After buying the neighbor's tiny decrepit bungalow at the peak of the market for $535,000, Marty spent nearly two years waiting for his moment. He got all his neighbors to sign letters saying that he might be injuring some of our trees, but would take every precaution.
During this period he began to nag us. He started by objecting to our compost bin. During the two years between groundbreaking and moving in with his family he kibitzed constantly, critiquing our landscape design and our lifestyles.
"You have too much old junk," he announced, indicating our old Volvo and our piles of bricks and concrete rubble for terracing our steep lot, Here in Arlington, which prides itself on recycling everything (including building materials) and composting and talks about it's AIRE something about reducing emissions) us it's and probably us. His crews took care that we didn't recycle any building material. (I had visions of turning a long tubular fence rail into a fountain.
He announced that he had spotted "a big rat." out in the alleyway of our property! He probably realized that he and his crew was the one that disturbed the ecosystem by driving those rats out of their homes and driving out predators like foxes and owls.
I caught them removing our wire galvanized wire fence and moving our county issued compost bin, which he found smelly and unsightly. He called my visiting Sister in law's attention to it, and she came running to suggest that civilized people don't do that. She is not a sturdy soul, but believes we should live in "harmony." She lives in a developing country.
In the two years we have known him, Ann and I have never had a real conversation with him. We go, "Hi Marty, how are you?" and he responds "hi" and then ducks his head into the nearest doorway.
He spends pretty much all of his time there, working.
He began by bulldozing the little house that had been there for a hundred years or so, along with all the outbuildings. Then he deleted EVERY piece of plant matter, including grass, many trees and mature shrubs and other items, leveled the lot with a laser, removed an old fence post that had marked the alley forever.
During July, our friend Mike sent an email with this subject line:
Prevent Plant Blindness -- a new syndrome discovered
Plant Blindness
American Institute of Biological Education Eye on Education
William Allen
Plants fuel life on Earth by tapping the sun's energy. But if plants are the main mediators between the physical and biological worlds, why do most people tend to appreciate animals so much more than plants?
That question is at the center of a new campaign whose rallying cry is "Prevent Plant Blindness." The aim of the campaign is to liberate students from the many traps that lead to a lack of appreciation for and understanding of plants, say its leaders, botanist-educators James Wandersee of Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, and Elizabeth Schussler of the Ruth Patrick Science Education Center, in Aiken, South Carolina. Wandersee runs LSU's 15° Laboratory (www. 15degreelab.com), which takes its name from the observation that people prefer to view objects that are between 0 and 15 degrees below eye level.Surely as hunter-gatherers we evolved responses to food plants as well as animals!
To read the whole thing go to ....
http://www.aibs.
Some say Disney and PETA have inculcated us with images of animals that are more interesting than plants. Surely we are also hardwired by evolution, through our history of hunter-gathering, to recognize plants too.
Various members of the Garden Club weighed in on this note, Kathy Jentz, editor and publisher of Washington Gardener magazine, summed it up:
Based on 1998 research, it is not new, but maybe a name change: 'green blindness' was a previous moniker and I see it daily in the different ways lawmakers treat animals vs plant issues (ie deer vs our forests).Here is what I wrote on my blog in 2007:>>At one of today's APGA conference talks there was a brief mention of Plant Blindness, which I'd heard tale of before and wish they'd go into more deeply. What is it? The affliction of many in the general public that makes them see right past anything green. Like many diseases, it is genetic. Hard-wired into us humans. We see color. We see movement. We filter out the background (i.e. plants). Just a matter of survival you know.
What I found really interesting this time was the speaker talked briefly about a real cultural bias against flora over fauna. That animal life is given far more weight than plant life. We are animal so of course that is how we view it and our innate prejudice is formed. That made me sit up and my ears prick forward. I had been feeling this undercurrent for years, but never heard it expressed so well. When I talk to naturalists and environmentalists, there is most definitely an animals-first, built-in institutional morality that I find slightly repugnant and off-putting. Hey, I love animals too - some of my best friends are of the mammal persuasion! But are we really honoring Mother Earth when we outright give preference to one category over the other? I think I may need to start a PETA equivalent for our green friends!<<Sincerely,
Kathy Jentz
Editor/Publisher
Washington Gardener Magazine
826 Philadelphia Ave.
Silver Spring MD 20910
301-588-6894
http://www.washingtongardener.com/
http://washingtongardener.blogspot.com/
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This is the best Blog ever.
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