Re: Article from Natchez "Naturalist Newsletter"

Zem,
They've done that a lot here, much of it ordered by the Army Corps of
Engineers clearing our ditches and riverways when they execute flood
reduction plans.  They say it is necessary to get rid of underbrush and that
that will help the trees left survive, but I think it's a load of crap.
What's with this freakish neatness?  Do they want the whole country to look
like a parking lot?  Does everything have to be stripped and levelled?
Why all this control?  There's a lot of wildlife that need these spaces.

I was just about to do some digging in my own little patch of disarray.
Just about to plunge the shovel in, but decided I'd better pull back that
bit of mulch.  The dirt had a slightly strange color.  I rubbed it.  It was
a toad.  He didn't like my moving him to a safer spot, but he went.  That's
probably the wildest it gets here on my lot, but I relish it.

Kitty

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Zemuly@aol.com>
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Wednesday, September 29, 2004 9:48 AM
Subject: [CHAT] Article from Natchez "Naturalist Newsletter"


> I received the following article from our Experiment Station
horticulturist.
>  Thought you all would find it interesting.
> zem
> zone 7
> West TN
>
>
> NEATNESS AS ABOMINATION
> A fellow in the vicinity has been busy this week  bulldozing the trees and
> bushes from a ditch running across his large, flat,  grassy field. Someone
> remarked to me how wonderful it is that "things are  getting cleaned up
around
> here, really looking neat now."
>
> Let it be known  that when it comes to neatening up the landscape for
> neatness' sake, what I see  is habitat destruction, and there's nothing
neat about it.
>
> Above I use  the word "abomination" advisedly. I am aware of the word's
> religious  connotations, for many of us never see that word except in the
Bible,
> where many  things are classed as "abominations before the Lord." I use
the word
> not in a  religious context, but in a spiritual one, and in my opinion the
> destruction of  life-giving habitat purely for the sake of appealing to
the
> local community's  concept of "neatness" is abomination before the spirit
of the
> Creator.
>
> For, when you look into the Universe and at the web of life on  our little
> Earth, you see plainly that the Creator blossoms diversity out of
nothingness,
> evolves sophistication out of awkwardness, and leaves strands of
> interdependency among all things. Whatever in
> spirit goes against this grand  and beautiful theme of the Creator is
> "abomination."
>
> The bushes and trees  along that little ditch across the field provided a
> tiny island of habitat for a  gorgeous diversity of living beings. A
thriving
> local ecosystem of mutually  dependent living things existed in an ocean
of
> ecologically unstable monoculture  grass. It was a polyphonic song sung in
a
> desert. And its destruction for the  sake of neatening up the
> landscape is an  abomination.
>
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