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I’m a city girl and do not automatically hate new development. That said …

• I think that when someone wants to build a residential complex outside the core urban area, it either needs to be in walking distance of (at minimum) a grocery store and drugstore, or else the developer needs to include (at minimum) a grocery store and drugstore as part of their site plan. We seriously have to start reducing the need for car trips.

• Also, all of our roads need either wide sidewalks or bike lanes. No more roads that are only safe by automobile.

(This is a rant, but it ends with links to delightful alternatives that are happening.)

What passes for “normal” landscaping practices is disgusting. As I type this, my neighborhood is being blasted with deafening noise and sickening fumes from tractor-mowers, blowers, and edgers. Giving the stupid grass and useless ornamental shrubbery a high-and-tight. Weren’t these people just here three days ago? Do they get paid by the hour or the visit or what? This is on city property (as it happens — our tax dollars at work!), but I’m not calling out any one entity, because the norm is pervasive, affecting the public and private domains alike.

With every little bit of this land we could be growing fruit trees! Vegetables! Shade trees! Native plants!! Instead, we pay big bucks to maintain ugly and useless, assault our senses, pollute the air, raise the ambient temperature.

I realize that as environmentalists, we focus a lot of our energy and angst on protesting the clearcutting of virgin land for development. And I certainly don’t want to discount the importance of preserving wild lands. But our landscaping practices on existing developed land, and our failure to make productive and ecologically sound use of existing developed land, are at least as big a problem.

As I type this, I am somewhat calming down, but this prevailing social norm to me is hideous, outrageous, and disgusting. The noise and fumes are still being spewed, and the nice respectable “landscaping” company will continue to earn a sh*tpile of money for this racket. “Racket” — Pun unintended but it fits. SMH. I seriously feel assaulted by our mow-and-blow culture, and if you don’t, maybe you have tougher eyes, ears, and lungs than I do.

Mark Lane, who writes a column in my local paper (Daytona Beach News-Journal), calls himself the “Darwinian Gardener.” His columns serve up a smattering of current topics along with his lackadaisical gardening philosophy. I always enjoy Mr. Lane’s column, but he really outdid himself this time, talking about things he’s noticed as a result of being home all the time because of the pandemic: “I learned that there are far more lawn services using far more powerful machinery operating before 10 a.m. than I would have guessed before. I also learned there are far more tree services knocking on doors than I would have guessed before. Some of them point out the hazards I am cultivating right in my front yard. I tell them I’m a man who lives a life of danger.”

All joking aside, I have friends who are constantly being harassed by the land-scrapers/scalpers. Their yard is a mix of fruit trees, vegetable plants, and a thick green carpet of multiple types of hardy ground-cover plants that thrive on minimal maintenance. These friends have literally had land-scalping companies sneak into their backyard and take pictures, then phone my friends and tell them why their yard needed to be “nuked” to kill off the ground cover so some nice lovely sod could be laid down. (My friends told them to never set foot on their property again or they would call the police.)

I don’t know how things are where you live. But here in Florida, it seems like a sizable percentage of the population has a vendetta against the entire plant kingdom (other than turf-grass). This is just one manifestation of our culture’s disconnect from nature.

One of my current areas of focus as an eco educator is attempting to get more of my fellow environmentalists to notice what a major chunk of money, labor, and fossil fuels we are expending for a bunch of busywork. Not to mention degrading the soil, a deadly mistake (topic for an upcoming blog post). And how much better things could be, probably for no extra money or labor if we take into account the monetary and social value of what we could be growing instead, like food or forests.

This is actually something that will have to start from the bottom up, with a shift in social norms. The same way that environmentally unfriendly standards in HOAs and local codes began. Trends, solidifying into norms. Natural gardening and food-growing is experiencing a rise in popularity; we just each have to do our best to contribute to their popularization. And de-normalize, de-popularize violent, rapacious landscaping practices.

We environmentalists are big on waving signs, writing letters, circulating petitions. “Speaking truth to power,” we call it.

Well, how about speaking a little truth to the yahoos who run our homeowners’ associations. Or speaking truth to our own husbands, for gosh sake (those of you who have husbands, and whose husbands are the lawn-obsessed variety). “Speaking truth to power” could be as simple as saying to your husband, “Honey, I’m putting my foot down. Your lawn obsession is bad for the environment. I want to be able to look my hypothetical seven-generations-great-grandchildren in the eye. You need to find a less destructive hobby.” And if you’re lucky, maybe the hobby he picks will be going hunting or fishing (apologies to my vegan or vegetarian friends here; I’m an omnivore making a plug for hyperlocal, non-factory-farmed meat). Or growing fruit trees!

(I know my comment about husbands and lawns might sound sexist, and I do know at least one couple where the wife is the one who wants a manicured yard, but honestly if I had a dime for every time I’ve heard a woman say she wants a natural non-manicured yard but “my husband won’t allow it”… well, I would have more money than I’d be able to spend in this lifetime!)

All of us, regardless of gender, need to strengthen our “Mama Bear” instincts; become bolder defenders of nature right where we live. We need to be a lot less shy; a lot less afraid of offending; a lot more fiercely protective. All of our lives depend on it.

I’ve posted a lot of links (on this blog, on my Deep Green Facebook page, and in various forums) about why lawns are bad for the environment. There are so many good articles out there, including many in the major mainstream papers. (And I’ve posted about how you can have a lawn that isn’t bad for the environment. #GinnyStibolt #FreedomLawn.) In my Further Exploration section below, I’m taking a different approach: highlighting lovely and desirable alternatives to entice people to loosen their attachment to the big flat monoculture lawn. Enjoy!

Further Exploration:

Tiny urban forests are boosting biodiversity; mitigating climate change: “Miniature forests are springing up on patches of land in urban areas around the world, often planted by local community groups using a method inspired by Japanese temples.” (from WeForum.org) And this page on saytrees.org has photos showing how fast a Miyawaki forest can grow in just two years.

30 tiny Zen-inspired gardens (Pinterest board). Inspiration station! Check out the breathtaking, exquisite little micro-worlds on this Pinterest board. “30 Magical Zen Gardens.” Landscaping can be so much pleasure!! So quiet and creative and restorative. So much more than the expensive ugly high-and-tight lawn-drudgery that we’ve made it. And you could easily choose edible, medicinal, and native plants for any garden you design, even an artsy little universe like this.

Church Forests of Ethiopia (National Geographic): “The forests provide a kind of ‘respectful covering’ for the churches at their centers and the riches they hold. Some of them are estimated to be 1,500 years old—tiny, ancient islands of historic habitat in a changed landscape.”

The other day, a plant-whisperer friend, who’s always bringing me cuttings and other goodies, brought me a Miracle Fruit. It was a tiny (about pill-size) bright-red smooth ovoid fruit. Eat this, he told me, and for a little while afterward, anything you drink or eat that ordinarily tastes sour will taste super sweet.

So I gave it a try. The fruit itself (which is mostly taken up by a seed in the middle that you don’t eat) tasted pleasantly sweet.

After ingesting the fruit (felt like popping a mystery adventure pill!), I took a sip of my “morning tonic” (water with a bit of cider-vinegar). Sure enough, my drink, which of course is usually tart, had suddenly been transformed into a super-sweet apple elixir.

Miracle Fruit. It occurred to me that it could have useful application. For example, if a person had to take an extremely unpleasant-tasting medicine, eating a Miracle Fruit immediately beforehand could make the medicine easier to swallow.

But then it occurred to me that Miracle Fruit could have a dangerous side. Things taste sour for a reason. For example, if you drank an entire glass of straight vinegar or concentrated lemon juice because Miracle Fruit made it taste sweet, you could hurt your esophagus or stomach! My advice would be, if you eat a Miracle Fruit, don’t eat or drink anything out of the ordinary for awhile afterward; stick to only foods and drinks you know, in familiar concentrations.

Reflecting upon my Miracle Fruit experience, I was struck by the thought that we are surrounded, metaphorically speaking, by potential “Miracle Fruit” of various kinds in our everyday lives. And they keep us from noticing the aspects of our lives and our society that are deeply sour (or bitter). So we keep enduring those sour or bitter things instead of avoiding or changing them as we would be better off doing.

For example, economic security could be a “Miracle Fruit” obscuring the sour taste of a bad marriage. Or a soul-sucking job.

Our climate-controlled, noise-insulating houses, with their closed doors and windows, can be “Miracle Fruit” dulling our sensitivities to the brutishly noisy, hot environment we have created outdoors. The harsh noise and toxic fumes of the landscaping equipment that scalps the grass and trees; the hot air spewing out the back ends of people’s air-conditioners.

Our cars, traveling bubbles that they are, can be a “Miracle Fruit” that keeps us from experiencing the blistering heat of our excessively paved, deforested world, and realizing we really need to have a lot more trees and other vegetation all around us.

White privilege can be a “Miracle Fruit” rendering us oblivious to the fact that systemic racism harms us all, not only the Black people and other people of color who it harms most.

Blind patriotism, with its feel-good self-righteousness, is a “Miracle Fruit” that numbs us to the horrors we wreak by waging war.

Stock-market gains and a “booming economy” can be a “Miracle Fruit” that erases the sour taste of how those corporations are gaining their prosperity: at the expense of their employees; indigenous peoples’ lands; our rivers and oceans and forests.

Our abundant supply of cable TV, internet, and other entertainment on tap can be a “Miracle Fruit” that dulls our ability to perceive the sourness of living in an HOA neighborhood where any creative urges we might have are quashed by a fussbudget culture that curtails self-expression.

Food or alcohol, indulged in excess, can be a “Miracle Fruit” dulling our spiritual tastebuds to the sense of loss that comes of not challenging ourselves to go make something creative, or go out walking and meet a new person.

I don’t want anyone to feel guilty about indulging in comforts and pleasures; I certainly have my comforts and pleasures. (For example, I love watching a show called Dexter! I watch it with my neighbor, on his wide-screen TV. We get together for an evening of Dexter-binging once every couple of weeks.)

We just can’t allow those little indulgences to become “Miracle Fruit” that dull our ability to fully taste the flavor of our lives. Things that taste sour, taste sour (or bitter) for a reason. By choosing to experience their flavor as is, we are more likely to get motivated to change what needs to be changed, in our lives or in the world. And that, in the long run, is really sweet!

All this aside, eating the Miracle Fruit, and then having my vinegar-water taste sweet, was a wild fun experience! Try it sometime if you get the chance.

What other metaphorical examples of “Miracle Fruit” can you think of, in the world or in your life?

Further Reading:

“The Evolution of Bitter Taste,” by Robert Christopher Bruner on ScholarBlogs. Fun facts on how bitter taste works; how humans evolved bitter-taste receptors.

“Miracle Fruit” entry in Britannica.com

Avoiding styrofoam and single-use plastics is a challenge at the best of times, but the Covid pandemic has made it even tougher, as many of us are trying to support our local restaurants by ordering takeout/delivery food.

I am doing a survey to find out if people are willing to pay extra for backyard-compostable takeout containers as an alternative to plastic or styrofoam. So far, a lot of people in my local eco groups have said they would be willing. Amounts range from 50 cents extra to 10 dollars extra! Obviously folks care about this. I myself would be willing to pay about $5 extra.

I plan to share my findings with local restaurants, and work with them to get backyard-compostable containers as an option.

Here are my survey questions; feel free to use them to poll people in your area.

1 — Would you be willing to pay extra for paper or other backyard-compostable containers if it were an option?
(Y/N)

2 — If yes, how much extra would you be willing to pay per order? (enter a dollar amount or range)

In my previous post “Where Green Meets Thrift,” I talk about how great it is when the eco thing and the thrifty thing are one and the same. (Buying clothes at thrift stores instead of buying new is one common example of this.)

The takeout-container thing, alas, is not an example of a situation where green meets thrift. At least not right now. Containers made from cardboard, bagasse (sugarcane waste), and other backyard-compostable materials tend to be priced many times as high as plastic or styrofoam containers.

Plastic and styrofoam are cheap in part because the manufacturers and sellers don’t have to pay the full cost of their product. I’m referring to the cost on the back end. The cost to towns and cities of cleaning up those containers when they become litter; the environmental cost as they end up in landfill where they may take hundreds of years to break down, leaching toxins all the while.

Since green does not yet intersect thrift when it comes to takeout containers, those of us who care, and are in a position to do so, can help by being willing to pay more for cardboard or other household-compostable options.

An idea I have often suggested to fellow eco-minded folks is making containers out of nontoxic “invasive” plants such as reeds or cogon grass. I have not yet delved into detailed research on this possibility, but I think it’s worth exploring, not only as an environmentally friendly container option but also as an opportunity for investors, and as a potentially high-demand niche for your local manufacturing sector.

Papyrus, the thick paperlike material used by ancient Egyptians as a writing surface, was made by laying sliced reeds perpendicular to one another and pressing them flat. Supposedly the reeds contained a natural adhesive that, when dry, kept the reeds together as a sheet.

I have no doubt that the plant kingdom offers many other potential solutions to our takeout quandary as well.

Another solution: If you order quite regularly from some establishment(s), and have a good rapport with them, you might ask them if you can give them a package of biodegradable/backyard-compostable containers to keep on hand for your orders. Or even better: If you can spare the money, buy them several packages of such containers so they can offer them to other eco-minded customers and see how many customers end up choosing the eco option.

That said, the real place where green meets thrift is our own reusable containers. If we could convince restaurants to stop being so afraid of lawsuits (resulting from some customer getting sick from their own inadequately cleaned container), this would be the greenest and thriftiest solution.

Or restaurants could send out their own reusable containers for takeout and delivery. Customers would pay a deposit on the containers.

When I lived in Japan, a common sight in neighborhoods was noodle-delivery guys on motor scooters. They’d bring your ramen or soba to your door in real, reusable bowls with reusable lids. After eating, you’d leave the dishes outside your door and the delivery guy would be back within an hour or so to retrieve them.

This might not work in most parts of the USA for various reasons. But my point is, we should be looking into this topic and finding alternatives to all this plastic and styrofoam we’re generating. It’s literally a growing problem.

When green intersects with thrift, it’s a happy day, both for people and for the planet. Yesterday in an online local community group I belong to, someone posted a flyer for a community school-uniform exchange. People are asked to donate their kids’ school uniforms that no longer fit, so that another child can use them. Uniforms are going to be collected all summer, and people with kids needing uniforms can register to get the sizes they need.

The uniform exchange was motivated by a wish to help people through hard times.

The fact that it also helps the environment (by cutting out the eco-footprint associated with manufacture, transport, retail of new uniforms) is just the icing on the cake.

I love when this happens! What examples have you noticed lately, of green intersecting with thrift?

Starting a list of unsustainable attitudes/values/social norms that are contributing to eco degradation, economic hardship, and other suffering throughout the world. As you may have noticed, I sometimes post “open-ended” posts, which are often lists. (I call such posts open-ended because I start with what I’ve got, and revisit the post to add other items as they occur to me. Sometimes I’m still adding items months later!) 

obsessive symmetry

obsessive neatness

giving exalted status to college, so-called “higher ed”; denigrating other forms of learning; not acknowledging that there are other, possibly better, paths to success and good citizenship

exalting youth; devaluing age

anti-sensitivity: branding sensitive people as lunatics needing meds

obsessive need for “order” and security

anti-visionary: calling young people with imagination and vision “impractical” or “naive”; anyone who manages to make it to adulthood with this sensitivity & imagination intact is dubbed eccentric, naive, not worth listening to

extreme risk-aversion

fear/intolerance of nature

me-first

On the whole, my local paper Daytona Beach News-Journal offers pretty good coverage of gardening topics. Correspondent Lynette Walther is a good writer. 

This article about plants NOT to plant because they “take over” is good advice from a conventional gardening perspective, and also from a native-habitat perspective. We don’t want invasive plants choking out our vegetable patch or crowding out native plants. 

That said – speaking from a PERMACULTURE design perspective, with patterns and the long view in mind, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that we have some plants that are this tenacious. Human activity, including excessive pavement, factory agriculture, and destructive residential and commercial landscaping practices, has seriously degraded the land.

There may come a time, if soil depletion continues and we have an extended drought, that ANY vegetation will be needed to help check erosion and stave off desertification. (Maybe it’s just me, but overall I’m more worried about desertification than I am about sea-level rise or extreme wet weather. A Facebook friend in Ohio said a 6-mile square which includes him has gotten 0.5 inches of rain since May! Normal would be 8-10 inches. Even my friends in Ireland experienced a major drought this year. )

Super tenacious plants may one day help screen our food/medicine gardens and our homes from a merciless sun in a treeless landscape. Furthermore, photosynthesis is an endothermic (heat-absorbing) reaction, and as humanity’s bad habits continue to heat up the planet, super-tenacious plants may one day be the only thing that stands between us and literally being cooked alive. I pray things never reach that point, and I am doing everything I can think of to reduce that likelihood. But as eco-minded folk, we need to be prepared to design for all possibilities. And today’s “pesky” tenacious plants might be tomorrow’s essential allies.

In my opinion, the best thing we can do with most invasive plants is cut them back; either “chop and drop” for mulch, or harvest as material for basketweaving, papermaking, and such. Cogon grass, considered highly invasive here in Florida, is used to make sleeping-mats in one region of China (according to a book I found online by doing a search “cogon grass basketweaving.”)

And extending the conversation to invasive animals and insects, I read the other day that Sudan and neighboring countries are having their worst locust plague in 70 years. Awhile back, I saw an article about restaurants in Israel capitalizing on the bounty. The writer pointed out that humans can only eat so many locusts. But this morning, as I was walking on the beach (where many ideas come to me), it occurred to me that maybe the bugs could be used as an ingredient in pet food as well.

Further Reading: I am currently rereading Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystems Restoration, by Tao Orion; published by Chelsea Green. From the publisher’s site: “Concerns that invasive species represent significant threats to global biodiversity and ecological integrity permeate conversations from schoolrooms to board rooms, and concerned citizens grapple with how to rapidly and efficiently manage their populations. These worries have culminated in an ongoing “war on invasive species,” where the arsenal is stocked with bulldozers, chainsaws, and herbicides put to the task of their immediate eradication. In Hawaii, mangrove trees (Avicennia spp.) are sprayed with glyphosate and left to decompose on the sandy shorelines where they grow, and in Washington, helicopters apply the herbicide Imazapyr to smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) growing in estuaries. The “war on invasive species” is in full swing, but given the scope of such potentially dangerous and ecologically degrading eradication practices, it is necessary to question the very nature of the battle.”