A thought

We live on a half acre, none of it regular lawn, so I do a lot of weeding. On portions of it I’ve achieved a rough balance between civilization and jungle; other parts are still subject to “survival of the fittest.” I enjoy being out there, even if only for half an hour a day. Better than trying to put my desk in order.

I’ve joked that I’m really engaged in Ethnic Cleansing — weed the clover out of the moss bank, restrain the creeping Jenny, pluck out the migratory colonies of baby’s tears, and utterly destroy all burr clover, sticky-weed, stinky-weed — stuff that I don’t even know what it’s called but I know I don’t like it. And keep pushing back the tall grass to let the asters have room.

But I’m a bit disturbed at how apt my jocular metaphor seems. It’s not a question of the ethics of animal slaughter or whether broccoli feels pain — that’s another debate. I’m simply musing on the psychology of purification. Obviously, there’s great difference, at least to this human, between weeding out weeds and weeding out human beings. But I’m thinking about the similarity.

Certainly, one motive force in genocide is hatred, another may be material advantage, another the adrenalin rush of killing. Those are forces that foment mob violence, but you can’t run a concentration camp or a gulag on adrenalin. That requires routine, the same rituals day after day. I can’t imagine that technicians sitting in front of video screens, tapping in missile strikes from drones are screaming, “Kill! Kill!” They’re just doing their job. It’s only when you can reduce the act of hacking or shooting or gassing people to the emotional neutrality of pulling up weeds that you can keep things running smoothly.

Nor do I curse the stinky-weed. But there’s a great, compelling urge to control the aesthetics, to clear up the disorder, to correct Nature’s grammatical mistakes. That satisfaction of completion, cleansing, purification, imposing your smooth-shaven jaw on the world at large — how satisfying, how potentially deadly.

I won’t be letting the weeds — the bio-organisms I designate as weeds —grow or prosper any time soon. But the metaphor echoes.

- Conrad, from DamnedFool.com

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Posted in reply to the post by theindependenteye:

I’ve joked that I’m really engaged in Ethnic Cleansing — weed the clover out of the moss bank, restrain the creeping Jenny, pluck out the migratory colonies of baby’s tears, and utterly destroy all burr clover, sticky-weed, stinky-weed — stuff that I don’t even know what it’s called but I know I don’t like it. And keep pushing back the tall grass to let the asters have room.

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Conrad, I've read that when the Europeans first came to California it all looked like wilderness to them, though the natives had been living here and tending it for centuries, even millennia. You couldn't call that way of tending the wilderness agriculture, or even horticulture. It was just a way of favoring the plants and animals that provided the food, beauty, medicine, fiber, and tools that they depended upon.

I appreciate the thoughtful way you are taking up that practice.

Of course, there is danger in dividing the plant world into friends and enemies. We may become righteous, indignant, and take ourselves too seriously. But consider. while genocide is enabled by de-humanizing a group of people, this thoughtful tending of the wild is a way of re-humanizing the plant world, of making our relationship with specific plants be up close and personal, an antidote to the emotional neutrality that enables genocide.

My favorite gardens are wild ones that I tend, aiming for diversity. I like for each species to have a place to fully express itself, but not allowing any one of them to crowd out the others. I also feel an urge toward esthetic control, but fortunately, there are limits of time, energy and wherewithal, so I am still more of a mediator or a nudge in the garden than an emperor. I cut blackberry canes out of the pathways, and they always cut me in the process. It's a conversation. Neither of us destroys the other. Both of us flourish.

i refer to the native ways as tending the garden, others i know call it hoop walking. it can still be seen in the oaks where villages turned into european towns, places like winsor, and middletown. my most productive gardens have always been the ones i no longer had time for, so the weeds took over. so much to eat with so little work! now that i keep goats blackberrys are precious to me, i have always thought of them as a challenging lover, so enticing sweet and sharp! now i hold them with more appreciation and care, knowing a vulnerable side of their piercingly tricky nature ; )

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Posted in reply to the post by Barton Stone:

Conrad, I've read that when the Europeans first came to California it all looked like wilderness to them, though the natives had been living here and tending it for centuries, even millennia. You couldn't call that way of tending the wilderness agriculture, or even horticulture. It was just a way of favoring the plants and animals that provided the food, beauty, medicine, fiber, and tools that they depended upon.

I appreciate the thoughtful way you are taking up that practice.

Of course, there is danger in dividing the plant world into friends and enemies. We may become righteous, indignant, and take ourselves too seriously. But consider. while genocide is enabled by de-humanizing a group of people, this thoughtful tending of the wild is a way of re-humanizing the plant world, of making our relationship with specific plants be up close and personal, an antidote to the emotional neutrality that enables genocide.

My favorite gardens are wild ones that I tend, aiming for diversity. I like for each species to have a place to fully express itself, but not allowing any one of them to crowd out the others. I also feel an urge toward esthetic control, but fortunately, there are limits of time, energy and wherewithal, so I am still more of a mediator or a nudge in the garden than an emperor. I cut blackberry canes out of the pathways, and they always cut me in the process. It's a conversation. Neither of us destroys the other. Both of us flourish.

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