Saving Bambi, and an Heirloom Tomato or Two

Our eating habits, it seems, along with just about everything else we do, are destroying the planet. Biodiversity is disappearing in our food supply, according to the New York Times Idea of the Day for July 24. Tamas Dezso of the Times Week in Review quotes Emily Badger in Miller-McCune magazine: “…today, 99 percent of turkeys eaten in America come from a single breed, the Broad-Breasted White… More than 80 percent of dairy cows are Holsteins and 75 percent of pigs come from just three breeds.”

It’s also true of fruits and vegetables. The Times summarizes: “while there used to be 15,000 varieties of apple, there now are 1,500.”

And it’s all because of consumer demand. “Biodiversity is disappearing precisely because people no longer consume it,” Badger writes, “and if we would just eat endangered crops and livestock now, restoring their role in the food supply, we could save them from extinction.”

So we need to consume in order to protect.

At the same time, I’ve been thinking that it might be a good idea to thin our voracious deer population. It’s a herd of seven, plus three little guys that still have spots. They don’t eat weeds, or at least not enough of them. They do eat everything else, particularly the plants and trees that I’ve actually paid money for and planted. (I admit, I do like venison.) But now, it seems that eating them might just encourage them. Bambi saved by the New York Times and Emily Badger. Imagine: a deer saved by a badger. Sounds like The Wind in the Willows.

But seriously, let’s frequent those farmers’ markets and roadside stands, where they might just have some fruits and vegetables that haven’t been especially bred for uniformity and to withstand travel — they might just taste a little better and a little different.

For information on Farm to City farmers’ markets in the Philadelphia area, go to http://www.farmtocity.org.

Thundering for the Kids — The Flash Version

I’ve never liked motorcycles much — the noise, the exhaust fumes — raw aggression. On the highway I hear them, roaring up behind me, often two abreast, weaving in and out of traffic, going fast and loud. Or gunning their engines at stop signs. Threatening, all in black, hidden behind big, intimidating helmets or goggles. Anonymous power. Darth Vader on wheels.

Yet, on a crisp bright Sunday morning in autumn I am on Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia with thousands of bikers. Even on a beautiful sunny day, they’re big, tough, and scary. They have to be to manage the Harleys.

This is the 28th annual ABATE Run for the Kids, “America’s Largest Toy Run.” At 12:00 sharp, they will start their engines and roar out to Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania. Each of the bikers has a toy, or more, to deliver to sick kids.

ABATE stands for Alliance of Bikers Aimed Toward Education, a national organization that lobbies for bikers’ rights and provides education and safety instruction. The ABATE run was started in 1980 to counteract their “bad guy” image. Just to look at them, there are a lot of “bad guys” on Columbus Avenue this Sunday morning, the kind of guys you wouldn’t want to find perched on the next bar stool.

Near the front is a lean man with a craggy face. On the left chest of his blue denim jacket are the words “Combat Vet” and an American flag. He’s a member of ABATE and has done the ride for many years. “For the kids,” he says, as do all the other guys I talk to. “But I can’t do it no more.” He says the noise of the ride is too much for him. Then he pauses, becomes thoughtful. “These kids,” he says, and even in the din of the motorcycles, there’s a pool of quiet around him. “These kids. Some of them won’t be here tomorrow.” He pauses again. “There was a 10-month old baby I saw once, with tubes coming out all over…” His voice trails off and he looks into the distance. “I just can’t do it no more.”

He won’t go into CHOP with the rest of the bikers. He’ll go ahead of the ride to help organize the parking, underground, where the noise — the noise that he says is too much for him — must be deafening.

So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be perched on a bar stool next to one of these guys. But I’ll still be careful of them on the highway. For their sake, as well as mine.

All Things in Moderation

“Don’t Blame Google for Ignorance” is the title of a post from the New York Times “Idea of the Day.”

“Some say rapid Internet search is killing general knowledge, the retention of key facts, from capital cities to historic dates — long the marker of an educated mind.” Yet another way in which the Internet is dumbing us down.

The blog quotes a journalism professor, Brian Cathcart of Kingston University in London, who disagrees. Knowledge, he says, and what kinds of knowledge we need to have, are essentially moving targets, “a society’s pool of shared knowledge is ever-changing.”

And the targets have moved throughout history. Cathcart points out that when printing with movable type was invented in the 15^th century, there were predictions of doom, of the death of knowledge. In fact, to the contrary, the printing press increased the reach of knowledge and facilitated an expansion of knowledge greater than any invention since the development of standardized writing.

And speaking of writing, almost exactly 1,000 years before Gutenberg, Socrates weighed in against that then fairly new invention (he never wrote anything down himself, we have Plato to thank for transcribing his arguments). The reason? It would lead to wrong belief and misguided opinion. Writing, as opposed to oral discourse, would enable people to find ideas and opinions and think about them all on their own without guidance from a wise mentor — like, maybe, Socrates.

So, just to summarize here: In around 400 BCE, some of us worried about unchaperoned access to written knowledge and opinion. In 1460 or so AD, some of us worried about universal, unchaperoned access to printed knowledge and opinion. And now, in 2009, some of us worry about an “unmoderated” Internet, the etherized spread of knowledge and opinion.

It’s a 2,000-year trend. How on earth will ordinary people be able to tell the Internet weeds from the good stuff? Should we worry?

Images: Johannes Gutenberg, Encyclopedia Britannica Online, Jacques Louis David, "The Death of Socrates," Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Conversation in the Weeds

It may be that if you weed too much, you get a bit goofy. Different weeds take on different personalities and you treat them accordingly. What follows is a conversation with one of my least favorites: Five-leafed Akebia.

Weeder: Good morning, Akebia shoot, I see you’re back.

FLA: Yup.

Weeder: I pulled you out just two weeks ago — maybe a week and a half.

FLA: (sullen) Yeah, that hurt. But I got over it.

Weeder: So why do you keep growing? Why do you keep strangling other plants? Why won’t you cooperate?

FLA: (flatly) It’s what I do. It’s my destiny

Weeder: But you’re so relentless.

FLA: It’s my purpose, to grow and reproduce. (livening) It’s your purpose, too, by the way: grow and reproduce.

Weeder: Well, yes, but I do other things as well.

FLA: (increasingly more engaged) Yeah, other stupid things. Like worrying about why you’re here. Stupid waste of time. You’re here because you’re here, that’s all. And worrying about purpose. Just grow and reproduce, like me. And multi-tasking. If you just stuck to one thing, you’d be a lot more productive, like me.

Weeder: Well, I was more restrained about the reproduction business: two children, max.

FLA: That’s fine for you, you’re taking over the earth anyway, with all your stupid buildings and your stupid chemicals and your stupid fancy plants. God, I hate those rhododendrons and how you baby them! Let them stand up for themselves and fight like real men, I say. We weeds have to keep growing just to keep up.

Weeder: OK, OK, granted, we aren’t very good stewards of the earth…

FLA: I’ll say. And we got here first.

Weeder: But why do you have to do your growing on my property? Can’t you fulfill your destiny somewhere else?

FLA: I like you.

Weeder: LIKE ME! How can you like me? I do my best to eradicate you. Not that I’m very successful at it.

FLA: Actually, I even love you. Because you don’t use chemicals. Remember when your neighbors drowned the place with Roundup?

Weeder: Yeah, the whole neighborhood reeked for a week, made me choke.

FLA: (angry and morose) And then they came back and did it again. Wiped out my whole family, they did. Uncle Charlie, Aunt Mildred, all my brothers and sisters, all the little nieces and nephews. It was devastating. Planticide! An herbal holocaust!

Weeder: Well, although I hated it at the time, it worked.

FLA: (outraged) It certainly did, all too well. We’ve had to redouble our efforts on your side of the fence.

Weeder: Well, thank you very much.

FLA: And another thing. If you’d just stop worrying about those fancy plants and put up an arbor for me to grow on, we’d get along a lot better. I could be beautiful. I could hide that awful mess that your stupid mechanic son makes in the back yard — all those tires and trucks. It looks like Appalachia back there…

Weeder: Yes I know. I try…

FLA: (primping) I would be beautiful. I have round rich green leaves in neat clusters of five. I have pretty little flowers…

Weeder: I’ve never seen your flowers.

FLA: (outraged again) See that! You haven’t been looking. All you do is yank and snip, yank and snip. You don’t even pay attention to what you’re doing! Stop and smell the roses — oops, I mean honeysuckle — Weeder. My flowers are subtle.

Weeder: I’ll think about it — that arbor thing. But only if you promise not to go anywhere else in the garden.

FLA: No promises.

Weeder: Well, then…

FLA: OW!!

Conscience

It happened around lunchtime. We heard the whipping of the blades. First the news copter, then the Medevac. Thirteen-year-old boy on a bike. “A tan- or gold-colored wagon, possibly a Volvo,” we heard later. Hit & Run.

For two weeks the story was in the papers and on the evening news with pleas for information. The police searched, following false leads. The boy lay in the hospital. Possible brain damage. Two weeks.

Finally, an anonymous tip led to the car — a Volvo with a hole in the windshield — parked in the garage of a 75-year-old woman.

She says she thought she’d hit a deer. At noon, at a busy intersection. She says she didn’t see anything about it on the television news or in the papers. She’s now out on bail. The boy is “recovering at home.”

There will be outrage based on the woman’s age, calls for testing older drivers, for revoking licenses. And probably, there should be. But someone who could run down a thirteen-year-old boy on a bike and then hide for two weeks amid a public clamor for information? I don’t want her likes on the road, regardless of age.

The Futility of Weeding

“The stateliest building man can raise is the ivy's food at last.” – Charles Dickens, novelist (1812-1870)

In other words, it’s the goal and destiny of plants to take over the earth.

Advice on Weeding

When I first started weeding, I hardly knew what was a weed and what was not. I could identify roses and daffodils, tulips, day lilies, lily of the valley, and a few more, but not a whole lot more.

As I watched the landscape over the spring and summer, things popped up, proliferated, and came back the next year. I was cautious. I knew that 100 years ago, the land was farmed and managed by a great aunt who really knew her stuff when it came to wildflowers and other plants. So, like hunting for a long lost Declaration of Independence hidden in the back of a drawer, I searched the landscape for extraordinary plants.

It turns out, there were none. What grew there was an ordinary collection of suburban Philadelphia flora, some good — a few very shy trillium — some not so good — pokeweed, which some consider a weed and others grow intentionally as an ornamental — and some downright horrible — a collection of invasive Asian immigrants (see my previous blog, "Thugs in the Garden").

Since I spend so much time weeding, I thought I’d offer some random advice.

Know Your Weeds
There are many books and web sites that identify weeds. I’ve found “Invasive Plants of the Eastern United States” particularly helpful for the real thugs. Of course, it helps to know the name of what you’re looking for so that you can find a photo of the plant to compare with what you have. But most books and websites have photos that you can browse through. The advice of experienced gardeners, who are almost universally generous, is invaluable.

Pay Attention
It’s easy to get carried away. You’re busily pulling some vine or other, the mind wanders, and all of a sudden, you’re elbow deep in poison ivy or you’ve yanked something that you paid a fortune for a few years ago at the garden store and forgot about.

Go Out Early in the Morning
Before the heat of the day and preferably after a rain. Weeds are easier to pull from moist soil than from dry, baked ground. Follow the sun, or rather the shade, in summer.

Be Prepared
There will be bugs — mosquitoes and midges. I put on a Bert’s Bees anti-insect concoction, which seems to help. I also wear long pants, socks, boots, and a long-sleeved shirt (usually with the sleeves rolled up) when I’m doing heavy weeding in the field and woodland beyond the lawn. I know, it’s hot. But it’s protection against insects and prickles. I only wear gloves when I’m dealing with thorns, poison ivy, or mile-a-minute vine. I can't feel the plants and roots with gloves on.

Water, Water, Water
I mean drink it yourself. No need to say more.

On Compulsivity
Yes, you can just weed-wack weeds. But they will come back. Some are masochists and love being weed-wacked. I pull as much as I can, to get the roots. Pull slowly and carefully, otherwise, the stem may break and the root will still be there, ready to continue growing when your back is turned. Get them early, the more mature they are, the harder it is to get all the roots. In plants with rhizomes, it's impossible.

Prioritize
I will never get rid of all the weeds in my landscape and neither will you. They're hardy and determined, which is why they've persisted for so long. But there are some, the thugs that crowd out everything else,and the strangle vines, that have my attention. I will certainly never eradicate fiveleafed akebia or Japanese honeysuckle. But each year I have a goal to push them back further, starting from the edges, and, of course, rescuing rhododendrons, laurel, and any other legitimate plant from their clutching tendrils.

After Work
I always take a thorough shower, even if it’s cool and I haven’t gotten sweaty or muddy. I also examine my body as thoroughly as I can. We have a substantial resident deer population that brings with it deer ticks, carriers of Lyme Disease. I’ve had it twice and it’s not fun. Vigilance — and I mean vigilance, dear ticks are distinguishable from a speck of dirt only with a magnifying glass — helps.

Above All, Enjoy
Yes, it’s work, but satisfying work, good for the body, good for the soul. A great stress reliever and workout. Don't kill yourself. Stop while you still have time to sit back and enjoy. And so it won't hurt as much the next morning.