Written on Earth Day, 2009
As you crest a hill on Old Susanna Road just before it drops down to our short side road, the horizon stretches before you. In the distance the hills march westward. Most prominent is Smith Mountain, with its abandoned fire tower still standing watch over the lake.
From this vantage point you see more shades of green than the vocabulary can name. It is worthwhile to pull to the side of the road and drink in the scene.
On our half hill spring is rampant. Last week, I prepared a two beds for some flowers that I had started from seed a couple of months ago. I was beginning to think that the plants would become root-bound before there was enough of a break in the cold, wind and rain for me to set them out.
At last, though, sun appeared, the soil dried and the thermometer climbed, and I carried the tray of fledgling flowers down to the beds by the seawall.
The planting went quickly. When I finished, I stood erect and stretched and let my eyes wander. The native azaleas are past their prime, and the winds have stripped the flowers from the dogwoods. But the oak leaf hydrangeas have fresh green leaves, and wildflowers abound.
Violets are still blooming, and the flowers that look like tiny asters – according to Joab Thomas’ excellent wildflower book wild asters should not be blooming, so perhaps they’re daisy fleabane – abound. Small yellow flowers – I think they are eared coreopsis – abound on the hillside and on the flat path along the seawall. One of these days I will have to run the string trimmer along the path, but not until the flowering is past.
The attention getters, though, are the wild irises. They are small, even delicate. It seems impossible that they would thrive on their own, but there they are. I am reminded of one of my favorite Kate Campbell songs: “He used to call her Wild Iris; if you said don’t, she would.” Which in turn reminds me of my own wild iris.
All of these wildflowers and more are around the beds into which I’ve prepared.
I confess that I am only a semi-skilled gardener, and I don’t know whether any of the seedlings I set out will survive, much less thrive. My success or failure in this particular venture doesn’t matter, though. In the riot of shapes and colors around me, I recognize that God is a lot better gardener than I am.
Perhaps my – our – greatest contribution to our beautiful planet would simply be to avoid messing it up.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
A Long Road to Simplicity
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.
Yankee Proverb
The proverb came to mind not long ago as I read a newspaper article reporting that in this trying economy more people are having their clothing mended and shoes resoled, using the public library instead of buying on Amazon, and preparing more meals at home instead of eating out.
It came to mind again as I was wheeling the garbage can to the street. It was nearly full, despite the fact that only my wife and I live at home, and we recycle newspapers and magazines, aluminum and steel cans and cardboard. We save our plastic grocery bags for use by the food pantry.
What is it that we are throwing away? By far, the most substantial part of it is packaging. Everything seems to come in multiple layers of paper and plastic. Some of it is leftovers that got left over for too long. It is obvious that we are throwing out more than we’re wearing out.
Whether you call it frugality or conservation, it is unarguable that our footprint on this plant is much larger than that of the generations that went before us.
I’m sure that the generation my grandparents belonged to didn’t think of themselves as being eco-friendly, or as we say now, “green.” They thought they were simply being sensible.
Certainly industries used our air and our streams as convenient dumps and didn’t concern themselves with the consequences.
On a lesser level, not everything my grandparents did, such as burning household garbage in an empty oil drum and then burying what remained in an old borrow pit, was particularly earth friendly. But on the whole, they made far fewer demands on the planet’s resources than we do.
We buy paper towels by the case; my grandmother wiped the kitchen counter with a cloth from a 25-pound bag of flour.
Many in our generation and even more in the one following us buy bottled water. When my grandfather went to the field, he carried his drinking water in a gallon syrup jug, insulated with an empty 10-pound sugar sack.
Most of the food was grown in the garden and didn’t come shrink-wrapped in a Styrofoam tray. Meat purchased at the grocery store was wrapped in butcher paper instead of plastic. Far more items, from foodstuffs to hardware were sold unpackaged.
My grandfather’s old Studebaker pickup truck probably was not as efficient as the engines of today’s vehicles. But he drove fewer miles in a year than we do in a month.
The closets in my grandparents’ house were impossibly small, but the closets and a couple of chifforobes held everything they owned, and they did not feel compelled to buy new things before the old clothes wore out.
At our house, the clothes dryer runs a good deal of the time; I can’t remember the last house we lived in that had a clothesline. Although my grandmother eventually had an automatic washing machine, she never had a dryer and never felt the need for one.
I don’t hold those days up as the ideal. Times change and so do we. I’m pretty sure, though, that despite our consumption of a larger share of the planet’s bounty, we are not really any happier than they were.
Would we be more content if we owned less, if we used less? I don’t know. All that simplicity may be more attractive in the abstract.
Intellectually, I know we have all kinds of stuff that we don’t really need, but as long as we have a place to put it – even if we can’t remember where we put it, or sometimes even remember that we have it – simplifying will continue to be a challenge.
My efforts thus far have been limited. I’ve thinned my library of a fair number of books, taking them to the public library for use in one of the Friends of the Library’s periodic book sales. But I have to consider a book multiple times before I admit that I’m not going to read it again or use it for reference. I’ve gotten rid of bags of clothing that no longer fits, things that are too big instead of too small. I want to make it expensive to regain the weight I’ve lost.
It was easy enough for Thoreau to preach, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”
And simplifying would make us greener.
It’s the doing that is difficult.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
Yankee Proverb
The proverb came to mind not long ago as I read a newspaper article reporting that in this trying economy more people are having their clothing mended and shoes resoled, using the public library instead of buying on Amazon, and preparing more meals at home instead of eating out.
It came to mind again as I was wheeling the garbage can to the street. It was nearly full, despite the fact that only my wife and I live at home, and we recycle newspapers and magazines, aluminum and steel cans and cardboard. We save our plastic grocery bags for use by the food pantry.
What is it that we are throwing away? By far, the most substantial part of it is packaging. Everything seems to come in multiple layers of paper and plastic. Some of it is leftovers that got left over for too long. It is obvious that we are throwing out more than we’re wearing out.
Whether you call it frugality or conservation, it is unarguable that our footprint on this plant is much larger than that of the generations that went before us.
I’m sure that the generation my grandparents belonged to didn’t think of themselves as being eco-friendly, or as we say now, “green.” They thought they were simply being sensible.
Certainly industries used our air and our streams as convenient dumps and didn’t concern themselves with the consequences.
On a lesser level, not everything my grandparents did, such as burning household garbage in an empty oil drum and then burying what remained in an old borrow pit, was particularly earth friendly. But on the whole, they made far fewer demands on the planet’s resources than we do.
We buy paper towels by the case; my grandmother wiped the kitchen counter with a cloth from a 25-pound bag of flour.
Many in our generation and even more in the one following us buy bottled water. When my grandfather went to the field, he carried his drinking water in a gallon syrup jug, insulated with an empty 10-pound sugar sack.
Most of the food was grown in the garden and didn’t come shrink-wrapped in a Styrofoam tray. Meat purchased at the grocery store was wrapped in butcher paper instead of plastic. Far more items, from foodstuffs to hardware were sold unpackaged.
My grandfather’s old Studebaker pickup truck probably was not as efficient as the engines of today’s vehicles. But he drove fewer miles in a year than we do in a month.
The closets in my grandparents’ house were impossibly small, but the closets and a couple of chifforobes held everything they owned, and they did not feel compelled to buy new things before the old clothes wore out.
At our house, the clothes dryer runs a good deal of the time; I can’t remember the last house we lived in that had a clothesline. Although my grandmother eventually had an automatic washing machine, she never had a dryer and never felt the need for one.
I don’t hold those days up as the ideal. Times change and so do we. I’m pretty sure, though, that despite our consumption of a larger share of the planet’s bounty, we are not really any happier than they were.
Would we be more content if we owned less, if we used less? I don’t know. All that simplicity may be more attractive in the abstract.
Intellectually, I know we have all kinds of stuff that we don’t really need, but as long as we have a place to put it – even if we can’t remember where we put it, or sometimes even remember that we have it – simplifying will continue to be a challenge.
My efforts thus far have been limited. I’ve thinned my library of a fair number of books, taking them to the public library for use in one of the Friends of the Library’s periodic book sales. But I have to consider a book multiple times before I admit that I’m not going to read it again or use it for reference. I’ve gotten rid of bags of clothing that no longer fits, things that are too big instead of too small. I want to make it expensive to regain the weight I’ve lost.
It was easy enough for Thoreau to preach, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.”
And simplifying would make us greener.
It’s the doing that is difficult.
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
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