I may be able to come up with something along those lines. What is CC, Constuctive Criticism?

ilima

I canÂt stop myself; every time I start to think about sustainable gardening, I come back to Wal-Mart. No, this wonÂt be another one of those "Wal-Mart is evil" rants. Wal-Mart isnÂt the problem; in the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Many years ago, Holiday Inn ran an advertising campaign with the tag line "No Surprises". The idea was that a Holiday Inn was a safe, known quantity when traveling to areas that you were not familiar with. Today, this seems to have become the tag line for American life in general. You can go to any town in the country above a certain size and dine on quasi-Southwest cuisine at ChiliÂs or buy the same cheap clothing at Wal-Mart. Head out to the mega-mall, close your eyes and spin around three times and I dare you to tell me what state youÂre in.

Increasingly we are moving to a bland, safe, middle ground of consumerism. Regional differences are smoothed out, toned down and averaged away. Instead of smaller stores catering to the tastes of the region, we have the big boxes and a one-size-fits-all mentality.

So how does this relate to sustainable gardening? I think that a key component of sustainable gardening is to recognize and embrace the regional differences of where you live. As I look out my front windows, I see a sweep of little bluestem wearing its autumn cloak of copper. When the late afternoon sun hits these grasses, the effect is nothing short of stunning. For where I am in space and time, I can think of no better site to see right now.

But in our Wal-Mart World where everything needs to be the same, my landscape is a radical departure. WhereÂs the Kentucky bluegrass, whereÂs the lawn care company, where are the Stella dÂOros? You know, there could be coyotes lurking in that tall grassÂ

For me, sustainable gardening is first and foremost about a distinct sense of place. A place that isnÂt connected to a Wal-Mart parking lot.

V.
ps  sorry, Prof. Ink, I think this is closer to 350 words!

Sorry V, I meant 400 as a suggested maximum, here's my 280.

LetÃs keep it the way it was
Autumn was once a smell. Autumn always reminds me of something both sensual and cyclical. Autumn is neither the beginning nor the end, it is a reminder of time passing. Raking leaves into a pile to be slowly burned has a ritual quality and keeping the fire burning depends on secret lore that is passed from father to son. This knowledge too is cyclical and like all other things that come around, hurrying it is not appropriate. Converting leaves into a nostalgic odour has caught up with us and now suddenly there is guilt attached to autumn leaves that once inspired songwriters and poets. Falling leaves and love were once romantically linked,
ÃThe falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and goldà (with apologies to Nat King Cole)
but are now only a nuisance to be hauled off, god knows where for disposal. There is even a machine to replace the contemplative raking, a machine that wants to hurry its user to blow the dreaded leaves somewhere else and here is is a twisted sense of re-cycling when one mo blo and go type blows it on to your plot and your guy blows it back again! Now Autumn is a sound, an ear splitting raucous sound that pervades the air from October to snow fall.
Could we again learn to live with leaves and let them fall among shrubs allowed to grow to a natural shape instead of the unkind meatball? Could we tolerate a lawn with grass longer than half an inch, perhaps reduce our standards of speed and control to a more sustainable and natural level?

This past summer, I did a garden tour organized by the local garden club. Eight gardens all different. Some small, some large, two churches and several mostly created and tended for by retirees. Along the way we passed the local market garden. I stopped at the store last Saturday, on the way to pick up our child from a sleep over in the next village.

On the right is the farm itself, on the left the large barn style store. The floor was concrete, the aisles were short. Large bins on either side touted 'our own cauliflower', 'our own onions'. Brussel sprouts were on stalks as well as in bags. Potatoes came in small quart containers or bags or by the bushel. Fresh pressed cider lined the cooler alongside local produced butter and herbs. At the checkout there was a sign up form for local turkeys for your Thanksgiving or Christmas feast, just $10 deposit and tick the size you want. It was early, but the place was active with ladies in the back pressing cider, and preparing the field grown vegetables for the store.

I got my vegetables and went on my way to collect the child. The child's great grandfather had just passed away. He was the owner of the farm. The child's grandmother runs the bakery at the store. The child's mother runs a booth each October weekend, selling various baked goods at the fall pumpkin patch.

Farming is a precious commodity in these days when we are disconnected from the source of our food. Three generations show continuity of a lifestyle that is rapidly disappearing. We fuss about chemicals on foreign fruits, and the price of food, yet we demand that we have tasteless strawberries in the supermarket for the recipe that we want to bake.

What is the point of promoting sustainable agricultural practices in one's community when we do nothing to support our local farmers, organic or otherwise. For true sustainability we need to shop responsibly and eat in accordance with what is grown and supplied locally, perhaps foregoing all those out of season vegetables and fruit.

I think most of us have perhaps come too far to revert to a totally sustainable lifestyle, but it stays alive as a dream in some of us.

Just because I like to be different. Warning! PG-13

Sustainable: of, relating to, or being a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged.

Gardening: the act of maintaining a plot of ground where herbs, fruits, flowers, or vegetables are cultivated

Sustainable gardening. Sounds kinda earthy-crunchy, right? So soothingly seductive, peaceful and rejuevenating! A heaven for sore minds, a place to recoup the thoughts crushed under the cold steel of deadlines and commecialism.

Bah!

ItÂs the Serengeti dressed in a Disneyland shawl.

ItÂs a beast eat beast eat beast world where the ultimate predator cultivates his victims in ordered rows and is most satisfied when it meets his quotas.

ItÂs the home of the insane scientist, selecting his victims for complacency and delectability, with an eye ever keen for the mutant, the malformed gigantismic.

ItÂs a terrible place where the dead and dying are hacked and left to rot in piles in the hot sun, where the predator reviles in turning the newly dead under to expose the brown runny corpses, where maggots and worms crawl and devour indescriminately.

ItÂs an unnatural battle between Nature and Mankind to determine whoÂs needs can be met most. ItÂs picking a scab on the face of the Earth, eating it and picking it again, a battle to heal and to survive, growing infectedly across the land , deforestation, agriculture, a pox of sustainable gardening. A bacterial invasion, keeping its host alive, slowly consumed.

Poppa

The invitation to add to the excellent examples above is still open. Eddie, come on down. A lurker are you, now is your chance to break into print (?)

It's Friday night and I am heading to my favorite bar to listen to some good music, see people have a good time and check if my CD made it onto the jukebox. I appreciate the invite but it will be late Saturday or Sunday till I get to it. You know me, I will have something to say. I must add that what I've read so far is very eloquently put and inspires me but right now there's a bar stool with my name on it waiting for me.

This one was a major struggle and I am not sure that I even like it but I had to send it out and be done with it. I enjoyed reading all the others.

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There really is no argument that the ocean waters around our island, the coral reefs and the myriad forms of life they support are in decline. The arguments come when we each look to place the blame at someone elseÂs door. The simple truth however is that it is the combination of all human activities that are pouring chemicals and nutrients into our warm blue green seas. Everyone is to blame for this slow suffocation.

A town that is four blocks wide and ten miles long jostles itself so that each may try to be as close to the gentle surf as illusion can create. Not satisfied with natureÂs setup of sunny skies and scant annuals rains that form a dry savannah habitat this town must transform itself into a luxuriant tropical rainforest. Just add water and miracles can happen.

That miracle is not good enough though. The tropical rainforest has a few kinks that need fixing. Weeds grow tall and strong. Bugs breed and feed. Lawns get anemic on thin rocky soil. Out comes the potions for cures and bags of chemical foods, sprays for this and sprays for that. This jungle will be made perfect. Every leaf will shine. No bug shall live. We have been sold the notion that there is always some quick and easy solution.

Even without streams gravity takes the water that started it all and every thing in it down hill through the land and into our ocean. When the winter rains do come this chemical brew pours into the sea in a muddy torrent.

"Hey you, Sponge Bob Square pants here. Yes I mean YOU."

"It is getting awful hard to breathe down here and a lot of my friends have been forced out of the neighborhood."

"Cut the Crap Already!"

The ground you stand on, the soil you garden in is much like the waters of the ocean. It is a medium that is very much alive with myriad forms of life. A healthy and living soil also acts very much like a sponge. It absorbs and holds water, nutrients and chemicals. The more organic matter you add in and allow to stay on your soil the more it can absorb and the more it has available for your plants. A living soil can breakdown chemicals and render them less potent. A dead soil holds nothing and washes away, leaving little for your plants to thrive on.

Have You Fed Your Soil Today?

ilima

Recycling and the environment? (511 words)
Recycling=good. Everyone has heard that, yet I'll bet the percentage of the general population that has a compost pile is very small indeed. We do what we've always done: out of sight, out of mind. When we flush the commode It's gone and we are left with a bowl of fresh, clean water, the heck with whoever is downstream. What we don't want to think about is the people upstream from us doing the same thing. It seems odd how we take water out of the stream, clean it and use it which pollutes it and then we put it back into the stream with the clean water. What we need are 2 water systems: one that carries only clean water and one that carries only polluted water. I hope this makes sense as I feel I haven't expressed it well. Going on from there we all know how bad our streams are polluted if we remember many years ago about the front page news about a river up north catching on fire and burning for days. If it is that polluted up north imagine what it is like when it reaches the ocean. We may have to start thinking of the ocean in different terms. It is not the beautiful clean mother of life we once knew, it is now the earth's commode. It is a good thing man has been on the moon because now we need to build an umbilical pipeline to the moon so we can flush our ocean there.
Isn't progress wonderful? We used to put garbage in a can and bear with it until pickup day. NOW we just turn on the insidious little garbage disposal and it is once again "out of sight, out of mind" and into the water supply.
It doesn't seem to matter how much pollution this adds to our streams as long as it is efficient and makes our life easier for the moment.
Did you ever look in the back drawer of the refrigerator and find an old mouldy orange? I have, and I have come to think of the earth as that orange and the people that inhabit it as the mold. There is no effective population control going on. Granted a lot of modern American families may limit their size to a couple of children but that doesn't mean population isn't exploding in India and China. How many Chinese does the planet need? ten billion? Not picking on the Chinese just using their large population to get a point across. I read something once that said "Too many people, Not enough plants" If there were no people or no mammals for that matter the plants would do just fine but if there were no plants, animals would be gone in a heartbeat. Population control is not going to work unless it's global. This may seem draconion to you but I am looking far into the future and thinking about the future of all mankind. At what point to we start considering the big picture?

Did anyone find this useful or encouraging? What I found interesting, especially in light of a thought I have entertained, "every subject has already been covered", above are six totally different approaches to the same topic. All of the pieces are enjoyable and insightful and personal, some phrases are worthy of kidnap "the Serengeti in a Disneyland shawl" is memorable as is the world as "an old mouldy orange" we have thoughts about our farming community and its Wally antithesis and a manifesto from those who want to spoil it all "Every leaf will shine. No bug shall live."
Should we do another one soon or am I indeed coming on like Prof.Ink?

I rather enjoyed having my say which may have come across as a rant. I half expected someone to point out mine was a doom and gloom philosophy. I was inspired by what the other posters had to say and I would be surprised (given time) if others did not contribute to this broad topic. I thought this exercise was fun and interesting. Anyone else?

I certainly had fun tho the disclaimer is that the opinion expressed was not necessarily that of the author.

What I like about exercises like this is that I am constantly amazed at what comes out of my fingers. I can not reread and edit a piece to death and I am sure it shows in the grammar. It just ainÂt in me. I am most interested in the ideas and how one is connected to another. ItÂs akin to watching a magic act when the magician pulls a string of colored scarfs (scarves?) out of their mouth. I am almost disconnected and just a spectator ooooh a blue one followed by yellow! WhoÂda thunk it! Do you laugh at what you write?

I think I had read once that John Denver felt that he just reached up into a cosmic stream and pulled down songs. I feel the same way (not that the quality of what I write is the same) that when I am in a creative vein, I just make a cut and everything spouts out beyond my control. I find myself laughing out loud at some of the things I write as I write them. I even cried once, and I have to think, "Where is this coming from?".

I used to hate reading poetry because they way it was taught in school. "The author used this to convey THAT, and THIS passage is a metaphor for that". Bulloney! It just spouted out.. There is no control. ItÂs just scarves.

I think INK, that it is not so much a matter of whether everything has been said already, itÂs more about letting the scarves (yes, I definitely think it is not scarfs) come out in the order that they flow and not matching all the blue ones together.

Poppa

My horticulturist Dad was dependent on garden clubs for survival throughout his career. He was fully booked on the lecture circuit, had a daily radio program and often researched for groups such as the Camellia Society. Little did they know that he was furious over some garden club practices, mainly the subject of plant sales or swaps.

He felt strongly that garden clubs should set strong rules regarding those sales where members would supply plants from their own gardens. "They don't realize that when a plant is dug and potted all the insect and disease problems in their garden will pass on to the buyer. Garden clubs should be planning their sales so that members can dig dormant stock, rinse the roots well and pot in sterile soil."

He also was upset with second home owners who would dig plants from home and move them miles away because they would look nice at the cottage. He knew that the onslaught of insects and disease would slowly spread, but felt that gardeners should act in a responsible manner when possible. He lectured and wrote on the subject, mostly to big yawns. In my files I have an article he wrote for a national magazine when DDT first came on the market. He was concerned and saw problems down the road.

Of course, soil moves from here to there in all sorts of ways harboring many unwanted problems. Insects can hitch hike around the world concealed in unexpected places. We have recent examples of this on shipments arriving from Asian countries. But, maybe just maybe, the gardener who is passing along plants for a sale or giving them to a friend, will think on this subject; potting in sterilized bagged soils so that the recipient will not have to fight a newly acqured problem with chemicals.

Yes, our earth is similar to a closed petri dish. There is only so much nutrient to sustain life. Bit by bit we are destroying, upsetting the balance of our natural world. And when growth consumes all the agar ......life ends "not with a bang but a whimper".

Yes, I did enjoy the challenge of this 'excercise'. We could preach, tell tales, indulge in a way that we cannot in the popular press.
Great idea INK, and as those of us in the north are in the 'non gardening' time, I sincerly hope you come up with a few more ideas.
Have a great Thanksgiving anyway all of you wherever you are!

It was good for me too but I must say I enjoyed reading others stuff more than writing mine. It feels better writing when I am inspired to say something than doing a chosen topic. I would still do it again though.

ilima