Monarch Caterpillars, Chrysallises, and Wasps: Sometimes Things Go Wrong

Two days ago, as I came back into the house after dumping my coffee grounds in the garden, I noticed a small black and white wasp sitting on top of something on the swamp milkweed.  Looking closer, I saw what I thought was a discolored monarch caterpillar, about the size of a 2nd or 3rd instar.  "Damn.  Oh, well, her babies have to eat, too," I thought to myself.

Of course I grabbed my camera to capture some photos, but it was early morning and the humidity was high, so I was only able to take a couple frames before the lens fogged up and became too opaque for me to continue.  By the time the lens cleared, the wasp with her payload had disappeared.

Well, my garden is definitely a place for nature to "do its thing", so I made no attempt to intervene.  In the late afternoon, I noticed what looked like the same female wasp working at the entrance to a hollow tube in my bee house which is above and behind the swamp milkweed.  Obviously that was where her nest was.

When I downloaded my photos, I was relieved to see that the caterpillar the little wasp had was NOT a monarch caterpillar.  If I had to guess, I'd say it was a cutworm of some sort, actually.  Much as I love insects, that's not a caterpillar I'm sorry to see feed some baby wasps.

Yesterday, when I went back out to take photos, the nest tube this little wasp was working on had been completely closed off.  It's the right hand tube near the center of this photo.  Inside it, I am sure that a wasp egg is developing into a larva that will use this hapless caterpillar to create the next generation of mason wasps.  As horrific as that seems in one sense, at the same time it seems pretty amazing.

I see these little wasps hunting in my gardens frequently.  It would be fascinating to know how many caterpillars they remove over the course of each growing season - and what species get "harvested".

In other caterpillar news, I was thrilled a few days ago to notice a monarch cat hanging upside down in the classic "J" position as it started the transition from caterpillar to pupa/chrysalis.  Because we've been watching Youtube videos about metamorphosis, I carefully pointed it out to our oldest grandson, Connor, who is 3.

We were both ecstatic to see that the caterpillar had completed its change the next morning...

...but by the following day, I began to suspect that something was seriously wrong.

Two days after it had formed, I removed the remnants of the chrysalis, as well as the leaf it was attached to, fearing for bacterial contamination.  It was probably too little, too late, but I figured it was worth a try to keep further contamination from spreading to other monarch caterpillars in the area.

Does anyone with more specialized knowledge of monarch/butterfly metamorphosis know more precisely what caused the demise of this pupating monarch?

Once again, as with bird nests, if I find it, I'm beginning to assume that the chrysalis/pupa is not likely to have a positive outcome.  Sometimes I have to be content with letting exciting events happen "off stage" in the garden.  If the result is more baby birds and more adult butterflies, then it's all good and my curiosity will just have to go unsatisfied.  Thank goodness for Youtube videos!

Milkweed Signals?

Watching for caterpillars as closely as I've been doing this summer, I noticed an odd phenomenon on the milkweeds about a week ago.

As of August 5th, last Sunday, I had not seen a single milkweed bug, large or small, on any of my milkweed plants this summer.  At midday, I was out in the backyard, photographing insects and flowers like the swamp milkweed above, when I noticed something reddish flying in the middle of the backyard. 

Chasing it down, I saw that it was a large milkweed bug (Oncopeltus fasciatus) which had landed on a small yaupon bush (Ilex vomitoria).  Note:  I apologize for the quality of this photo, but it's the only one I took at the time.

The next morning, August 6th, when I got up, there were probably a dozen large milkweed bugs on my swamp milkweed plants, primarily on the blooms.  Many were in the process of creating the next generation of large milkweed bugs.

In the space of 24 hours, my yard went from absolutely no milkweed bugs to a single large milkweed bug to a dozen or more large milkweed bugs.  The numbers have continued to increase over the week.

Where did they all come from?  No one else I see around the neighborhood has milkweed plants and there is little "wild space" nearby.

What brought them all in at essentially the same time?  The swamp milkweed had been blooming for over a week at that point, the tropical milkweed for weeks, and the butterfly milkweed for months, so why August 5th-6th?  Why that day specifically?

I have no answers to these questions, but it's a fascinating little mystery to me.  Sometimes it seems like the more I learn, the less I know.

Tolerate the Uglies!!!

After carefully watching my larval plants for several months (which felt like years!), I'm finally seeing caterpillars on them. 

There are monarch caterpillars on the milkweed,

black swallowtail caterpillars on the parsley,

gulf fritillary caterpillars on the maypop vines,

and - based on the foliage - probably phaon crescent caterpillars on the fogfruit. 

YEAH!!! My plants are starting to get ugly!  They are making butterflies!!!

As much as I love seeing the caterpillars, though, I find that I do cringe at how ragged my plants start to look at this point of the summer.  Not only is the heat taking a toll, the plants are so large that any dry spells can cause wilting and brown edges, even partial leaf drop.  By the time the caterpillars show up and start eating the leaves, the plants can start looking like I should yank them out of the garden at the first possible moment.

Of course I don't pull them out.  I chose and planted these plants especially as butterfly food.  Why would I pull them out just as they are starting to actually produce butterflies?  Even if I do "mentally hear" my neighbors gossiping about how ragged my garden is looking these days.

Honestly, couldn't these plants be a little NEATER and PRETTIER while they go through this stage of their life cycle?!

My own phrase for this is "Tolerate the uglies!"  Benjamin Vogt of Monarch Gardens shares the same concept with his phrase of "Redefine pretty."  In a world saturated with television ads showing happy, beautiful people in manicured yards that don't have a single tattered leaf or brown spot in the lawn, it feels subversive to allow caterpillars to actually eat the leaves on your plants.  Seriously, shouldn't this be done behind closed doors, people?!

To be even more subversive, this summer I've noticed that my monarch caterpillars seemed to purposefully deflower the milkweed they are feeding upon. 

First, mama monarch laid quite a few eggs underneath flower bud clusters, so the caterpillars have been eating the flowers and buds from the moment they hatched.

Secondly, as the caterpillars reached one of their later, larger instars, I noticed that 3 of them had cut the stem of the entire flower cluster partway through, resulting in the entire bloom head hanging upside down and dying.  Seriously, what's up with that?!  The only thing I can figure out is that, evolutionarily, this decreases the chances of parasites being attracted to the plant for nectar and thereby finding the caterpillar(s) nearby to host their offspring on.  I've never heard of this as a "thing" before, though, so I don't know if my imagination is just running away with me - or if, maybe, I'm on to something.  Any monarch researchers out there that might want to look into this idea?

Along the same lines, is it coincidence that the eggs were laid shortly after the buds started opening and the plants started blooming?  Evolutionarily, could it be that so many eggs were laid on these newly opening flower buds to decrease the overall numbers of blooms, decreasing the seed production, and thus moving the plant energies into leaf production, thereby providing more food for more baby monarchs?

Or is this egg placement just a way to hide the caterpillars until they get a little bigger and less attractive to wasps and other caterpillar parasites who might not care that they don't taste good?  See how well that monarch caterpillar is hidden?

Can you see it now???

How about now?  Pretty safe hiding place, isn't it?

WHY the timing and placement for egg laying?  Coincidence or evolutionary plan?  Inquiring minds want to know.

While I contemplate these possibilities, I meander my garden enjoying the new life chomping hungrily on my plants and try not to cringe at the blooms being cut short and the leaves disappearing in the process.  Life is a balance - and never more so than in a garden.

Color Clash: Where Do I Go From Here?

I'm not normally the sort of gardener who obsesses over clashing colors in my flower beds.  In fact, I'm rather an "anything goes if I like it" sort of person.  However, I find myself being challenged by color clashes in my front yard this spring.

Specifically, I have a couple plants that I absolutely adore:  downy phlox (Phlox pilosa), a beautiful soft purplish pink bloomer that goes from December through June, and Indian pinks (Spigelia marilandica), a graphically spectacular bloom of bright red with yellow highlights.  For better or worse, because I love both of them, I planted both of them in my front flower bed...pretty close to each other.

And they clash.  Even to my eye, they clash.  (The phlox is on the left, the Indian pinks are on the right, and a Darrow's blueberry is in the middle.)

I guess I figured that one of them wouldn't do so well, leaving just one for me to enjoy, but they fooled me!

Now I have a dilemma.  Which should I transplant, if either?

The downy phlox provides great color for months AND it stays low.  It blends well with foliage of the Darrow's blueberry subshrubs (Vaccinium darrowii) that are also doing well in that bed and with the spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis) and the blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) that bloom spectacularly in the front gardens during the spring.

The Indian pinks bloom for a much shorter period of time than the downy phlox, but I have a special place in my heart for them.  I've tried them unsuccessfully in both my Mobile and in my Clearwater, Kansas, gardens, so having them do well here is exciting.  Truthfully, I'm a little scared to transplant them and risk watching them wither in a different spot.

The first time I saw Indian pinks was on a garden tour in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where they provided a thick, blooming carpet on a shady hillside.  I've never forgotten that spectacular sight.

While the Indian pinks clash with the downy phlox (and truthfully with the Darrow's blueberry too), they look great with the native columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) that seems to have found a happy home in my garden where it has started to seed itself about a bit.

So far the columbine hasn't seeded itself close to the downy phlox, but it would clash, too, if they grew in close proximity.

So, fellow gardeners, any thoughts?  I won't promise to follow your advice, but I value it nonetheless!  Maybe your thoughts will help me clarify my own.....

Am I Still On Track?

Reading a magazine about blogging earlier this week, I tried to remember exactly why I began Gaia Garden.  Was it simply to share the photos I was taking as I gardened?  To share the plants and animals I found as my hands dug in the soil surrounding our home?  Amazingly, I realized that I started writing this blog over 11 1/2 years  - and 2 gardens - ago, in March 2006, while we lived in Mobile, Alabama.   I must say that my memory is fuzzy on many of the details.  I do remember clearly, though, that our son Sean had a LOT to do with my starting this blog.  He basically bullied me into picking a name ("It doesn't have to be perfect, Mom!"), picked a platform he felt would work well for me, and in those lovingly irritating ways, actually got me online with my first posts.

To refresh my mind about my deeper motivations, however, I decided to go back to the earliest posts and see what I had to say for myself....

In my very first post, "New Beginnings", I wrote that "...it's not just gardening that interests me.  It's gardening within the genius of the place, gardening that celebrates the local flora and fauna."  That certainly still rings true.  If anything, I think I've become even more fascinated by what is now known as "gardening with native plants".  I like the way I phrased it back then, though.  "The genius of the place..."  It sounds much softer, even somewhat romantic.  That is a concept that I haven't thought about for a long time.

So different from the prairies of southcentral Kansas and our last garden, the "genius of the place" here in our Florida panhandle neighborhood is reflected in Spanish moss literally dripping from evergreen oak trees.

A little further along in that same post, I mentioned hoping to gently encourage a sense of cooperation between gardeners and the natural elements in their gardens, as opposed to the more common combative feel of gardeners battling nature's tendencies.  At least in my own mind, this concept is central to most of my posts to this day.

Towards the end of that original post, I started to wrap up by expressing a broadening mission for my new blog: "Since gardening works so well as a metaphor for living, along the way I expect to be looking for ties to philosophy, politics, literature, and any other subject that "crops up."  I hope to hear from others who are similarly involved...or even just interested in the process."

It's in that final, broader hope for where my blog might lead me that I feel I've perhaps lost my way.  In recent years I have found it quicker and easier to share photos and explore what I'm actually seeing as I garden than it has been for me to delve into other facets of life that I think about or learn while I'm  getting my hands dirty.

So my blog has become more photo driven.  Is that a good thing...or not?  We all seem to respond instinctively to photos, so in that regard it's helpful, but it can also be limiting to rely too heavily on them.  For example, so far in 2017, the only "philosophical" post that I have written was to think a bit about what I think about as I garden.  Hardly deep stuff, but I was able to find photos to illustrate my thoughts!

It's also not deep (literary) stuff, but if a book seems relevant to science or gardening or the environment, I still do book reviews, as in this 2014 post about "A Sting in the Tale" by Dave Goulson.  In the last several years, though, this is about as close to "...ties to philosophy, politics, literature..." beyond gardening as I get.  Sigh.

Another big change I see in my post topics, compared to 2006, is that I am a lot more involved these days in identifying insects and figuring out what they are doing in the garden.  For example, note this little halictid bee, feeding on the nectar and pollen of the Gaillardia bloom - and pollinating the plant in the process. Sometimes I actually feel as if growing plants has now become secondary, for me, to learning about and nurturing bees, butterflies, spiders, and other wildlife in my gardens!  Ironically, photos are a big part of WHY this change has occurred, as I got a DSLR camera several years ago and am now able to take pictures of a small insect, enlarge them, and identify the species.  Knowing the actual identity of the insect I'm seeing allows me to research its biology.  In fact, I'm becoming quite the bug nerd, at least in my own mind.

Well, it's time to wrap this up.  Enough navel gazing.

Upshot?  In general, I think I'm still on track.  I'd like to work in some more "tangential" subjects as blog post topics, if only because I'm finding it fun to go back and read those posts, years later. 

For my own sanity, I'd like to get back into regular posting - blogging feels creative in a way that Facebook posts don't.  I think more carefully about what I'm saying when I write a full blog post, and I rework the wording to get as precise as possible about what I mean.  I can more easily choose my topics, too, which in this current political clime is not all bad.

So, onward into the next 11 1/2 years!  I wonder how many gardens I'll have made in that next interval of time - and where we'll be putting our literal and figurative roots down by then?

Thoughts While Weeding

What do you think about while you weed?

As relaxing and enjoyable as I find it to weed, you'd think I'd be thinking elevated, beautiful thoughts that calmed my spirit and elevated my soul.

You would be grossly wrong.  A few days ago, I found myself "listening" to  my thoughts and here's what I heard:

1)  a series of theme songs running through my head from Winnie-the-Pooh, "I'm so rumbly, in my tumbly, time for something SWEET, to eat!"  and "Winnie-the-Pooh, Winnie-the-Pooh, scrubby little tubby all stuffed with fluff!  He's Winnie-the-Pooh, Winnie-the-Pooh, willy, little silly, old bear!" and "Up, do-own, up!  Up, do-own, up!  When I up, down, and touch the ground, it puts me in the mood.  Up, down, and touch the ground, in the mood for food!  I am short, round, and I have found, speaking poundage-wise, I improve my appetite, when I exercise!"

2) more somber thoughts about our family friend who, at 55, was diagnosed recently with a very malignant form of cancer,

3) and, of course, some political angst mixed in with the more pressing comical and tragic elements.

At other times as I weed, I find myself composing gardening blog posts.  Understand, please, that the vast majority of these garden-composed posts have long since escaped my mind by the time I actually sit down in front of the computer.  Nonetheless, I go on, mentally "writing."

As I weed, sometimes I dwell on transplanting that needs to be done or on other changes to my "landscape designs".  ("Landscape designs", in my garden, is a euphemism for the "plop 'em there" design pattern that I generally follow when I bring home a carload of fantastic plants that I've just discovered at my local nursery or plant sale.)

Most importantly, I think, I talk to the creatures that I see while I'm weeding, like this recently de-tailed ground skink,

this red-faced little southern toad I disturbed, buried in the soil,

or the red-shouldered hawk that haughtily surveyed the landscape while "hidden" right above me.

All of these guys joined me in the garden recently, even though it's still early February.  They are among the living creatures with whom Greg and I share our landscape, so it seems only polite (and politic) to discuss the changes I'm making with them when I see them.

What do you think about while you weed?

Time for a New Beginning

As I sit down to write a new blog post - the first in many months - the joyful screams of laughter coming from our grandson, Connor, are ringing through the room.  Grandpa is rough-housing with him, and 7 month old Connor loves it!

Life has changed a lot since last I wrote.  We're fairly well settled in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, now.  Every week day we care for Connor, generally for 8 or 9 hours a day, sometimes for as long as 11 hours.  Greg hasn't gone back to work; he will probably start working part time soon, but for now he is deeply enjoying this time with Connor.  Thanks to long hours during training, Greg missed much of our children's early years.  Even for me, who stayed home and raised our kids, there are new observations and opportunities.  I'm getting a chance to notice things I was too busy or too stressed to notice when our kids were young:  the development of smaller muscle control, the personal preferences that show up almost from the first day, and the changing patterns of babble, to name a few.

Between settling in and caring for Connor, what I haven't done in the last several months is garden much or blog at all.  With the holidays behind us and spring looming soon, the gardening juices are finally beginning to flow again through my veins.

I have no idea where this new garden will take me yet.  I definitely plan on using mostly natives, but I'm floundering a bit for a central theme, like "restoring prairie" was for our land and garden in Kansas.

This is a completely different situation, not too surprisingly.  We're in an older, suburban subdivision, developed in the late 1960's, about 4 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico.  Located on a small, man-made, freshwater lake, our lot is about 0.4 acres in an area of sand hills.  In the neighborhood, there is an overstory of sand live oaks, live oaks, and southern magnolias.  I suspect there were longleaf pines originally, too, but most of them have been removed.

While the neighborhood has a great deal of landscape personality, our lot is fairly bland.  There is a large live oak (Quercus virginiana) and a large southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) in the front yard, with some foundation shrubs and a few non-native plants under the magnolia.  The rest of the front yard could euphemistically be called "lawn."

The back yard is fairly similar, with a younger southern magnolia, 3 pignut hickories (Carya glabra), a sand live oak (Quercus geminata), a healthy live oak, and 4 unhealthy live oaks.  There are foundation shrubs along the back of the house, a tangle of azaleas and undergrowth along the west side (a city right-of-way over a drainage pipe), and a lot of open "lawn" dominated by dollar weed and assorted other nongrass species.  Next to the lake, two sea walls have been put in to terrace the hill, with an area of bare sand in between them that sits about 3' above the level of the lake.

The post I did last June, "A New Chapter Begins "Down South"," while we were here on "baby watch" shows our yard in its "virgin" state.  I've made a few changes - and, of course, it's winter now - but the basics are unchanged.  Since writing that post, I have realized that we actually only have one sand live oak - the others are live oaks, a similar but larger species.  Also, the hickories in our backyard are pignut hickories (Carya glabra), not bitternut hickories, as I originally thought.

I know that I want to add sand live oaks and maybe a few longleaf pines (Pinus palustris) to start restoring the yard's canopy.  I know that I want to add some shrubs, both for wildlife habitat and for privacy from across the lake.  I know that I want to add flower gardens for color and pollinator habitat.

And there my mind just sort of stops.  How much lawn should I leave?  How big should the perennial and shrub beds be, and how should they be shaped?  We want a vegetable garden (probably raised beds) - where should it be located?  How should we lay out the path leading to the dock and lower deck?  I feel like I can't place trees or shrubs until I have the answers to these and similar questions.

Winter is the best time of year to plant woody plant material here, so it's (past) time to begin.  Have suggestions?  I'd love to hear them!  Have other design ideas?  The more, the merrier!  It's a new beginning, for us...and for the garden.  There's new territory to chart and discover, so we'd best get on our way....

Serendipity...Or Lives That Want To Be Shared?

Okay, this is a warning.  I am going to sound a little "Woo-woo" in this post.  I can't help that because sometimes that's just how I am.

So, with the appropriate warning out of the way, I have to confess that sometimes it seems as if certain animals consent to show themselves to me so that I can photograph them.  How else to explain the chance to photograph the fly attacking the hornworm last week? 

Or the funnel spider that sat at the entrance to its hole and just looked at me one morning last summer?   That's very unusual behavior for a funnel spider.

How about last week, when the scissor grinder cicada (Tibicen pruinosus) flew to the stem of a sunflower, about 5 feet from where I was weeding in the vegetable garden, and started to loudly sing away, making sure I had the chance to put his song and his appearance together. 

He even sat there singing while I stood up and photographed him!

Then there was the hanging thief robber fly (Diogmites sp.) that landed right in front of me to munch away on her wasp victim, while she dangled nonchalently from a single foot hanging onto the dry tip of an aster leaf.

Look how gently she seems to be cradling her prey.

I shouldn't forget the beautiful (and BIG) garter snake that posed prettily on the back path earlier this summer, obviously replete from a satisfying meal of (probably) cotton rat or baby rabbit. 

I walk the paths with 2 large German shepherds and I make little or no attempt to be quiet or to keep the dogs on heel.  That snake HAD to know we were coming!

Don't get me wrong - I am definitely not complaining.  I absolutely love getting glimpses into the lives of the animals that share our "little bit of Earth" with us.  It's a privilege and an honor to share their stories with a wider audience, too.

I'll leave you with one last animal story I was privileged to witness recently and with the related thought that it sparked in me.

I saw this David and Goliath story in my front garden just last week.  How in the world did that little crab spider manage to catch - and especially hold onto - that huge swallowtail butterfly?  The butterfly was obviously old - it's tattered wings hint of multiple adventures survived.  Was the butterfly just too old to have the energy to get away this time?  Or did it, somehow, know that its time was done and "consent" to become a meal for the little spider, passing along its energy to help the wheel of life spin just a little bit further around?

Do animals "consent" to be eaten and to become part of the food chain?  I've read that the Native Americans always used to say thanks to the animals they hunted for giving their lives to them for sustenance.  Was that a willing choice on the part of the animals?  Or was that simply an acknowledgement, on the part of the Native Americans, that they were taking the lives of other animals to support their own?

Of course I have no answers to my questions and I know that I'm being fanciful, especially in imagining the animals' desire to have their stories shared on the internet, but thanks for reading this and letting me indulge in whimsy from time to time.  I hope you'll always share the chance encounters you have with wildlife in your gardens - and the stories behind those encounters, too!

What's the Point of Gardening? A Gardening Ethic for Our Times

Why do you garden?

If you're like me at all (and I suspect that many gardeners are), you probably have several reasons you garden - several passions that gardening feeds - several functions that gardening performs in your life....

I garden because it makes me feel good to see flowers blooming around my home.

I garden because it's a form of exercise that I enjoy and it gets me outside, in the fresh air.

I garden to increase our property value (I hope).

I garden to provide some good, chemical free food for us to enjoy.

I garden because plants and animals fascinate me in their infinite variety.

Most of all, though, I garden because it's my way of doing something very concrete, very local, and very specific to make the world healthier and more ALIVE.  I garden, and I garden the way I do, because it's my way of helping to heal the life force on our planet, which seems to be in serious danger from the increasing human assaults on it over the last 100 years or so.

"Okay, Cynth, " I can almost hear you sigh.  "What brought this up?  Can't we just look at pretty pictures and move on?"

Well, of course you can.  But I read something the other day that really got me thinking about my role as a gardener.  Ben Vogt of Nebraska, who blogs at The Deep Middle, posted a commentary that struck a deep chord with me:  "Is There Any Difference Between a Land Ethic and a Garden Ethic?"
Hmmm.  Is there?  Why DO I garden?  Why do most people garden?

Ben started his thought-provoking post by quoting bits and pieces from Aldo Leopold's wonderful statement about developing a land ethic, as written in A Sand County Almanac.  Leopold finished writing this small, but important, three part book in 1948, just before he died.  The book was published a year later.  I think the most concise statement of Leopold's land ethic is actually written in Leopold's own forward to this book, "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.  When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."  (My italics)

Filling the last 25 pages of A Sand County Almanac, the entirety of Leopold's "The Land Ethic" is certainly too long for me to quote here, but it's well worth reading...and rereading.  In it, he moves from showing how we humans have developed our ethical codes, first working on the relationships between individual humans and later developing codes such as the Golden Rule and democracy for how the individual relates to society as a whole and how society relates back to the individual.  Now, Leopold believed, it had become necessary to develop another layer to our ethical codes to govern how humans related to the land and to the plants and animals that shared it with them.  Otherwise, in Leopold's words, "There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man...."

Aldo Leopold wrote in 1948 and presumably developed his ideas even earlier.  What would he say about the way we treat the land, and the plants and animals on it, now?  I'm rather glad he's not around to see what we've done and, even worse, what we're in the process of doing.

Because I am around to see what we've done and what we're currently doing, I try to treat our little 10 acres according to Leopold's Land Ethic, adopting this ethical code, to the best of my ability, as my gardening ethic.  I try to treat our land, with its associated plants and animals, with love and respect, thinking of it as a community that I belong to rather than as a resource to maximize.  Realizing that communities - like most complex things - are healthier when they have all of the parts that they should have, I am trying to reintroduce plants that have disappeared over the last 150 years while this parcel of land was being extensively and intensively farmed.  I'm hoping that, as the plants reestablish, many of the smaller animals will find their way back too.

My goal is to have as stable, as healthily functioning, a prairie community on our 10 acres as I possibly can.  Someday, perhaps, the plants and animals that remain on this tiny piece of land will serve as a source to move back out into the wider landscape as a whole, helping to heal it as well.

Towards the end of "The Land Ethic," Leopold talked about a schism among folks who work with and on the land - he called it a cleavage - that divided people into 2 camps which deeply affected their relationship to the land they worked with:

In all of these cleavages, we see repeated the same basic paradoxes:  man the conqueror versus man the biotic citizen;  science the sharpener of his sword versus science the searchlight on his universe; land the slave and servant versus land the collective organism.  Robinson's injunction to Tristram may well be applied, at this juncture, to Homo sapiens as a species in gelogical time:

Whether you will or not
You are a King, Tristram, for you are one
Of the time-tested few that leave the world,
When they are gone, not the same place it was.
Mark what you leave.

As a gardener, which cleavage do you belong to:  the conqueror or the citizen?  Is your garden your slave and servant or a community that you belong to?  When you are gone from your garden, what will you leave for the future?  What mark will you have made?

Thoughts Provoked By Trash

As I walked down the driveway last week, I saw some trash caught along the fenceline.  It irritated me a bit, but it's a part of modern life.  I picked it up, stuck it in my pocket, and headed back inside.

When I fished the trash out to throw it away, though, something made me look at it a little more closely - and for a brief moment I got really mad.  Seriously - have we become so crunched for time (or simply lazy) and so consumerized that it is necessary to buy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches premade and pre-packaged???  Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?  Really?

This rates right up there with buying tap water by the (plastic) bottle, for over $1 each.  Come on, folks, just turn the tap on and fill a bottle up for free!  Save the plastic.  Save money.  Avoid some extra chemicals leaching into your water from the plastic.  Then slap some peanut butter and jelly on 2 slices of bread.  Cut the crust off if you've encouraged your kids to be picky about such things.  I haven't priced it all out, but I can almost guarantee making the sandwiches yourself will be cheaper than buying commercial, pre-made pb & j's.

When we've gotten to the point where we're too busy or stretched too thin to get ourselves a glass of water from the faucet or to make our children a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, we're too busy.  Something's got to give.

It takes 2 people to earn a living these days.  If even 2 people can.  Working 40 hours each, 50 hours each, 60 hours each.  Working hard, because we'd never want to be seen as slackers and because we have no choice.  Performing "internships" for free so that we can get experience, then not getting hired because the next unpaid intern is waiting, anxious to work for "experience."  Working 2 jobs at 35 hours each so that the companies don't have to pay benefits - we're "part-timers" working 70 hours each week but not "worth" health insurance or paid time off or sick leave.  When these horrible hours have their inevitable result and our bodies rebel, we become one of the "slackers", too sick to keep working.  If our health insurance comes from our employer, we're really screwed.  Too sick to work, but no health insurance if we're not working...and no work to get money to pay for health insurance.

We're not machines.  Any of us.  We're human beings, with good points and with faults, with weaknesses and with strengths.  Some of us are kind and some of us aren't.  Some of us naturally work harder than others.  Some of us are smarter than others.  Some of us are more social or less social than others.  Caring - or not.  Artistic - or not.  Creative - or not.  Neat - or not.  One way or another, there's much more to human life and human worth than paid labor.  And it's time for us - all of us - to remember that.  We need to be treated as living humans, to treat each other as worthwhile humans, and to treat ourselves with love and compassion.   We need to take our lives and our world back.  One way...or another.

(Warning!) Rant: Too Much is Too Much

(Note:  this isn't a gardening post!)

How much is too much?


My mother-in-law passed along several issues of Architectural Digest last week and, for kicks and giggles, I started thumbing through them over the weekend.  One article, in particular, has stuck with me, raising my blood pressure every time I think about it.

A husband owns a business, geological services, in New Orleans.  He wants to move his business (and family) to Houston.  His wife sees a home there, which hasn't been lived in for some time, and tells him that if he'll buy that home, she'll move.

He buys the home.  It's a large mansion on 4 acres, completed originally in the early 1930's.  Of course there are repairs and updates and remodeling to do:  plumbing, wiring, heating, cooling, a new roof, bigger closets, a bigger kitchen, a family room, a conservatory....

Among those more normal things, which any well-to-do family buying an older home would want and expect to do, here is a list of things they've done in the last 14 years that were touted in Architectural Digest:

1.  Reopened a closed quarry to mine limestone, so that they could exactly match the limestone on the outside of their home, during expansions, with the limestone used by the original architect/builder.

2.  Had their decorator go on buying trips to New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, often with them accompanying her.  They have found (and used in their home) a huge chandelier once owned by Napoleon III, 16th century Italian painted ceiling panels, a 17th century Brussels tapestry (in the wine cellar) and a "museum quality" 18th century Italian mirror - among many, many other beautiful pieces of antique and more modern furniture.

3.  Installed an antique chapel - imported from France - adding an 18th century chandelier and 19th century stained glass windows and pews to it.

4.  Imported (from France) the antique cobblestones with which they surfaced the driveway.

Am I jealous?  Believe it or not, no.  As I've gotten older, I've learned that the more I have, the more I have to take care of, in one way or another.  I'm finding that simpler is better, at least for me, personally.

What is infuriating to me is that this is a "relatively ordinary" rich couple who is doing this.  This isn't a mogul whose name is on all our lips.  These aren't the Rockefellers or Carnegies or Hearsts.  These folks aren't someone particularly special or unique right now.  And they can afford to do this (and ARE doing this) in a time when poverty is climbing, jobs are scarce, and the middle class - those poor blokes who just want to be able to own a 1200 square foot house on a 0.1 acre lot somewhere - are being squeezed out of existence.

Is the house gorgeous?  Oh, my, yes.  However, as beautiful as this house is and as special as the activities are that has brought it into this sort of condition - I have a real problem with having an entire class of people who are able to do this in our "egalitarian" country.  Should people be rewarded for hard work and initiative?  Definitely.  But there needs to be a limit to those rewards, a limit that is reached before the level of, literally, living like kings.  I don't think our Founding Fathers were trying to establish an economic aristocracy when they revolted from England.

HotLine Questions: Searching for a Magical Potion

Sometimes people really depress me.

Each summer I volunteer to staff our Extension HotLine for one afternoon a week.  When it's good, it's very, very good, but when its bad, it's depressing.

Today, it was bad.  First of all were the summary sheets, detailing the questions that other staffers have taken over the last several days and summarizing the answers they provided.  We always read those at the start of our shift to get a feel for "what's going on out there" in gardening land.  (Generally each session is staffed by 3-5 volunteers at a time.  I am lucky enough to work with 4 other excellent volunteers.)

One of the big questions that our local HotLine has been fielding recently is, "What do I do about those great, big wasps I keep seeing in my back yard?"

The reasonable answer, to me, is to identify those wasps (cicada killers) for the caller and then to describe what they're doing (the males are guarding the nesting grounds to get a chance to mate; the females are digging nesting holes, catching cicadas, dragging them back to their nests, and laying eggs on them).  The male wasps can't sting, because they lack the requisite equipment, and the female wasps won't sting because then they'll probably be killed and therefore be unable to make any more baby wasps.  If, however, you do something really stupid like try to catch a female or step on one, the females can give a very painful sting.  So it's best to just leave them alone.  In a couple weeks time, this year's life cycle will be finished and you won't see any cicada killers around again until next July.  There's no need to spray anything to kill them unless you absolutely have no choice - say a young child with an allergy to bee stings.  Just leave them alone and they'll leave you alone.

Over the course of the next year, if you don't want the cicada killers back again, you can plant a groundcover, or put down thick leaf or wood mulch, to cover the bare soil that attracts these large wasps.

Otherwise, relax and watch them.  They're an important part of the balance of nature - a predator preying on a plant-eating insect.  It's a real eye-opener to watch the poor females struggling to pull a paralyzed cicada 2 or 3 times bigger than themselves back to their nesting hole.  (Where ARE those guys when you need them?  Oh, flying around looking for another female to hit on!)

However, that wasn't the answer given to all the callers that had called in with this question over the last 2 days.  No, until our crew got in this afternoon, callers were told to spray wasp killer down the holes.  Period.  No further life cycle explanation.  No discussion of alternatives.  No understanding of their role in the ecosystem.  Just kill the things with insecticide.

Then there were the snake questions.  The answer given to those was to use a liquid repellant product to "keep the snakes out".  No explanation about the fact that the vast majority of snakes are nonpoisonous and provide great rodent control around the yard.  No reassurance that the snakes are more scared of you than you are of them.  No suggestion that if you leave them alone, you'll probably never see them again.  And, most importantly, no explanation that said liquid repellant probably won't work anyway.

The big excitement for the day was when a woman brought in a snake she had killed 2 days ago, put in a plastic bag, evidently left outside in the heat, and then brought in for "identification" to be sure it wasn't poisonous.  When the sack was opened up, it sure poisoned the air, but the snake itself had not been poisonous.  The snake was black with a cream belly;  I didn't see it, but my cohorts thought it was a watersnake.  Why had it been necessary to kill it?

(As an aside, I was working a plant sale in Mobile about 10 years ago when 2 young men came up to me to ask if I wanted them to kill the rattlesnake they'd just found.  I said no, thank you, but asked them to take me to see the snake.  If it was poisonous, I wanted to warn the other workers.  The young men excitedly agreed.  When they pointed out their vicious viper, it was a red-sided garter snake.)

Killing is a huge theme among the callers into HotLine.  Another call today was from a woman with holes in her rose leaves.  We asked if she'd seen what was causing the holes.  No, she never went outside, but she wanted something to spray on the roses to kill whatever it was.  Why did she care if her roses had holes in the leaves when she never went outside to look at them?

A couple weeks ago, we got a call asking if the ladybugs that were all over the caller's tree were eating it...and what should she spray to kill them?  Nothing should be sprayed, we reassured her.  The ladybugs weren't eating her tree, they were presumably eating the insects that were eating her tree.  Leave them alone;  it'll be fine.

(Which reminds me of a neighbor down in Mobile:  she found 2 - TWO - caterpillars on her 50' tall oak tree and proceeded to spray as high as she could with as potent an insecticide as she could find to "save" her tree.)

"I have weeds in my lawn.  What can I spray to kill them?"

"My grass isn't as full as I think it should be.  What should I spray to kill the grubs I obviously have?"

"X is wrong.  What Y (a.k.a. what toxic chemical) should I spray to fix it?"

Sometimes I feel like telling the caller to tear up every living plant they have and put in AstroTurf and plastic plants instead.  It's obvious that they just want plastic "perfection."

This insistence on visual perfection on the part of John Q. Public, no matter what the biological cost, tells me that we have a major problem in this country:  our science classes are failing to teach people the basic information they need to successfully and safely live in our world, especially if they are home owners or do any yard care.  Fifty or eighty years ago, schools could assume that children were learning about the natural world while playing outdoors and working with their parents in the garden.  That no longer happens. The only place people seem to get information on lawn and garden care these days is from TV pesticide and fertilizer commercials - "Other than a honey bee, which will sting you, the only good bug is a dead bug" and "Every yard around the world should look like England in the spring, all year 'round" and "Oh, but this product will kill every living animal it touches, yet it's perfectly safe for your children to play on!"

On average, our yards seem to have become biologically sterile, chemically toxic "picture frames" for our houses.   Why in the world would anyone want to save life on our planet if they are convinced that almost all life outside is scary and evil and just needs to be killed off with some magic chemical potion?

We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

Do You Ever Wonder?

Three days ago, I took a photo of this newly blooming sunflower that had come up by the corner of our house.  Something had already eaten holes in many of the plant's leaves, but it was still healthy and I was glad I hadn't pulled it out as a "weed".

A volunteer, the plant is probably from bird seed but, perhaps, from a seed that came into the yard in mulch, or on a muddy shoe, or carried in by a bird.  After I took the photo, I was struck by how light yellow the center was, since I usually think of "wild" sunflowers as having dark brown centers.

So when I booted up my photo program this morning and saw the photo staring at me again, I ran outside to snap a shot of the same sunflower, curious to see how it looked today, 3 days later.  The center has definitely darkened as it has aged, and the bloom now droops, instead of holding its face up to the sky.

It's still beautiful, but what really caught my eye this morning was the little green metallic bee that was busily feeding on the nectar and the pollen that the sunflower was producing.  I stooped to get below the flower a bit and zoomed in a little closer....

As I watched the little bee busily foraging and eating, I found myself wondering what life would be like lived on this scale all the time?

What would it be like to root around and get covered in pollen grains as you sipped nectar from each individual floret?  To see a sunflower as large as a house, each floret as big as a small barrel?  To have the center of a sunflower look like a deep cave you would fall into? 

To fly from blossom to blossom, only Earth-bound when you land on each flower or when you land on your nest to provision it for your children, whom you'll never see?

Yes, what would it be like to spend all your waking hours working on a home, complete with food, for children you'll never meet...or even see?  Talk about living on faith!

The world around me, even the world in my own backyard, never fails to amaze me.  What a complex and interwoven series of lives "life" truly is!

 

Bird ID - Can You Help?

For all of you birders out there, I have a question:  can you identify this bird?  From its behavior, I think it was quite young - there were two that flushed up from the grass quite close to me, then flew onto the barbed wire fence nearby.  By the time I had gotten over my surprise and thought to take a photo, one of the two had flown off, but this one remained and let me take two photos before flying off to join its companion.

The fence is at the back of our property, with our 5 acre (restoring) prairie on one side and a wheat field, newly harvested, on the other side.  Both birds flushed from our side of the fence.

With the large eye in proportion to the head, the relatively flat head, the white eye ring, the white stripe through the center of the crown (which you can't see in my 2 photos), the pink legs and the mainly pink beak, and the relatively unmarked face, I'm wondering about a young grasshopper sparrow.   Thoughts, anyone?

Samsara, A Visual Feast

Following the trail that serendipity was showing me, I convinced Greg to go with me to see the new movie, Samsara, on Friday night.  The day before, I'd come across an article about its making in a magazine.  Earlier that day, several friends had waxed enthusiastically about it on Facebook.  Realizing that Samsara was actually showing in Wichita seemed like a sign.  If nothing else, I wanted to support Warren Theaters for screening something beyond the latest low-level comedy or gore-filled thriller.

The movie fascinated me.  However, Greg fell asleep several times in the first 20 minutes and then, apparently, had to force himself to stay awake for the rest of it.  Perhaps not a movie to see after a long day at work....

Samsara took 5 years to film and was filmed in something like 25 countries.  There are no actors, per se, and there is no talking - just music and video sequences.  The trailer gives a good feel for how the movie feels overall.



There is no labeling, so you have no idea where each sequence is from, unless you happen to recognize it from your internal store of world knowledge.

I am aching to have someone to discuss some of the scenes from the movie with, as well as to help me analyze what the intent of the film-makers was in how they juxtaposed the sequences.  Why they chose to film what they filmed.  Sometimes the movie seemed celebratory, but at other times very disturbing.

It took me quite a while to come out of the spell that the film wove and, even now, I find myself slipping back into a mesmerized state thinking about it.  The scenes of the Great Mosque were mind-blowing.  A mechanized milking platform that still amazes me.  Shifting sands.  Martial arts practice by a crowd, a real CROWD.  Inside views of soaring modern hotels, ancient cathedrals, and homes being buried.  Red-robed monks creating a sand painting, watched by young initiates.  Beautiful women from different ancient cultures, some dancing in ways that seemed unreal.  Resolve.  Hopelessness.  The mechanics of daily life in places far removed from my daily here and now.

Hopefully I'll be able to see the movie again, preferably with someone who is stirred enough by it that they want to delve into what they've seen.  Meanwhile, I'm finding that I recognize certain images that wouldn't have meant much to me before.  (That's how I was able to pair up the movie sequences of the Great Mosque in Mecca with the name of the actual place I had seen - thank you, National Geographic!)  I may even go back and see Samsara alone, just to see what I notice on my second viewing that escaped my eyes the first time around.

If anyone who reads this has seen Samsara, I hope you leave a comment and let me know what you thought about it.  And if you haven't seen this movie, I must admit that I hope you get a chance to do so, at least once.

Having It All

"Having It All."  What does the phrase mean to you?  Seriously.  Stop a minute and examine what your personal "all" would be.

At this point in my life, my personal "all" would, of course, include many disparate things.   I want to love and be loved by my family and I want to have a few close friends whose company is mutually enjoyable and whom I get to see, in person, regularly.  I would like to live near enough to my children to see them over a weekend without more than 4 hours of driving, total time, for any of us.  I would be slender without too much thought or effort, and I would be "normally" healthy.  We would have enough money to live on comfortably without worry, but we wouldn't be trying to buy luxury cars or go on extended cruises, either.  We would own our own home without a mortgage, living near a functional, vibrant, and forward-looking community of which we were a part.  We would live in a location with rich soil, moderately plentiful rainfall, clean water, and a safe and functional environment around us.  I would have a wide variety of books to read and several good friends with whom I was able to regularly discuss the ideas those books sparked and to challenge me to expand my thinking....

Obviously I could go on and on.  As I think about my personal "all," I'm struck by the fact that I already have a reasonable number of those facets in my life.  (Maybe it's not so self indulgent to think about this sometimes - it could provide a blue print for changes we may want to make in our lives.  Hmmm.  Further food for thought.)

What my personal "all" wouldn't include (at least now, at the ripe old age of 56) is fame, although I do hope that people generally think well of me, or large fortune, although I do want to live without financial worries.  I don't want a large house (any more).  I don't want to be fashionable (Yup.  Got that one covered without issue!)  I don't want a horse any more.   I don't expect everyone to like or admire me (although the child in me would still like that!).  Again, I could go on and on, but I'll spare you more of my personal navel-gazing.

So, what would your personal "all" look like?

Apparently there has been a recent essay in Atlantic Monthly discussing whether or not it's really possible for women today to actually "have it all."  This piece has the opinion makers of the moment buzzing loudly.  I haven't read the piece nor have I seen any of the buzz it has caused except....  This morning, in the Wichita Eagle, I read an opinion piece by Daniel Akst, of Newsday, responding to the uproar by saying that society should be first asking about whether the blue collar male can have anything any more, not whether women can or should "have it all."

Wow.  He asks an important question, but I'm gob-smacked that he thinks it needs to be asked in conjunction with, or instead of, or before, "Can women actually have it all?" 

So, to put my two cents worth into the discussion, first of all it makes me livid that Mr. Akst links, in a not-so-subtle, cause-and-effect sort of way, the problems blue collar men have been facing for many decades now with the increased success of "the best educated women" attempting to reach "the pinnacle of their profession and also raise perfect children."  The quoted phrases are from his article, "'Can Women Have It All?' Is Wrong Question" on the editorial page this morning.  (And, yes, he puts in a few little asides trying to include blue collar women in his discussion, but it's obvious he's much more concerned about the men.)

Frankly, blue collar workers and best-educated workers, of either sex in either cases, are generally two totally separate segments of the labor force.  The problems that the blue collar workers are facing have to do with the outsourcing of jobs to overseas countries where labor can be had for pennies on the dollar and the subsequent decline of manufacturing in this country.  Since blue collar labor is now a global resource, American blue collar workers have to compete against foreign blue collar workers - and the companies/corporations are enjoying the race to the bottom in the labor costs.  Solutions?  Probably some sort of protectionist action on the part of the government to favor companies that keep jobs stateside.  Also adoption of national health care so that U.S. companies don't have worker health care expenses in this country, which they don't have it in other countries.  

On a personal basis, what's a blue collar worker to do?  Well, for starters, in our economy and culture, one option would be to get the best education you can and aim for the white collar work force.   Or to choose to work in a segment that is harder to outsource overseas:  plumbing, for example, or car repair. 

What's not going to help?  Blaming women for working outside the home these days, feeling that they're getting "uppity."   Yes, white males used to get automatic privilege in our society:  they would be selected for jobs over more qualified females or minorities, for example.  Even if they weren't very successful at work, though, males could expect to come home each evening to a household where they were The Boss, where what they decided was The Law, where they were waited on, picked up after, fed and coddled.  But nowadays both men and women have to work full time jobs to make ends meet.  The wife is just as tired from working away from home as her husband is.  Why should she have to do all the housework, or cook all the food, or do all the child care?  Why shouldn't she have an equal say in household decisions?  So there's no cultural respite for blue collar males anywhere now.  No place where they can almost automatically be "king."  No place where they can "rightfully" feel superior just because they were born male.  To have the economic hardships that a switch to a global labor market has created coming at the exact same time as the change in unquestioned household status for blue collar males is unfortunate timing, to say the least, and makes it very easy for many to pin all their troubles on women working away from home, however necessary those jobs have become to support the family.

The second question is also difficult, "Are women actually able to 'have it all'?"  In the case of Akst's article, "all" is defined as "a great career and a great family."   A couple different thoughts come to mind when I think about this question.  First, what is truly "all"?  What really does make a person feel happy and fulfilled?  Can one person "have it all" without sacrificing the chances of those around them to have a reasonable amount of whatever we're talking about?

The more I think about this question, though, the more I hate the question.  How many people seem to "have it all" from the outside, only for outsiders to learn later that they were rich in money and/or public respect, but that their kids and wife didn't know or love or respect them at all?   (And for all of the ones the public learns about, how many others live like that, but we don't learn about them?)  Or how many "had it all," but they ruined countless other people in their greedy quest to succeed?  Or "had it all," but they died from stress at a young age from the strain of trying to keep all those balls in the air?    Or had 5 huge houses, but never spent any significant time in any of them because they were always at work, and the beautiful houses always stood empty?  Or had nannies raise their children, so they never really played a significant, personal part in their children's lives?   Or found that their friends disappeared when they got sick or lost their money?

I'm going to make a very unpopular statement at this point:  I don't think it's possible for any one person to "have it all" in our society, with "all" equaling the pinnacle of a profession AND perfect children...unless that person has a partner, at the very least, to help them carry the load.  In which case, the individual person hasn't achieved all of this by himself or herself, the partnership of the two has achieved it together and both deserve praise for the results.  I'd be willing to further bet that for the most successful people, the ones who REALLY seem to have it all, they not only have a strong partner, but they also have an extended family that has played a very significant role in their achievements as well, through providing educational opportunities, loans or outright gifts of money, property, moral support, contacts in the professional world, and so forth.

Are men more likely than women to have the appearance of or opportunity to "have it all"?  Yes, because our overall culture still encourages a large percentage of women to play second fiddle to men and therefore it's easier for a man to find a strong woman to support him than it is for a woman to find a strong man to support her.  (And I want to point out that I'm using the term "support" in an emotional and psychological way, not necessarily in a monetary way.)

Having shared my frustration with the juxtaposition of the two disparate problems that Akst put together in his piece, I'm left trying to figure out what I want, in the end, to say in response to Akst's editorial essay this morning.  I think my message is this:  We, as U.S. citizens who care about our country and our fellow countrymen, need to guard against falling into the trap of pitting segments of the working class against each other when they aren't actually in competition against each other at all.  The ancient method of "divide and conquer" is alive and well and being practiced daily within our society.  It's time for all of us to start looking for the real reasons behind why we, as a country, aren't doing as well as we think we should be doing.  Then - and this is the hardest part of all - it's time for all of us to band together and work for appropriate change.

The Practice of the Wild

I can't remember why I ordered The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder.  I'm sure I must have come across a recommendation to read it in something else that I was reading, but I'm darned if I can remember what that was.

Despite my lack of context as to how this book ended up on one of my many "To Be Read" piles, I am glad it did.  The series of 9 essays within contained numerous thoughts that zinged, thoughts that encouraged tangential ruminations, thoughts that spiraled into other thoughts or thoughts that redirected feelings I'd experienced so often myself.  It was particularly appropriate to be reading this book on Earth Day.

Some thoughts made me laugh, "Human beings are still a wild species (our breeding has never been controlled for the purpose of any specific yield),...."  (p. 76)

But most thoughts made me question my preconceptions at least a little.  For example, "When we think of wilderness in America today, we think of remote...regions that are commonly alpine, desert, or swamp.  Just a few centuries ago, when virtually all was wild in North America, wilderness was not something exceptionally severe.  Pronghorn and bison trailed through the grasslands, creeks ran full of salmon, there were acres of clams, and grizzlies, cougar, and bighorn sheep were common in the lowlands.  There were human beings, too:  North American was all populated....  There has been no wilderness without some kind of human presence for several hundred thousand years.  Nature is not a place to visit, it is home...."  (p. 6-7;  italics are in the original text; the bolding I added.)

This is a startling thought to me - although it's also a moment of, "Duh! Yeah! That's right!  Why hadn't I thought of this already?"  Maybe what so many people are searching for in endless shopping or eating or bedhopping or working is a sense of belonging, specifically a sense of belonging to the natural world, of truly being a part of Earth.

"Wildness is not just the "preservation of the world," it is the world....  We need a civilization that can live fully and creatively together with wildness." (p. 6)

Snyder is right.  It's long past time that we start constructing such a civilization.  We, as a species, can now all too easily destroy not only civilization, but also most life on Earth.  Why not take that understanding and use it as a reason to start the more complicated, but ultimately much more rewarding, process of living in harmony with nature? 

There are many, many more passages I'd love to share - but perhaps you should read the book?!  There are certainly plenty of concepts held within its relatively few pages that are worth thinking about and debating.