The plants that persist in the landscape are the perennials. Succession belies a fabric of short-lived, seed-bearing forbs, herbs, low-lying ground cover, “weeds”, until the great quilt of woody species descends and ascends. A perennial culture by design, for sure. The end goal, the eternal return. It is what persists through the years. It is as though a proliferation of annuals and biennials gives way to what endures over the long run, the perennials, the eternal “fruit” meeting the fingertips and lips of generations.
We humans may come and go, but the trees persist, the big bluestem persists, the saguaro persists. The metabolic creatures of the soil at the feet of these great masters go on digesting and digesting and turn what falls, into a smorgasbord of its own making, feeding animals, the mycelia, the flora and fauna of the matrix of life billowing out in all its sublime magnificence. No two leaves the same, bark furrowing from freeze and thaw, birds snatching insects from their several niches, over several decades.
But the tree as tree goes on being tree, architecture of all life, a cunning, brawling river of vascular madness and celebration. For those that pay witness and rigorously recreate, patiently, this extraordinary spectacle of intergenerational would (wood).
After a long walk through the burbs this morning I am amazed at the amount of wasted space. Too much unacknowledged potential for raising crops as food prices climb and the corporate farm continues to eat away at the small farmer. Notice how we say “eat away”. We are the ones that need to eat, not the pigs and cows, not the soy and corn merchants. As upheaval continues to erupt around the world what are the outcomes? What are people putting in place to deal with the rampant, greed economy and all-consuming decimation? And the forests? When in the future will what we breathe is nothing less than a chemical soup? So what gives us life is continually turned to sawdust and 2 by 4′s, that, placed end to end, go from here to the moon and back every year. Gardening? You mean we actually have to go out in the back yard and touch a worm, stick a seed in the ground, harvest fresh vegetables, herbs, nuts, fruits?
“Every society that grows extensive lawns could produce all its food on the same area, using the same resources, and . . . world famine could be totally relieved if we devoted the same resources of lawn culture to food culture in poor areas. These facts are before us. Thus, we can look at lawns, like double garages and large guard dogs, [and Humvees and SUVs] as a badge of willful waste, conspicuous consumption, and lack of care for the earth or its people.
Most lawns are purely cosmetic in function. Thus, affluent societies have, all unnoticed, developed an agriculture which produces a polluted waste product, in the presence of famine and erosion elsewhere, and the threat of water shortages at home.
The lawn has become the curse of modern town landscapes as sugar cane is the curse of the lowland coastal tropics, and cattle the curse of the semi-arid and arid rangelands.
It is past time to tax lawns (or any wasteful consumption), and to devote that tax to third world relief. I would suggest a tax of $5 per square meter for both public and private lawns, updated annually, until all but useful lawns are eliminated.” (Bill Mollison)