that, of course, do bring real joy and necessity. I do like having air conditioning and reliable transportation. I am blessed and fortunate.

See, I'm rambling. I feel like I've been in a coma for a year, maybe years. In that time I've surfaced for gulps of air--write a poem or essay, finish a book, host a garden tour. But these events are like the aftertaste of good chocolate in your mouth, and you want more. I want more. More than whatever this is. Purgatory? No man's land? I need a kick in the butt.

I'm nearing the realization that, at least in this point of my life, I won't be a college teacher. And this is maybe an essential step to my evolution as a person, that might, someday, make me an even better college teacher--or simply lead to something else just as or more rewarding. Maybe I've dumped too much energy into a machine I can't be a part of. See, I don't know. I wish I could do this on television (bad joke at the wrong time?) and make some money off of it, get myself that acreage and prairie. But maybe that's too much. I'm not ready for that kind happiness if I can't find it in my 1,500 foot paradise.

I look at my grandmother who was so happy, seemingly, with so little. A small apartment, but near family. She walked and lived (walks and lives, why the past tense) with rose-colored glasses both to be admired and concerned with. But as Alzheimers slips over her I feel with great urgency, a great restlessness pushing against my skin from somewhere deep inside, the need for a massive change. A change I might not be prepared for. I don't want to forget who I am, and I think over the last year or so I have begun to forget, lost some wonder, lost some carpe diem. I am a mirage to myself.

I don't know what such rambling posts mean to this blog. Both I and the blog seem to be in some pre mid life crisis. I can see it in the sedum and bluestem, too, in the garden. We need dividing.

Today I notice the snow receding from the garden through the window. It is very much like a bed sheet, exposing warmth to cold. The cloud line has moved east, the sun is out, I feel entombed and fenced in by the nearby stand of trees. This is why I could never live anywhere but on the plains--if I lived in the mountains or forest I'd feel breathless and afraid. Hunted. Stalked. Our species' primal memory is of emerging from the jungle into a savanna where we could see danger coming and escape.

There are two incredibly important tasks at hand for me: writing a book on the Plains and Oklahoma and family, and whatever this thing is behind the fog that lays over me. I can sense it. Hear its breath. Feel its eyes centered on me. Is it predator or prey? Strange, but I believe that until I write a memoir I won't know. How can writing a book set you free? Physically free, not just emotionally or spiritually. And how afraid I am of it--this big experiment, this leap of faith which in the end will be only a small step, yet one that will deplete me. The real leap is beyond and unimaginable. We tend to call it faith.

We leave memories. Moments. Feelings in walls some people pick up on and call ghosts. We are echos the moment we speak or move, even before we are physically gone. We trail off in our thinking and passions, our love is a conditional uncertainty that is certain. I love the prairie that is now only an echo in our landscapes. I love my family in the remnants of barns and stories, memories of warm 7up in plastic cups and sweet juniper after a rainfall. I think that if I leave only one thing behind, my marker, my echo, I want it to be a piece of writing. And yet writing is in everything--a garden, a child, a wife. Not just a book. Writing is that red-winged blackbird perched on the fence eying the feeder, the flash of its body, the ricochet sound of its warning call and its wings in the air like a pebble in a pond. Slowly, our rippled presence blends into the world around us if we remain still enough to settle our spirits into one moment that can be forever. I think, right now, it is a prayer.

NWF in Garden Bed with Scotts

I'm sure most of you have heard that the National Wildlife Federation, promoters of the backyard habitat certification program, have partnered with Scotts of Miracle Gro and fertilizer and insecticide fame. Two programs are key: increasing wild songbirds (by buying Scotts birdseed) and getting kids back out into nature (where they can absorb all kinds of Scotts products). I apologize for my snark. Go read Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home, and Louv's Last Child in the Woods. That's all you need to light a fire under you.

The president of the NWF proclaims lawns as carbon sinks, useful places to help curb global warming. This is a joke. Please, do not dump chemical fertilizer produced with oil from Iran (hyperbole, maybe) on your lawn four times a year, most of which kills good soil bacteria and other life, then runs into our streams and lakes killing aquatic life. Instead, top dress with free compost from your local city. But, that wouldn't make any money for Scotts.

Lawns are antiquated dreams of a 19th century American middle class wanting to have small, private Versailles. And the democratic idea of Olmsted, where lawns create a large park bringing us together, is ludicrous--we have fences, I don't know my neighbors, et cetera. Kids may play in lawns, but they learn nothing about themselves or the natural world, its processes, its lessons. That happens among the brush. It cures ADHD. It speeds a patient's recovery from surgery. We don't need more lawns, we need more habitat, shrubs and trees with berries, flowers with insects--insects that are key protein sources for songbird chicks. In Nebraska, we need prairie like we need love and forgiveness and oxygen. Prairies are carbon sinks.

The best article so far, summing up the outrage, the backlash, and the corporate brush off, is right here. (This post also has links to NWF's Facebook and Twitter feeds if you're so inclined to say something to them.)

Feel free to check out this link about Scotts new GMO lawn seeds that resist Roundup, so anyone can spray willy nilly, and in the process create super weeds. 

Also, Scotts trying to overturn bans on nitrogen lawn fertilizer in Florida during rainy summer months.

Obviously, I don't agree with NWF--who claim not to support all of the Scotts products, and see this as a way to work from the inside out in a company that wants to change (so why don't they?). The chemicals we spew on this planet are immense--we really have no idea. From lawns to gardens to big crops, to the feed in cattle and chicken and hogs, to what we put into ourselves and release into the sewers to be "treated" but is never really gone--Tylenol, antidepressants, estrogen, the gmo food we eat.  When you refinish a bookcase. When you paint your house. Most anything you toss in the trash.

Now the NWF appears to be supporting (and is financially supported by) a company whose basic raison d'etre is "Buy chemicals. They will save you. Have a spider? Spray it. A brown patch of lawn? Treat it." We spray before we think, and NWF tripped up. My garden and lawn pests are treated, often within days, by natural predators, all because I invite in those predators with non-lawn habitat.

I have little to no faith in our government. If we want things to change for the better, whether they be environmental or social or economical, the private sector must do it, must turn the tide and create such an uproar the government may finally act. Unfortunately, I don't have enough money to buy politicians and get stuff done sooner. All I have is this blog. This post. Some anger, confusion, and sadness. Sometimes it gets me hoping through writing, but not today. I am so disheartened. As I will be again, I'm sure. I'm going to go start some liatris seeds.

Snowblowers v. Lawnmowers, Case 263, District Court of TDM

With our first few inches of snow comes the end of the brief month were the neighborhood was silent. Gone was the constant drone of a lawnmower, and far off seemed the pulsing vibrations of the snow blower. Since both are pollution hogs, both in regard to the atmosphere / spilled gas and noise levels, let us weigh which is truly the more evil machine in the court of The Deep Middle.

Defendant 1 -- The Snow Blower

-- Its sound is not as smooth or even. It ricochets as the mechanism spins. When the machine hits a dry patch it hums loudly, and when it runs into a drift it gurgles and goes baritone, sometimes being turned off then yanked back on once the chamber is cleared of frozen rain.

-- For some insane reason, owners of snow blowers have no time limit to their practices. Not only will machines be seen idling alone on drives and sidewalks as if they were making a slow run for it, but the machines are employed at any hour: 5am, midnight, it doesn't matter. Theoretically, one must assume, this is because clearing the drive and walk is essential to the business of the house, for example, the visiting UPS men or mother in laws, or rear-wheel drive cars, or unattended toddlers. Clearing snow is an urgent business, one best performed even before the snow has ended so that it can be done a second time hours later.

-- The placement of blown snow seems not to matter the least to the operator. If the snow is shot onto a neighbor's clear drive, across their garage door (open or closed), or into the freshly plowed street, it seems not to matter at all. In some instances, the violent thrust of snow will pass a young tree's path and branches will be snapped off without a notice at all. It seems that an "eye for an eye" law would best negate any of these practices.

Defendant 2 -- The Lawmower

-- There is a summer vigil with these machines, as if a secret neighborhood pact is in place like the guarding of the unknown soldier's tomb. As soon as the 8am mower is safely stored away until three days later when it comes out again, the next mower comes out, and so on until about 9 or 10pm given proper daylight conditions. Let it be said that a neighborhood can never be perfect unless a lawnmower is on its stern, Jeffersonian grid walk across the landscape, all along the watchtower, perhaps with the person operating the machine plugged into an ipod ironically listening to Bob Dylan.

-- Most prefer to mow their lawns during the dinner hour. Is this because they've been cast out of the kitchen by a domineering spouse, or because they despise the power of their neighbors grilling freely and almost heroically on the oasis-like patio next door?

-- Though lawnmowers provide a relatively constant acoustic level of insanity, the ocassional stick, rock, or frog will create an explosive discharge of metal upon metal, and an oft lowering of blade speed to address the problem. Wet lawn also causes a frequent interruption of sound level, and a much longer mowing time. Often, a father will be heard barking commands to an indoctrinated youth: "Damn it, go slower," or "Damn it, you mowed your mother's roses," or "Damn it, you missed the left side of the house why don't you just go back inside and let me finish it since you clearly aren't capable of helping out around here even after we paid for your mission trip to Mexico."

While we can see that both machines are cruel, we must rule wholeheartedly and fairly against the lawnmower, for only it seems to be the true terrestrial leviathan when it comes to destroying an environment. On levels of acoustical nuisance, wildlife endangerment, parental torture device, and noxious fumes which can create cancer and impotence, it seem the more frequently used lawnmower is truly the scourge of our modern world. We, the jury and judge of this blog, encourage the use of rocket launchers, C4, and any and all other violent means necessary to dislodge the rule of both lawnmower and snow blower from our society. Amen.

A Garden's Land Ethic

I've been swamped organizing research for my next memoir, so TDM has been a bit quiet (and shallow I suppose). However, I do have a post up at Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens that is a "thinking" post, based on some reading I've done lately. Here's the first bit:

I’m going to start off my semi philosophical / ranty / musing post with two quotes from Richard Manning’s book Grassland:

“Our science, our poetry, and our democracy fail because they lack specific information of the plants.”

“The culture of plants is the same as the culture of people.”

That last one is around a discussion of Aldo Leopold’s idea of a land ethic (and if you’ve not read A Sand County Almanac, exactly what are you waiting for?). In all my thinking and writing, and sometimes in my doing out in the garden as I plant or photograph, I’m developing a land ethic. It is not one that is in response to the land—not as a manager, caretaker, or gardener—but one of learning from the land the cycles of life, of creation, of existence beyond myself, which in turn makes me more aware of my own creation.

Recently there was a video, which I posted to my blog’s Facebook page last Friday, showing a massive swarm of starlings shifting and pulsing like bed sheets over a lake. Superimposed on the spectacle was loud music, which destroyed the birds, the lake, the moment. I wonder why we have to push ourselves so much on the world, why we can’t or won’t or don’t shut up and listen and be in it (why do college students surgically implant ear buds into their ears?). Maybe we’d be less apt to get angry, be jealous, and want something else, that promised land over the next horizon where life must be better, where we won’t be so human. Oh, the history of our pioneers....

The WORST Landscape Advice on Local TV Ever!

Watch this short video that was on a local news program, then read my comments. I just can't believe this is the kind of crap people pay good money for, and then honestly believe it increases their home's value.

Here's the link to the video. Watch it, laugh, sigh, grone, and then come back here.

Ok, these are the issues in order as they came up in the video:

1) The landscaper says that before the job it was just a basic lawn. FYI--it still is! If the owners wanted something more elaborate, one kidney-shaped planting berm out front is bupkis, especially one as sparsely planted as that.

2) Roses, spiraea, salvia, and barberry (hello 1990!). These are the best, low maintenance choices the landscaper could find? What a lazy landscaper! I bet they buy barberry in bulk and call it a spring order in like 5 minutes.          

3) Don’t be afraid to go big? See #1. When is he going to go big? Anytime soon?

4) You want to diversify, says the reporter—where is the diversification? See #2. It looks pretty darn monotone to me! The plants are all at one level (and will be when they mature), and evenly spaced (just like in nature!). And it looks like pretty much every other landscaping job I've ever seen--that's not adding value at all!

5) Customer wanted pink rocks. They originally had more mulch but wanted rock since it's more low maintenance, and it has a weed barrier underneath.

Three things: 1) If you ever plant anything else there, it will be sheer torture moving that rock and cutting the weed fabric and 2) Rock dries out the soil as it absorbs the sun's heat, thus killing plant roots, thus killing the plants. Some investment! 3) Two inches of soil-enriching mulch and I don't see any weeds in my beds. Just saying.

6) More character at front door by adding gazing balls? “Don’t be afraid to overdo that” the landscaper says. What? You should be very very very afraid to overdo that. A person looking at a home will see more as less, and less as more. And wasn't the second coming of gazing balls back in like, what, 1995? I only see them at Home Depot anymore.

7) Have your home professionaly landscaped? Why? So it can look basic and blah like this? Look, for 1/2 the money I will give you just as low maintenance a design AND it will look far better. Plus, if you have kids, they might appreciate interacting with birds, butterflies, and such outside. You can improve the local environment AND have a more unique, money-bringing landscape with hardly any work at all for much less than this guy charged you. Just think how much you spent on the Bobcat, truck, and trailer that offloaded all that heavy rock which does nothing to improve the soil and ensures your plants will need more water and may not live to see next year. 

Holy cow, amen!

Mr. Mows All The Time Waters All The Time, Too

I just can't stand not saying something. If you don't have anything nice to say, blog about it.

Mr. Mows All The Time is watering his yard. It is 100 degrees at 5:30 with a 115 heat index, blazing sun, no breeze though. Their lawn is ever so slightly browner than last week in this heatwave. Keep in mind he mows so often (mowing makes grass release moisture) and so low, that it seems brown right after he mows, so they also water then. Mow, water, blow, fertililze, water, mow. No trees.

So, let's play multiple choice here, winner gets a free copy* of my forthcoming book Sleep, Creep, Leap, which features a chapter on Mr. Mows:

Assuming one hour of watering yields 0.5" of water, how much of that water makes it to grass roots while watering during the hottest part of the day?

A) All of it. I'm insane.

B) At least half of it. Or none of it. Well, not much I'm guessing since you're so upset about it.

C) Do I want deep roots or shallow? Shallow.

D) I hate these kinds of questions. Reminds me too much of the SAT or GRE, and the college my parents wanted me to go to but wouldn't admit me because I fell asleep filling in bubble sheets early on a Saturday morning.

Point is, worst time of day to water. Mow less. Maybe plant a tree--or some native flowers and grasses that do the heat well and reduce the amount of lawn (and the effort / $ / resources you expend outside).

*free copies are invisible

End of Semester Quote

“The natural world need not be logical in any obvious way. Science [or literature!] does not consist of imposing our reason on the world but rather reducing our preconceptions to the point that the world imposes its logic on us. This is very difficult indeed, involving a minimalization of our ego while maintaining our full powers of observation and receptivity. The capacity to perform this feat is what the teacher of science [or English!] attempts to foster in the student. No one succeeds completely.”

--L. Slobodkin(from Simplicity and Complexity in Games of the Intellect)

What Are We Here For?

" 'What is the world?' [my son asked] What the world is and who we are meant to be within it and how we are to conserve what is good and beautiful and true in the world, and in ourselves; and how we are to forgive and, if we can, redeem what is bad and ugly and false in ourselves and, because of us, in the world--this may be what we're here for."

-- Mark Tredinnick

This Guy is an Idiot

Did you all read the native v. non native article in the New York Times, "Mother Nature's Melting Pot?" Hugh Raffles makes me want to girdle him with some roots. I can't belive he wrote Insectopedia, the 2011 Orion Book Award winner. Maybe he was on drugs when he wrote some of the things below:

"The anti-immigrant sentiment sweeping the country, from draconian laws in Arizona to armed militias along the Mexican border, has taken many Americans by surprise. It shouldn’t — nativism runs deep in the United States. Just ask our non-native animals and plants: they too are commonly labeled as aliens, even though they also provide significant benefits to their new home."

"While the vanguard of the anti-immigrant crusade is found among the likes of the Minutemen and the Tea Party, the native species movement is led by environmentalists, conservationists and gardeners. Despite cultural and political differences, both are motivated — in Margaret Thatcher’s infamous phrase — by the fear of being swamped by aliens."

You know what I'm afraid of? Morons like you. I'm not afraid of things I don't understand or differing values or cultures. Well, I am afraid of you. People are gonna read your column and think they can plant any old damn thing anywhere. We'll get to why that's bad in a second, since you clearly have no idea what you're talking about (to start, go read a book everyone else has read called Bringing Nature Home).

"But just as America is a nation built by waves of immigrants, our natural landscape is a shifting mosaic of plant and animal life. Like humans, plants and animals travel, often in ways beyond our knowledge and control. They arrive unannounced, encounter unfamiliar conditions and proceed to remake each other and their surroundings."

They arrived because we brought them here, stupidly, arrogantly, and with no foresight (Asian carp?). That's how we destroy ecosystems and, Mr. Anthropologist, how we've murdered millions of our own kind. How we treat the planet is how we treat ourselves.

"Designating some as native and others as alien denies this ecological and genetic dynamism. It draws an arbitrary historical line based as much on aesthetics, morality and politics as on science, a line that creates a mythic time of purity before places were polluted by interlopers."

Arbitrary? Are you on crack? Ok, sure, there was no "purity" (was Mary a virgin?). Or was there purity, compared to now? Not only have we diluted ecosystems, we've simplified them, made them and all the species that hold them up vulnerable to extinction. Ecosystems, as well as people, thrive on diversity, yes. But ecological diversity is a delicate balance, easily destroyed after 100,000 years of slow cooperation and balance. What we've done to the planet is not balanced, just as what we do to ourselves is a mark of insanity. We fear our own human diversity, try to create order or a system which creates a "democratic" status quo, but find that order is in direct conflict with the evolutionary chaos of native organisms. You can't tell me Russian olive trees are a good thing. Or kudzu. Or corn (especially for ethanol).

"And in any case, efforts to restore ecosystems to an imagined pristine state almost always fail: once a species begins to thrive in a new environment, there’s little we can do to stop it. Indeed, these efforts are often expensive and can increase rather than relieve environmental harm."

"An alternative is to embrace the impurity of our cosmopolitan natural world and, as some biologists are now arguing, to consider the many ways that non-native plants and animals — not just the natives — benefit their environments and our lives."

Yes, once humans began to thrive in, say, the Great Plains, there's little you can due to reverse the flora and fauna genocide. Because, hey, that's natural, us rampaging across the planet like a supernova. Whatever. No responsibility. Glorious suicide. Go gentle into that good slaughter.

Yes, let us embrace the non native plants. They surely don't wreak havoc, even if they don't spread like wildfire. The issue, Hugh, is not about embracing what is, so much as it is realizing that what we've done is terrible, and in trying to stop further genocide attempt to prevent new genocide--because what we've done to the earth is no less a genocide than if we all lined up people of another race or religion and mowed them down with machine guns. We DID mow down a few dozen million bison with rifles, and so helped mow down Native Americans by starving them out, and destroying a key component to their culture and world view. What is the culture of a native prairie ecosystem? What does it really depend on (I bet it ain't non native plants, which do exist my friend)? Research this, and then get back to me making careful comparisons to America as "melting pot" (an idea which is a mythic joke itself).

If we can't respect the planet, what's here, what we've done, we have no hope at all of respecting ourselves or each other--of truly valuing the diversity you champion. The minute you burn that rain forest or yank that milkweed from the earth, you condemn dozens of other organisms. You condemn humanity in ways you can't possibly imagine.

The Sandhill Cranes in Nebraska

My wife and I visited some of the 500,000 migrating cranes near Grand Island, NE, and along the Platte River. They winter in Mexico and Texas, then funnel through a roughly 50 mile stretch of sandbars and corn fields between Grand Island and Kearney. Something like 70% of the world's sandhill cranes are here, and they are one of the few stable crane populations globally (and also can live to be 20). They end up nesting all over Canada, up to the Arctic Circle, then over to Alaska and across to Russia. For several weeks they fatten up on leftover corn, from early March to early April, then are gone. The time to see tens of thousands at once is at dusk or sunrise as they roost along the Platte, but we got to see thousands anyway in the early afternoon. Check out the Rowe Sanctuary crane cam around 7:30 am and pm central time to see, and hear, the massive flocks along the river.

So here are some of the over 200 pictures I took. First time I visited the cranes, having lived in Nebraska for eight years now (whoa). Grand Island is only 90 miles west, luckily.

Look at those guys to the right of the tree!



All day cranes were in fields full of center pivots, silos,
tractors, cows, and stacks of pipe. The juxtaposition
was never so evident to me. Viva cranes.





 My wife got out of the car, trying to sneak up on cranes along the road. She got close to one group, then they took off. Got close to another, then they took off. We got no closer than 100 feet. The best thing to do is step on the gas and fly over the culverts into fields, whip out the camera, and in those two seconds snap pics like you've never snapped before. I did not do this, as we were driving my wife's car....



Pairs of cranes argue, moon me, and kiss

I really like this image.



"The court order says you must stay this far away from me."



The cranes would often leap up into the air and flap
their wings, settle, and leap again as if
on trampolines. Show offs? Territorial? Courting?

Ran across this (odd) historical marker --
click on it and read!

All day as we drove along back country roads, drivers in passing cars would wave to me, and it seemed odd. Did they know I was not from here? Is that just what you do? They always waved. You know, leaning back, one hand on the wheel, so two or three fingers is all I got. Still, in the "big city" you don't see that, we use one finger, but I got used to waving back--two or three fingers, one hand on the wheel, the other clutching my heavy SLR camera like an excited dog who wanted to leap out the window. From now on I'm going to wave to the 100 cars I pass on my way to work every morning.

Mr. Mows All the Time is Mowing Brown Grass

I can't believe it. Got home and he's mowing his lawn. Keep in mind, grass doesn't turn green or start growing for another month. Maybe dormant lawn is like ghost lawn, and it fades in and out of some other dimension or time continuum. Beam me up, Toro.

I just wish the amount of time he spent grooming his lawn, fertilizing it with chemicals, watering on a windy August afternoon, and blowing the clippings back on to the lawn (air pollution galore anyone?)... I just wish all that energy was put into planting a few more trees, in the very least. Heck, I'd help.

Maybe my neighbors have found my blog, maybe not, but hey, Mr. Mows All the Time, if you're reading this, come ring my doorbell. I'll go to the nursery with you, help you pick the right tree, and plant it. I'll even drive. And buy you a snow cone on the way home. Any flavor but grape.

A landscape without trees is a body without a soul. (Substitute "tree" with anything you like -- shrubs, coneflowers, bluebirds, poetry.)

Mr. Renegade, You Make My Heart Sing

January perks up every year with the Renegade Gardener--a man who also installed the landscaping / gardens around my mom's new home in Minnesota. I'm still getting over losing my childhood home, but the new house sure is nice, too. I guess.

Anywho, check out Don's High Spot / Black Spot awards. If you like sarcasm and brutal ecological truth, you'll like Don. By extension, you may like me, too. There are always many literary gems with Don's awards, but I chose this more subtle one:

"Much of the joy in gardening comes from gaining expertise in growing a wide and disparate collection of plants the presence of which you enjoy. From its infancy in your garden, each plant exhibits different behaviors hinting at different needs, much like children. These differences range from subtle to stark. As parent, your job is to discover and adapt your skills at nurturing based on these differences.

This development of skills is usually fun, occasionally frustrating. You will grow some plants that help with the dishes, do their homework without prompting, and are eager to attend Sunday school. Other plants arrive home after curfew in the back of a patrol car. That the easy plants are often plain and the bad boys always gorgeous reflects a universal principle often adapted to literature and film."

And yes, Don, why do chewing gum packages now look like condom packages? Is the next step for seed packs to emulate this marketing strategy? I think it'd work.

Listening to Neurons

Just cut off a cockroach leg, hook up the SpikerBox, and listen to the insect neurons firing away (don't worry, they say the leg grows back).

Order yours now! I know everyone in my family would love this, and that soon after I'd be covered in vomit and taken out of the will, divorced, et cetera.

But seriously, have you ever heard of such a thing? Would this work on frogs? Cats? Humans who use their lawnmowers too often when I'm trying to enjoy my garden?

Then again, the demented natural scientist in me thinks this would be neat. I wonder what flowers sound like, if they even have a sound. Which I bet they do.

Wifi Wounds Trees -- Stop Internetting!

"Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.

In the Netherlands, about 70 percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared with only 10 percent five years ago. Trees in densely forested areas are hardly affected."

And sad news for cornhuskers re corn:

"The study exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. Trees placed closest to the Wi-Fi radio demonstrated a "lead-like shine" on their leaves that was caused by the dying of the upper and lower epidermis of the leaves. This would eventually result in the death of parts of the leaves. The study also found that Wi-Fi radiation could inhibit the growth of corn cobs."

Full (brief) article here.

See that maple outside your local coffee house where you go for the free internet? Every email you send wounds it. Guilt it up. If ever I needed a reason to get off the computer more, here's one.

Tour of Fall on UNL Campus

Here are some pics of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus on a chilly, blustery, about-to-be-cloudy late fall morning. Yes, that was a long sentence. English profs have that kind of power.

In the Sheldon Gallery sculpture garden

Crabapple marbles and leaf jacks?

Sumac

The sculpture through the trees I call "The Flat Canoe"

Roxy Paine's tree outside my office window

Burn the Flag Poles, Not the Flag

My post on flag poles over at Garden Rant sure infuriated some folks. Here's the link.

Let me make it brutally clear that I was not attacking the American flag--I didn't even say I was. I was not attacking the memory of anyone's father, or anyone's service in the military. I don't know any of those who commented saying I was doing that, so how could I attack them? I honor the military men and women, the firefighters, the national guard, no matter what conflict our nation sends them to.

Today is the anniversary of 9/11, but it is not the anniversary of a religion or a culture attacking another. The overly-covered media orgy of that small-town pastor in Florida set to burn another religion's holiest book is a sensationlistic dumbing down of our greatest fears and the ignorance of too many people. Islam did not attack this country, radicals who have a twisted sense of Islam did. That's how the crusades started, that's how much of our country was founded and where much of western history comes from--rich white "Christian" guys (straight or gay) trying to preserve personal gain at the expense of other races, women, and cultures. They twisted religion, too.

Someone pointed out that American flags are mostly made overseas. Irony? Justice?
 
It's important to remember what the American flag stands for, if we are to make this an argument about the flag vs. about the landscaping (I was making the latter for pete's sake). America is a special place to live in, unique in the history of the world, and thank whatever god you believe in (we can still do so) that our best moments come from periods of polarization and freedom of speech.
 
At the same time, this country was founded on mass genocide--human and ecological, which continues to this second. This is not unique to our species across the planet, but the ability to reverse these effects politically, spiritually, fairly, and without bloodshed is firmly within this unique country's grasp. We occupy an incredible moment in history with great responsibility put upon our blip of a nation, and are wasting it glorifying ourselves through Wal Mart or turning our backs on even our own families and environments, let alone those across the world. (And how quickly we've forgotten the Gulf oil spill, where a layer of oil has been discovered on the sea floor, not dispersed by chemicals whose effects we also don't know. This spill is the environment's 9/11, and in turn will eventually be another one for us.)
 
I apologize for having an opinion in my Garden Rant post, and trying to do so somewhat sarcastically or light-heartedly. Humor doesn't travel well in writing most of the time. I apologize for exercising my American rights that several of those who commented on the post are wishing I didn't have. C'est la vie, but at least it's a life we have and can give to others when our federal government doesn't think about its own preservation (unlikely to happen), but the preservation of the human spirit and a nation's collective will or hope for a better life.
 
Let's see some plantings in neighborhoods that go beyond a few basic orange daylilies and river rock piled against the base of a flag pole. Let's see restoration of native species we plowed up and now call weeds. Let's restore the native ecosystems as best we can in the islands of our yards--it's the very, very least we can do. If that means a flag pole in a praire yard then by god let's do it! I'll raise whatever flag you have myself!
 
But we should have more than just lawn going up to our walls, as is the case in most homes in my neighborhood, or foreign species of blah plants like boxwood or barberry that have no ecological benefit at all. If we can't help each other, let's at least help the planet--yet the two are directly connected, the health of the planet is the mental and spiritual health of our own species. Just ask Michael Pollan, Rachel Carson, Richard Louv, Doug Tallamy, Terry Tempest Williams, or Wendell Berry. When I see bees pollinating flags, or flickers nesting on flag poles, I will take it all back.