Is My Weeding A Micro-Contribution to Global Desertification

TED Talks are fascinating, and this is no exception. But as I watched this one, I could not help but wonder how my gardening work fits in.

The talk is not about urban microfarms, but - in an itsy-bitsy, teeny weeny way - am I playing a role in greening or desertification...? Or am irrelevant?

I live in a city; cities are artificial deserts. But L.A.'s coastal valleys are natural ones too. Getting dryer? Probably, if not for the massive quantity of pipeline-imported water we flood our gardens with.

As I listened to Allan Savory, I think of my work.  My March garden is naturally green and lush with wild grasses and plants. So what do I do? I pull out the weeds out and expose the bare soil...

Weeding? - My Micro-Contribution to Desertification ?

I compost it all though, so nutrients are not shipped away in my yard waste bin. And I make mulch with the coast oak leaves and use it to cover the soil. I am also carving depressions with overflows, so that the fresh water from our big Winter storms does not make its way to the street, and down the storm drain to the Pacific Ocean.

But could I do more, something different, to help this tiny land we own thrive with life, naturally.  Was it not thriving with life when we bought it, after being neglected for decades?  Am I killing it, even with my organic methods? Can I do anything? A giant herd is out of the question... But with 10 chickens, could I mimic the grazing herds mimicking nature? In a very small way? Or is that ideal laughable?

If you are like me, this talk will throw you for a loop. But regardless of your background, Allan Savory's talk is fascinating and stimulating, like all TED Talks. It will challenge ideas you may have about climate change and cattle farming. Enjoy!

Botany of Desire & apple tree seedlings experiment

With *video previews!

* Please let me know if the video is not available where you are.  I know it is here in the United States, but I do not know whether this content is made available elsewhere in the world.

The Botany of Desire is a fascinating documentary about the world from the point of view of plants; how certain plants may be gratifying our desires for their own purposes.  


This film is about 4 plants that have travelled the road to success by satisfying human desires (1). 

I was fortunate to learn about this through the book on which this documentary is based, also called The Botany of Desire, which was graciously given to me as a present by our long-time friends, Juliet Huntly and Michael Cooke, during their March 2010 visit, when they asked me to come with them to tour the Huntington Botanical Garden, which I had been dying to see since moving to Southern California.

The tulip, by gratifying our own desire for beauty has gotten us to take it from its origin in central Asia, and disperse it around the world...  Marijuana, by gratifying our desire to change consciousness, has gotten people to risk their lives, their freedom in order to grow more of it, plant more of it. The potato, by gratifying our desire for control, a control over nature, so we can feed ourselves, has gotten itself out of South America, and expanded its range far beyond where it was 500 years ago. And the apple, by gratifying our desire for sweetness, begins in the forests of Kazakhstan, and is now the universal fruit! These are grate winner in the dance of domestication.   <...>  And this relationship with the plants learning how to gratify our desires and our working for them in exchange for this is what I call The Botany of Desire (1) 

When Juliet described the book to me as we visited the Huntington's gift shop, I was a bit puzzled because it did not seem like her to be talking about a book that really sounded  weird.  After they gave it to me, I distractedly skimmed over the first couple pages and it seemed to confirm my first thought.  But a while later, with more time on my hands, I started reading it and thought it to be the most fascinating idea.

Humans often see ourselves as the center of it all.  Even though we are continuously reminded by Mother Nature that we're not in control of it all, we pretend that we are.  So this was for me the beginning of an awakening, of looking at nature and the billions of life forms that surround us, just here on earth, as separate entities with their own needs and their own goals, so to speak.

All of us, earth's life forms, are interdependent but not independent or separate from one another.  We are a whole. It taught me a new respect for nature and is now helping me rethink my place, my role, as a a living thing, being given an opportunity to participate in this continuously evolving scheme that we are a part of but don't fully comprehend.  In other words, it made me a little more humble.

(1) quoted from the documentary The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan

More information in addition to this preview can be obtained on the PBS website at:
PBS - The Botany of Desire

Interested in my apple seedling experiments, then click here!