SECTION SIX
ANCIENT GARDEN
ADDED TO COMPENDIUM
AUGUST 2022
LOTS OF REPLICATION. PUTTING THIS TO WORD DOCUMENT THEN TRANSFERInG TO COMPENDIUIM
-6-1-THE GARDEN GREEN
-6-2- PLANT INVENTORY
-6-3- WILDLIFE VALUE OF OUR PLANTS UU ATRIUMENT (ipm) LRJ
-6-4- RUMINATE
-6-9- RIVER RAT
-6-10- WEEDS OR WILDFLOWERS?
-6-11- FAVORITE QUOTES HISTORY OF THE PAGANS
-6-12- PAGAN MILLENIUM / THE PEOPLE OF THE SHORT CORN
-6-13- THIS IS THE FOLK MAGIC
by Mr. Phyllode Pinnate RFD3
section six
article one
THE GARDEN GREEN
THIS IS MY RESUME
Do you know what is spectacularly unique about this plant?
Bok Choy, Kale and Spinach
seem to be the easiest for me to grow. Brown Peppers and Purple Carrots
not so much.
Honestly, I'm not a
gardener or a landscaper. I consider myself a habitat gardener, and will admit
that I don't have a green thumb overall.
BROccoli Black Thumb. Out there in the gardening world,
habitat gardeners are not considered real gardeners. People who use annuals along with a hackneyed, static, biotic dead zone of a landscape concept, can't be considered gardeners either. It's a design for the throwaway culture.
THIS IS MY RESUME
MY EARTH CAREER BEGAN IN 1980 IN
TUCSON ARIZONA
1980 with LARRYS JANITORIAL
He wanted me to get on a career path and got me some work outside the
restaurant we cleaned, moving six Barrel Cactus as my first job. "Remember
they lean into the Sun." When he laid me off, I parleyed that minimal
experience into a job with ...
1981 CASA VERDE
LANDSCAPE much to my surprise they had all the fancy accounts in
town. The new office buildings with lots of glass and fancy elevators.
All new machines with Casa Verde and an enthusiastic crew of potheads that knew
what they were doing. It was agreed I would focus on plants n shit, and
they would mow. At the very first job I was told to rake the sand in a
certain pattern in a 100-foot Zen Garden. Right in the middle was a
75-foot-tall Deodar Cedar. Probably the most beautiful tree I've EVER seen
before or since, and I groomed it up cutting excessive branches and raking dead
needles, so it looked nice and clean at the bottom. Then made the rake lines so
it looked like a Zen Garden. I looked forward to this every week and have been
in love with Deodar since. There are only four true Cedars in the world.
When I went to Connecticut in 1984 and
I worked in the garden center, Cedrus Atlantica was getting very popular.
Then there's the Lebanon Cedar and one other I can't recall.
not the same tree.
this Deodar Cedar needs a prune on the right side
When he got the Park Mall account he told me, "I got the
perfect job for you." Amazing place with beautiful street trees and a
complex irrigation system with 528 heads. I learned irrigation and endurance.
There was a bunch of Pyracantha hedges in the parking lot I had to keep
precise. Every one of them had a different shape or style to it because the
cement curb islands were all different shapes. So I parlayed THAT experience
into an application at a work for rent job at
a 40-acre horse ranch.
1981-84 We lived in a
converted tack room. There were six unfenced dogs guarding the property and
nothing between us and Gammons Gulch, 45 miles away as the crow flies over the
mountain. See original oil painting below of our view in the morning.
As the Buzzard flies, gammons gulch to tucson miles - Search (bing.com) This was a work-for-rent, full
on, caretaker situation. More gardening good 'ol days. Wearing overalls every
day for 40 hours as indoor/outdoor plant guy at the original mall in Tucson and
a co-caretaker of the last house on Broadway. Bordering the 9-acre Sahuaro East
Monument, and a 170,000-acre section of the Coronado National Forest it
was a complete desert experience..
Then the boss lost the account at the
mall by an unscrupulous head of maintenance, and I went to work for
...
SCHOMBERT ELECTRIC 83/84 A
great set of experiences I really needed. I'm not a fixup guy, you know, not
real handy with tools ever, but I was running miles of wire through new condos
and updating the wiring in a male dorm in the middle of a Tucson summer with
only fans to keep us cool. Average daily high temperature 104.
APRIL 1984 picture of
loaded van here. Moved to Connecticut and worked for
TARNOW NURSERY 1984 -86
STANLEY GREENHOUSE 1985-1987
DAT SHENOY 1987-89 Entrepeneur, house
flipper, I did painting, cleanup and landscaping as needed for each house. The
wife often made me Indian lunch wraps when I worked on their yard.
PLANTATIONS 1986 interior plants
professional training
PLANTSCAPES 1987 interior
plants in an old building with a really old elevator. They went all female with
a pink and black theme, and I was out of there.
SPIELMAN LANDSCAPING 88 TO
89 landscaped fancy homes in the hills. Redneck, Biker, Indian, and our Farm
Girl boss who loved tractors. Was probably one of the best crews I was ever on.
moved to Florida
ATLANTIC VIEW 1989
BIOGREEN 1990
ORCHID ISLAND 1990 TO 2001
THE GARDEN GREEN 2001 TO 2021
Ancient Garden (section
six), attempts to bring you a working knowledge of the plant world, so we can
all create a plan for the stewardship of nature. If
we can get her back on her feet, she’ll take care of herself
Left to its own devices, nature knows
what to do. Humans however have taken resource extraction as a basis for
wealth, with very few of them giving back. Everyone wants to park in the shade,
but no one wants to plant a tree. Capitalism is like your Aunt emptying
valuables from Grandmas house as me mere is dying in the hospital.
I like to use the example of the Astor
family to illustrate how we've gone wrong. John Jacob Astor made his money by
having millions of animals killed. A master of the Fur Trade, it's said he had
a golden touch, but I can't stop the image of the bones of skinned animals
drying in the sun. Slaughtered.
Dynasties of wealth were made from the
stripping of the ancient forests across the world. Proper society is filled
with illegitimate wealth that has been derived from development and destruction
and understanding this ... is lesson one. Creating abundance is the only true
wealth. Taxing accumulated wealth is the only way to eliminate the
national debt.
Imagine
some little 4-ounce bird has just flown 250 miles hopping from one island to
the next looking for food and shelter as it migrates north. She goes to
the cookie cutter house in the gated community and sees oleanders, ixora,
plumbago, philodendron, and other non-native plants. Off to the next
house....no food here either.
Finally, she flies into my yard,
White Indigo Berry, Wild Coffee (Psycotria nervosa), Tamarind, Elderberry,
Sugar Cane, Fiddlewood, Maypop (passion vine) Marlberry, Saw Palmetto,
Snowberry and others. If not fruiting, they are flowering which attracts the
many pollinating insects birds love to eat. Right now in early November,
Fiddlewood is flowering and Marlberry and Firebush and Wild Coffee have large,
juicy berries waiting for migrating birds to arrive.
New England Rainbow
The ear of corn above, at the top of this article, reminds
me of my best corn growing days. 1987. '88 and '89. My gardening good old days.
I had ten packs of Indian Sweet Corn seeds I bought in February or so, and was
going to mix them all together to make my own variety as soon as the soil
temperature was right. Mix all the breeds of Indian Sweet Corn together,
then acclimate them to my ecosphere and start trading with others.
The big surprise was when
the ground had thawed out and I dug into the soil for the first time. "Are
you kidding me?" I dug a second hole and more all over the yard, shocked
at what I found.
HARVEST 1987
We rented the house on North Street in Hazardville Connecticut
and there was 16 inches of black topsoil in this free rental that had been used
by Stanley Greenhouses primary truck driver. Formerly a field office amidst a
couple thousand acres of tabacco and corn, apparently no one had ever planted
anything there. The land only knew poor people standing in line, waiting for
their paycheck.
I'm
sure the soil in the 200 acres of corn and 200 acres of shrubs planted nearby
is nearly depleted of organic matter but the yard in the rental we were in was
deep in black topsoil. Yet, it appeared to be Connecticut River Valley alluvial
soil at our new home, but the curious thing was where we lived was not in any
flood plains. In fact, the location of our house was at the crest of two
watersheds.
I shoveled up a hunk
of soil one day when my dad came to visit and showed him. He looked at it and
it was like "OMG! Time to grow some vegetables, sonny
boy".
It was a bit mysterious how 16 inches of black, crumbly alluvial
soil sat on a crest at the 183 foot elevation of that area. Five miles away in
the Connecticut River, the elevation is 36 feet.
Over
yonder going northwest, the local area drains into bogs, then Freshwater Creek,
then Freshwater Brook and eventually Freshwater Pond in downtown Enfield. Out
the other way, most of North St. drains southeast to the Scantic River. So how
did Connecticut River alluvial flood plain soil get to this elevation, over 180
feet above sea level? Could it be the blessings of the Corn Goddess?
Above
are dramatic photos of the flood of 1955.
I was One Years old and often had nightmares of this flood
till I was a teen. My dad's garden was at the edge of this flood plain in
Wethersfield, Connecticut. He had a compost pile and rarely bought fertilizer,
the soil was so rich and his compost abundant. There was even a grease pickup
in those days. Kick the lid open, it was a stainless-steel bucket someone
actually picked up with things that didn’t go in the .
Another hundred-year flood and the Connecticut River was
six miles wide at the peak in the spring of 1955. In previous years, the edge
of Red Schumans cow pasture was where our families Victory Garden was. My
parents canned an enormous amount of food from this rich soil in the
60's.
In our new home in Hazardville in the 80's, I spent a good
deal of time breaking ground and planting the seeds I had been obsessively
buying. I put all the grass clumps from digging out new areas, in a giant pile,
and it was dirt by the end of the summer.
HAZARRDVILLE CONNECTICUT 1987
Summer of 88 and I had
a second year of gardening this site. Planted some corn seed that I grew in 87,
and bought more varieties, some rare shit for sure, and I was ready to do some
science.
I bought a book called the Ethnobotany of the Hopi
which I could relate to, having just spent six years gardening in the desert
environs of Tucson Arizona. But here I was, back in New England, growing
Indian Sweet Corn and many other heirloom vegetables, such as the
Egyptian Walking Onion.
Colonialism bullied its way across
the North American continent 1635-1835, and I had a hankering to know more
about the original inhabitants of Wethersfield now that I was back in the area
with some practical out of state experience.
My search to uncover Native American traditions
began ten years previous when I rode my bicycle to the state library in
Hartford after high school.
My friends went to college, my parents moved to Bloomfield,
and I was out to re-educate myself properly. Deprogram my mind from the
stultifying nonsense that dared to call itself education. I didn't want to
train to be a bookkeeper any longer.
I locked up my ten speed and walked
in, marveling at how huge the place was. Immense. I wanted to find out more
about the history of Wethersfield Connecticut, as a starting point, with the
Great Wethersfield Elm (biggest Elm east of the Rockies) and the meeting house
of the Charter Oak incident being on my paper route.
Wethersfield soldiers during the Revolutionary War were the
elite soldiers who escorted generals and what not. Some history in this town.
The Rise and Fall of the Wethersfield Red Onion - New
England Historical Society
I
learned about the indigenous Podunks, who lived from central to northern
Connecticut on the east side of the Connecticut River. They went to Boston and
invited the original settlers of Wethersfield to settle the west side of the
river.
Later, I learned about the Nipmucks, who also lived along the east side of the
river from Springfield to the Quabbin Reservoir area in Massachusetts and
inhabited territory north of the Podunk's. Both tribes were trying to
keep the Mohawks and Iroquois from infringing on their land.
The Podunks and Nipmucks were quiet woodland tribes, and
these peaceful people were often overwhelmed by hostile tribes, though, to
their credit, the Iroquois Confederacy of Peace is allegedly the inspiration
for the American Constitution and the Mohawks are pretty cool people.
I adopted the Native American notion of a planting stick
out there in the desert and also beseeching the Corn Mother for her
blessings.
A couple summers in Thompsonville, then off to
Hazardville after my firstborn arrived. Time to move to a safer
neighborhood and the little white house in Hazardville was delightful. Then, as
I related earlier, I dug into the soil.
Hazardville looking east
16 inches of the richest soil I had ever seen. Black
gold. I also grew perennials and they spread quickly and I split them and
sold them the following two springtimes at my yard sale. Flowers such as
Echinacea grew to their maximum height at this site, and one corn variety grew
11 feet tall. A 60-foot row of sunflowers lined the south side of the
property. Everything grew so well and I mixed everybody together. (see
below)
But you know, people
are not really interested in plants, but I was, and I did what I wanted because
I was self-educating myself with botany, horticulture, habitat building and
hobbyist gardening. No one cared. I was the plant guy. You know. the dude
with no skills.
Mike Two Hawks was
someone who also did what he wanted. Steeped in Mohawk tradition, he was
an indigenous activist and caused quite a stir wherever he went. I
was able to share my thoughts with him and he seemed to think I was authentico,
with my planting stick and all, so he shared with me a few of his native
American rituals.
I was growing corn
ceremonially and my off road research kept returning to Native ways. The ancient ways, traditional ways. The way we all were
once upon a time. Red, White and Black.
My people are the
Lusitanian people of Portugal, and people of the Copper Culture and the Stone
People and the Cave Painters before that. Before xianity, indigenous Europeans
were very much like the native Americans in their habits, customs and cultural
practices.
We talked about the Hopi when
I wore my t-shirt one day that said, "Save Big Mountain. End Apartheid in
America." That is about the Hopis being forcibly moved from their traditional
land. For ten thousand years they have been there, protecting the Four
Corners, repelling all invaders, even the Spanish who couldn't hustle their
stout defense. In the 80's more attempts to remove them from their
land were fought back.
So we'd do a Tabacco ritual before the work
began for the day. The boss was cool and knew a bit of fun and bonding led to
motivated workers and we were motivated, efficient, and professional.
Mike was forever quoting John Trudell (2) John Trudell - Mining our Minds For The Machine -
YouTube
The corn I was growing was
different than the Silver Queen F1 and F2 hybrids at the farm stands. Native
American sweet corn is more nutrient dense than the candy corn hybrids but they
were squeezed out of the market. I think the corn my dad grew was "Country
Gentleman," which was the last of the popular heirlooms before the
ridiculous F1 and 2 hybrids became popular and overwhelmed the market.
Native Sweet Corn is smaller and there was
only a two day window when they could be eaten before the kernels became rock
hard. For most people, they think its a waste of time to grow smaller, subtly
flavorful corn, that ripens too quick. But I was motivated to try this as my
science experiment and my conclusions were about common sense. Indigenous
Americans grew Corn co-operatively, checking the crop frequently removing
insect pests and scaring away Raccoons and such. Always coming home with the
ripe ears. Fresh, vitamin packed Corn or shipped GMO sugar corn? We no longer
have a choice but I’m thinking the demand for open pollinated sweet corn will
return.
I staggered the plantings three weeks apart and harvested from August to
October. 4 or 5 every three days. Black Aztec dominated that second year and
people would go "ewww why would you eat blue corn?" Blue is rot and
fungus, right? Gorgonzola.
Then in the 90's, the
super markets were selling this new Blue Corn Tortilla.
Touche, mon
aci.
The 60 foot row of sunflowers Echinacea Roses Millet St.
Annes lace and others popped up in there.
The 60 foot row of
Sunflowers and Echinacea and Bee Balm and what all else, was an attempt to
build a English hedgerow. (see above) A wonderful memory was counting at least
13 Yellow Finches in a feeding frenzy on the sunflowers one steamy August
morning. So, two years of explosive growth and a total immersion into heirloom
seeds and native perennials and it became a peak gardening time.
My little sweetie was going on two years old, and she had lots of
running energy. On Earth again, yah! Lots of room to run in any random
direction. Chasing Dickens the Calico, who never got caught, my little toddler
would sleep good at night with all the outside activity.
Then the cold weather, winter was coming. Somehow, I got into a lab for a
growing job in a greenhouse and saw some early examples of tissue culture with
plants. Joe, the rough and tumble greenhouse guy had a connection at the
college. I was his assistant and we took a field trip to the lab one day. We
then worked in Lori’s greenhouse in January and February. Whereas micro plugs
were the rage in the early 80's, tissue culture came along in the late 80's
with its trays of completely identical plants. Just happenstance that I came
upon these new technologies early in the game.
Early 1989 was all about
seeds for me personally. Traditional seeds. Vegetables, ground covers, small
trees and tree seeds. Just ... everything.
I wrote to a dude in Oklahoma who had
a company named "Corns". Carl Barnes is now deceased but became
famous for his "Glass Gem" variety of corn about a decade ago.
Gardeners know the
anticipation of incoming seed catalogs and I was psyched for the next growing
season. So here I am 33 years ago writing to this dude about what I was
attempting to do with corn. I told him I wanted to blend all the
varieties together and then send free seed to people in various countries,
locations and elevations to revive traditional growing and chemical free
agriculture.
Carl sent me a
letter in return, stating the seeds he sent back were from Anasazi stock. 900
years old. Carl Barnes Documentary Trailer - YouTube
He signed the letter,
"White Eagle," which is a name of great distinction and honor.
Some of my stated intentions were what he was already doing. Looking at his
video now, I realize he was a mid-century Luther Burbank, and his letter is now
in my scrapbook. His wall of Corn Seeds in the video took my breath away
when I first saw the video. I could comprehend the amazing amount of work it
took to have a wall like that. Seed is the history of the people. You take that
away and you are a world class asshole.
The "Glass Gem"
variety of Corn was trending hard ten years ago or so, and when I read an
article about it, I noticed the name Carl Barnes of Oklahoma. It was HIM! Dude
went viral.
He even has a meme. He's
the "at least it's an honest living guy."
Back to that cold
winter day, I mailed a check with my order. I wanted two packs of seeds and he
sent me back five. Not even sweet corn either. Flint corn, among others such as
Hopi Orange. I questioned the generous response but had enough confidence that
the mf knew what he was doing. But still, I'm thinking the Flint Corn is gonna
make my sweet corn hard to chew, but I was wrong.
Soon enough the summer
came along and I began marveling at what grew that year. It was
astonishing. "Lots of genetic diversity" he stated in the
letter. I had the genetic base already in place, to brace for the
explosion of botanic wonders he sent me. Saved seeds from the previous year and
new varieties made the perfect storm of genetic diversity. The photo of the
corn ear above from 2020, is the one that seems to have lasted the longest.
First and
foremost, I managed to get Teosinte and Maize on a single cob,
proving Corn evolved from Teosinte. Would this be heresy to those
that believe the Corn Mother gave the Native Peoples Corn by using magic? Did
he know that I might discover this? I told him I grew Teosinte at the edge of
my patch like the Tarahumara people have done for a long time.
Finally, what a year that was!
Cobs grew at the top of the plant and at the bottom. Ears were fat, ears were
thin. Three ears grew together. Triple goddess symbolism. Things that didn't
even look like corn grew on the stalks. Smut and other weird shit was abundant.
Modern corn has 22 rows or something like that jammed together and sweet as
candy corn, but I had 8. 12. Even 4 with flattened sides. (see below) Despite
my instinct that I was going to ruin my sweet corn crop with these Flint seeds
he sent me, I had planted them anyways. Trust is the essence of anarchy. That
year the taste improved, the size improved, and the window of edibility
increased. Early version of Glass Gem.
Evolutionarily speaking, anomalies such as variegation and dwarfism occur
in 1 in a thousand cases. Sometimes one in a million, depending on the animal
or plant.
Who noticed a Teosinte plant that had enlarged
kernels and who had the foresight to save those seeds to plant another time?
Teosinte seeds are hard as heck but Dove, Turkey and Quail can eat them, and they
could fracture human teeth.
Teosinte and Maize on the same cob
It was an incredible piece of
land I was on and I created a permaculture structure in three years, harvesting
an abundance of beans and squash and corn ... and I forgot all what else. We
froze instead of canned. Pollinator friendly perennials and potted fruit
trees. June to September 25th, the abundance was a total blessing.
I could have lived in Hazardville Connecticut forever, but by the
27th of September, we had arrived in Florida, and it was 97 degrees.
Blistering, dry heat, but within a month, the temperature had moderated, and we
found ourselves on another relatively fertile piece of land. It was USDA Zone
9b, and in the last 30 years here, I have noted the change in climate. Now we
are just into zone 10. 10a.
MESQUITE
The
previous spring in 1989, in Connecticut, I went through the Master Gardener
certification Program in February and March, so I naturally turned to the
Extension Service and Master Gardener Program for my questions when I moved to
a new state.
"Can I grow Mesquite in Florida?" I
queried back in 1990. I was in the office and there was an Extension
employee and two elderly Master Gardeners. They were briefly stumped. "Can
I grow Mesquite trees in Florida?"
"Of course not,"
was the derisive reply. I could tell they weren't sure.
I had so many seeds and many of them
were thriving in one-gallon pots. I had seeds for Palo Verde, Acacia koa,
(photo at top of the page), Indian Rosewood (hardest wood in the world, well,
third hardest), Carob, Tamarind and many others which I soon planted.
Needless to say, by '93, the Mesquite were producing pods (cattle feed) and in
95 they were stout and throwing shade. This is the deeper green gardener ...
doubting the experts and succeeding despite them. Trying something anyways despite
the experts.
Having gotten Master
Gardener certifications in Connecticut in '89 and Florida in '91, I had learned
quite a lot. Could I simulate similar conditions? I planted my three little straplings in extremely hot,
sunny, quickly draining area. Being used to 10 inches of rain a year, the
Mesquite Tree could not tolerate ANY water accumulation.
So they grew fast. When it rained heavy like
it does in Florida, the soil drained in a few hours in the location I chose. So
it was ideal. Hottest sunniest part of the yard, lots of moisture without the
rot. Three years is easy to keep something alive, but could it survive the many
cyclical fungus diseases that thrive in Florida? They were still growing fast
after five years, and this indicated that they made it.
In 2001 I had quit the job I had for ten years and
started my own business. The Garden Green. Green from the git go, I was also
one of a handful of registered Green Party citizens and was interviewed because
of that by the local paper in 1995. "Sometimes Gardening, always
Green".
No
college degree to wave around, so it seems I have to establish my horticultural
cred with some people here in 2023 and that's why my resume is at the top of
this. I need to make some kind of resume for future employment, and this is it.
May need a bit of editing.
When I moved to
Florida, I found a job with the landscaping crew at Atlantic View. Indian
River County had banned oceanside condos over three stories, so Atlantic View
was just over the line in St. Lucie County. Seven stories and three buildings.
Developer delirium.
Well one day my
landscape boss was caught smoking crack on the fifth floor. He got fired and my
New Age buddy, Dave, was suddenly boss. Turnover such as it is in Arizona and
Florida, Dave was funny and smart but definitely suffered from IED.
Intermittent Explosive Disorder. He ended up getting fired too, so there I was,
two months in Florida and I was the landscaping boss.
South
American investors with alleged, old school drug gang connections, was the
shadowy power behind the throne of this development. It was reputed
they were laundering money. Then one day, they went to clear land on
the dunes, and we were all told "if we called the county, we'd
be fired immediately." They began clearing the dunes like a military
invasion, then a helicopter flew over and hovered. The county caught them.
Fred
Stresau had done the landscape design and I learned he was a bestselling
author. He wrote “Florida, My Eden” which remained the landscape bible through
the nineties for many in Florida. He had died before the project was finished
and planted, and I never met him, but Fred Stresau Jr. visited the site, and he
was such a dick.
The project manager was
also a dick. The developers hired gun, he fucked with everybody, but respected
me for some unknown reason. On December 24th, one of the worst
freezes in decades was predicted for all of Florida. It snowed on Christmas Day
in Titusville, we later found out. Even though I had a difficult time whipping
the boys into being 100% productive during regular hours, this emergency made
us gel into a real team. Through their initiative.
There
was nothing we could do to protect the 70 Coconut Palms out by the street from
the predicted 22 to 24 degrees, but we had many plants in pots that
were bound to be frozen by this freeze. The site boss would write it off
as a business loss, but the boys had a different idea. This was one
of those worker moments when the workers grabbed the initiative.
There
was Paul the pot dealer and a seriously redneck dude from West Virginia and the
guy that looked like Jesus. A 6’4” Jesus. He gave me some Alligator toes and I
still have them. A pagan welcome to me in Florida, you don’t meet people like
this when you’re stuck in an insurance company cubicle for 30 years. All great,
sincere men who respected each other and they got the notion to build a
greenhouse. Five hooligans with a focus.
“Are
you kidding,” the developer said when I told him their idea, We didn’t need to
buy a thing I said. They made a 15 by 10 foot greenhouse to protect the more
rare and frost sensitive material. I planted those tree seeds I had
ordered from catalogs in 89 that I had hoped to grow in Florida.
They
built the entire thing from what was in the dumpsters and what we could scrouge
from home that night. Plastic and wood, it was a work of genius with this
incredible cold front headed our way. Twenty degrees along the
whole Treasure Coast as it turned out, the coldest night in 40
years.
Everything
survived, and my seeds even germinated. What didn’t fit in the greenhouse
we placed next to it where it was warmer and covered them with sheets.
Our fifth guy, a young troublemaker, but a good egg, didn’t have anything
to do on Christmas Day, so he came in and checked on the heater.
772-321-2542
TURNING
YARDS INTO GARDENS
Twenty years as the Garden Green and now I'm looking to do
something else here in 2022/3. My back is wore the hell out, so now I want to
use my brain instead of my shovel. However, how do I tell these young Perma
culturalists about what I know? I try to avoid saying things like "I
was doing native plants, planting heirlooms and practicing permaculture when
you was still shittin' your britches." Sounds like a grumpy old man. Lol.
My dad had a "victory garden" which was very productive.
Still, I just took it for granted, and other than bringing the bounty in the
house, I really didn't notice. I DID notice no one else's dad did.
"Victory Garden?" I questioned. "The war's been over for 20 year,"
I said in 1965. He knew what he was doing and this imprinted on my brain.
We had a cellar pantry that was huge. Green Beans, Peaches, home-made
Tomato Sauce and others. They had three to four months of food at any one time
I had my paper route and had chores like taking out the garbage and brought in
the milk and other things but never did any gardening. My Mom loved Roses
and my Dad loved Peonies and we had a really nice Mountain Laurel near the chimney
where I practiced throwing and catching the baseball.
So in '73, I got my own apartment and planted my first
garden in the spring of '74. Heavy rain from a Tropical storm actually
destroyed my lettuce at the end of the summer and then I gave vegetarianism a
try. I joined a pretty cool Food co-op and would bring home Peanuts, Potatoes
and Peppers. '75 and 76 were party years till I got arrested for running
out of Bowl-O-Rama with my bowling shoes. Fourth degree larceny and three
cancelled court appearances when the charge was finally dropped, and I entered
the "accelerated rehabilitation" program. Suddenly the harmless
hooligan days were done.
I got more serious with researching ecosystems and
botany in ‘76. I subscribed to Mother Earth News and Harrowsmith, and other
back to the earth publications. In 1977 I discovered Seed Savers Exchange
via Michael Pilarski, a Permaculture Pioneer. Now that was some shit ...
learning about our genetic heritage of seeds and how important seeds and
forests are and what Permaculture is.
Gardens all the time from
here out. Garden in East Granby Connecticut. Then the move to Tucson
Arizona. Three Amigos out Ajo Way. Cat Mountain was in view, and Kitt Peak was
a short drive away.
The inventor of the Glass
Gem variety of corn and I communicated in the 80’s about corn breeding and this
is what I came up with.
We developed a system
where everything we planted could be watered with a hose. Just turn it on for a
half hour and it filled the ditches where the watermelons were. Rivulets were
diverted to the side to water radishes and all the other things we tried. The
soil was good, just add water.
We lived near the
Tucson-Sonora Desert Museum which is best stated on their web page.
"21 interpreted
acres, two miles of walking paths, 242 animal species, plants from 1200 taxa
and one of the worlds largest regional mineral collections."
Three New Englanders living the
western life at 160 Swinging A. Little Jenny next door often visited because we
were fun and her parents knew we was good people. Gardens, Music and Art. TS
always had a painting going, and this is his below.
The painter moved downtown and we moved mid-town in 1980. A
tiny home on Adams St. with more good soil for gardening. I aspired to be
nothing more than a janitor for work and a gardener at home. One day my boss
Larry sat me down. Normally a garrulous old fart, he sat me down one night and
asked me what were my plans for the future.
"Chop wood and carry water" I shrugged?
"where do you see
yourself in ten years?" He seriously cared. At the time I had been
thinking that somehow it might be nice if I could translate my irresistible
urge to garden into some kind of occupation. So I told him. A week later he got
me some work outside at the restaurant we cleaned. Moving six Barrel Cactus
that were out near the street, closer to the windows, so customers could see
them. Always leaning towards the sun, now I find out they can be eaten. So I planted
them in the same leaning direction southwards and so they had me do some
pruning. Larry got me on my career path.
He lost the account, six Village Pizzas, and so I got a job
with Casa Verde Landscaping. I turned that minimal experience into an updated
resume.
They had the best accounts in town and when the owner
got the 78 store Park Mall account, I was sent there, since I seemed more into
plants that mowing. 520 sprinkler heads and me not having ever even
seen an irrigation set up. 106 degrees and me turning on a station,
getting on my bicycle and checking it. The perimeter road had about a 2000 feet
of Juniper along it I was responsible for.
THEN ... my gal and I got a job on a 40 acre horse ranch in
1982. Can't hurt to try, we figured, applying for the positions, and somehow we
beat 125 other applicants. I had Citrus and Joshua Trees and much more to take
care of, such as pulling mistletoe out of trees. We had six Australian Shepards
who were not fenced or leashed because we were so far outside of town. Though
when the Peccaries were around, they had to be fed within the walled compound.
One day some coyotes thought they'd go through the yard in
the daytime and I watched as Sammy (on the left) stood on his hind legs,
looking very much like a bear because he had no tail, and scared them off. One
of those great moments where I wished I had a camera. I did catch my cat
Dickens standing up once during our time there.
That caretaking gig lasted three years and I had a fenced
garden where I used sheet composting and other composting methods using my
books from Rodale to learn the organic way.
We had experienced so much in six years but we moved back
to New England because we missed it and I intended to learn more about my
craft. First at a nursery then a greenhouse back to the nursery and back to the
greenhouse. Then I gave indoor plant maintenance a try for a year and a half
keeping me employed during the winter.
Rolling my 30-gallon tank of water through parking lots and
into elevators with Plantations and Plantscapes. Rolling through IBM, Ernst
& Young, Deutsche Bank and many insurance companies I fielded hundreds of
questions from employees. I was big on giving plants away too.
Then a landscaping job in Ellington with our super crew of
farm girls, bikers, rednecks, Mohawks and me ... whatever I was. The working
class knows how to get along, we had fun.
1989 was a great
year. Everywhere I went my two-year-old was there too. Trips to the Dump or the
Trolley or the store or over to the woods Mike Two Hawks hung out. We let her run
ahead the first time we were there, and he told me later she found all the
power vortexes on the property. But she didn't go to the Master Gardener Course
I took.
Carl Salsedo was a very entertaining teacher, and he was
extension agent and he and his wife who was the administrator of the building
were always arguing. It was funny because they would laugh at themselves after
one of their silly arguments. To get your Master gardener certification we had
to do 50 hours of volunteer work. Mostly phone work in four-hour chunks. We
ended up moving to Florida in September and so I went through the program in
1991 and 2001.
University research was now
showing the harm of chemicals, and instead of promoting their use, it was now
being discouraged and the 2001 program was dramatically upgraded.
As I explained earlier, I got to be landscape boss at
Atlantic View, then worked for Biogreen, which was an organic fertilizer
company. Then on May 30th, 1990, I got hired at Orchid Island, a gated
community.
I thought I had learned a lot in the 80's but the nineties
proved to be even more educational. In '94 I entered my A1A / Jungle Trail
native plant work with the Florida Native Plant Society FNPS and got a
Certificate of Distinction. Today you can still see the results. The west side
of A1A is still a biotic dead zone with the invasive Brazilian Pepper choking
out everything else. The east side where I worked, is all natives, even
today. 2000 feet by 40 feet and part of my job was burying the dead animals
that got hit by cars. I made the claim I created this habitat using only a
chain saw and Roundup. But that's a story for another day.
In '98, I somehow got first place in the residential
category with the FNPS. On his 2 acre oceanside, 10 million dollar home, Mr.
Avery saved all the native plants in a 150' x 40' part of his property by the
roadside. It was a wreck after construction of the home and I cleaned it up,
pulled the weeds and invasives, which allowed native seeds to live long and
prosper. Liz Gilleck got an award for her work designing the remainder of the
property using the hackneyed choices of that time. Same old stuff for
beauty and lines and all the stuff overpaid landscape architects do. Notorious
for putting Queen Palms next to pools, the clueless experts never saw the great
delight that Raccoons exhibited by this choice. On the steps the barely
digested fruit was deposited on the steps going into the pool.
The walkway to be
beach had to be just so. The environmental laws had caught up to the developers
at long last. At this point, I had made two thoughtful presentations to two
bosses. The mucky mucks at the top. Trying to get them to do mainstream
environment initiatives proved impossible. So anyways, I went to
the annual conference where I saw my slides enlarged to twenty feet and given
an award. First god damn place no less.
I was getting to know all the horticultural players in the
county and applied for an opening on the Sebastian Tree Board. I was told,
"you know what, you could be an adviser and not be subject to the Sunshine
Law." Turned out to be good advice because members could talk to me when
the meeting was done.
Walmart was expanding and we tried desperately to get them
to save the existing semi scrub habitat. The parking lot was goinbg to be atthe
same elevation as the Scrub Pine Forest. Parking spots in the shade and
downpours could be collecting in natural, quickly draining soil. Today the sad
looking Elms they planted twenty years ago are not even 15 feet tall. They are
so sad.
My first real assignment was filming all the cities
properties. Many were small for drainage, but some were really large. I
suggested that all they had to do at the 2.3 acre property on the corner of
George and Barber was take out the Brazilian Peppers and you would still have a
canopy of Oaks and native Palms. They did and added a playground area there. My
firstborn helped me with the filming and we went to the 5 acre site on Keen
Terrace and came up with the idea that it would be a cool place for dogs to run
free. I also had an open door agreement with the city manager to come in
anytime and I made the case for it. We imagined the whole place fenced in and
dogs could avoid each other but the one they made is pretty large. None of my
dogs seemed to like it though.
I was told by the Orchid Island people my ideas were valid
...but...and... uh. They seemed more concerned their real estate parasite
friends, would all be millionaires. Or selling club memberships.
One year a big log had blown into the lake near #7 Tee.
When we went in for lunch there was always a couple birds and turtles resting
on it. A place to feel safe, you know. Where is a turtle supposed to go with
these biotically dead retention ponds? There was native Spartina everywhere but
that gets old.
In Sebastian I
could be part of the developing park system. There was 4000 people when I moved
there and 14 thousand about fifteen years later.
2001 came along and I started my own business. Oh ... one
more thing about Orchid Island. I was driving my tractor picking up brush and I
finally had had enough of these Brazilian Peppers so I went on private property
and ran my chain saw through five of the thickest trunks I could find.
A couple days later the golf course boss came running over.
"John ... John did you cut those trees that are all dying now?"
"Which trees?"
"Over by nine fairway?"
"Why yes I did."
"Are you crazy. The property owner is in Kevins office
and hysterical that someone cut his Oak trees down."
"MMMM. I don't think I cut any Oaks. Maybe accidently.
Why don't you go over there and look for yourself. I'll talk to the guy if you
like." Well, long story short the property owner and I got together and I
explained about Florida plants and how the Brazilian Peppers were subsuming
millions of acres of native habitat. He knew all about what I was talking
about. I went on and on about birds and how they used that site for feeding and
nesting and it was being lost to this pest tree. Atlantic Flyway, blah blah
blah.
Turns out he was a Birder and I worked for him for over
five years. He gave me a signed copies of the book his mother wrote. A Little Bird Told Me So: Birds in Mythology and History by
Eleanor Stickney (1997-12-04): Amazon.com: Books
This resume needs to be edited and reduced, and I 'll make
20 years of being the Garden Green creating native habitat, for another day. I
was into the work, not the money. My customers no longer spend money on
irrigation repairs or fertilizer applications. Some began taking care of their
own which I encouraged and that's what I want to do in 2022. Weekly visits had
gotten so restrictive in many ways. I was never able to really take a vacation.
I was happy in the Pine Forest next door.
I'm looking for monthly customers. People who give me free
rein to plant what I thought was right, and to keep what is doing well as long
as it's not invasive. I did one yard in 8 phases over 4 years. A minimum of
expenses since I start with small plants so there is less plastic waste with up-potting.
I tell people that whatever they may spend on my labor and new plants, double
that and that is probably how much I increased the total value of the
property.
That 20 dollar unstaked tree is worth 200 in les than ten
years. Where else you gonna get that kind of return?
I can check the property monthly or when you’re away for a
season. I know how much water is needed when I visit. My customers have moved
or died and I tried to rest my back, so now I want to transition to property
stewardship. I need some work so let me know.
SECTION SIX
ARTICLE THREE
Here are some of my
Connecticut job experiences.
Looking for a New Englandy
place to live after living in Tucson for six years, I went to the Boston area
first. I got pulled over by a cop trying to find my way around a tight little
neighborhood in Boston in my search for a home and the only way out was going
the wrong way on a one-way street… and there’s a cop. I talked my way out of it
and went on to a quieter town between there and Salem.
Then I realized that maybe Vermont, New Hampshire and
Massachusetts were far from the people we knew, and Enfield Connecticut was
quite New Englandy in its own way with its old houses, Apple orchards and farm
stands. At the end of April, I had been at Norms for two weeks. They
spent a month or something in Cape Cod and I was house sitting which, all in
all, was a pretty cool transition to New England. Taking care of Freddy the dog
and shepherding the arrival of Dickens and Rocky, our cats.
I applied at Tarnow Nursery which was down the road about a
half a mile and got a job. Minimum wage had risen to $3.35 an hour and despite
a pretty good horticultural resume by this point, I started at only$3.50. Owner
John was a well-known skinflint as I found out from his nieces Nancy and Susan
who had set up the nursery the previous fall and ran the place. He barely paid
them 4 an hour to run the place, and they were kin.
There’s that pattern emerging that most guys wanted to be
millionaires. The nursery owner probably became a millionaire eventually, on
the backs of 100, mostly dedicated young people of course. As did Tom Collins
in later years with lots of turnover and probably 1000 employees at Captain
Hirams in Sebastian Florida. As did the owners of Rock City leaving at least 500
disgruntled employees in their wake at least.
Joe from Springfield came along at
Tarnow Nursery, and he was a young, but old looking, college grad and
he became the boss and Susan and Nancy went back to the main store to work,
except weekends when Joe was off, and they were the bosses. Susan Nancy and I
spent a lot of time talking on the weekends and there was quite a bunch of
interesting kids that came through that summer. That was a good crew.
At 32, I was the oldest at the jobsite and should have been
well on my way to a capitalist career and accumulating assets and investing for
retirement, but I wasn’t buying into this system. I had learned quite a bit
about plants the previous four years with the mall and caretaker job, and I
quickly learned about Connecticut's favorite plants, it seemed more
fun than being a functionary in the insurance capital of the world (Hartford
Conn.)
I thought I had quite a good sales approach and we were
taught to handle two or three customers at once and go between them while, you
know, keeping the elbows and ankles flying when Joe was there. I started by
being a loader and met many of the Enfield people who frequented the store who often
lauded the variety of the plants. This was no vegetable stand with plants, it
was a slick professionalism that people like, and Tarnows quickly became
Enfields favorite nursery.
The end of the summer came, and it was pumpkins and fall
decorations and selling the fall planting concept. The kids went back
to college, and I became the main salesperson (except when
that lazy guinea schlub from the Main store worked there). He was lazy as fuck and
immediately had an effect on productivity. By November, Michelle ran the
Christmas shop, and I was the everything else person. She was sharp
and knew how to please the little old ladies buying Christmas fluff.
So, my first winter since 1977-8 was set to arrive. (Blizzard
of 78 picture here) We came back to experience the seasons, right? My partner
and I had moved to the Thompsonville section of Enfield, and it was like a
slice of Boston, a dose of “Southy” that had dropped down in the Connecticut
River Valley.
There was Ragnos where they served the food I had missed
out in Arizona. A little further away was the best Polish Deli I had ever hoid.
Our daughter was born and then baptized at the ancient gothy church down the
street. A little further down the street, a Norman Rockwell Christmas emerged
at Freshwater Pond when the ice froze.
It was exciting and I realized at this point that I had
truly created my own path. My peers were buying houses and working
in cubicles, but I decided to carve my own path. I was creating my
own horticultural college experience in a pull up
your bootstrap's way with job experience.
There was Tiny’s Little criminal enterprise next door in a
pool hall and a host of characters living in 8 rentals in two large houses. Add
loose soap opera here.
I bought some choice little evergreens and had planted them
on the side of the house. Rocky and Dickens would run up the steps to come in
because the back steps were missing. I was planting in this grey dust they
called soil and people were digging it. “Looks good” said local murderer Wilmer
Paradise.
My partner was working downtown, and I went to the local
employment agency to find another job when I got laid off after Christmas at Tarnow’s.
When you make peanuts, the unemployment was very minimal and a couple weeks
before Valentines day I got a job with a wholesale Greenhouse.
Former Ball Seed Vice President Peter Stanley was one of
the most manic people I’d ever met. He had reconstructed two 440 foot
greenhouses and was striking out on his own with his patented concept called
Jet Plugs. Instead of the usual 75 cent plugs, these were much smaller and only
about 35 cents if I recall, so that was 40 cents a plant profit. I learned the
long road from producer to purchaser. This was three years before I went
to the tissue culture lab. Tissue culture jet plug eventually became the
industry norm in the 90’s and the aughts.
One day running between greenhouses I caught the top of my
head on a round eyehook. Shouldn’t have torn my head open since it wasn’t sharp
in any way, but that was a trip to the emergency clinic and 13 stitches. My
nickname was Zipperhead for a while.
So, there I was off to a new job in early February with the
temperature around 10 degrees and a dry wicked wind was blowing so it felt like
it was well below zero and I was reminded of one of the reasons I moved to
Arizona. It was COLD! Everything was frozen and the loading dock area looked to
be abandoned with 4’x4’ flattened boxes blowing around and other litter was
being blown around. I was looking for a job here? It looked like a disaster
area.
Peter was short on employees and this was his problem. So
he hired me on at $4.25 an hour which was 25% more than I was making at Tarnow
Nursery. An employee was walkie talkied to come and give me an orientation. She
was one of those tall Nordic women who cursed very fluently. We got on pretty
good, I was always monogamous, so there was never sexual tension with any
female co-workers.
In the world of capitalism, men are sheltered from the
minorities and they were the bosses of the women and this is why so much sexism
remains. You treat a woman like a dude, and they respond in kind. At the mall,
I also talked with dozens of the employees from every demographic as they were
walking in to punch in. I reject the notion that I “don’t know how to
communicate”. At Tarnow Nursery I met practically everyone in town who came to
check out the place. I had the gift of gab when I was younger. I spent the
entirety of the 80's meeting people. 9 different jobs 9 different
experiences.
I don’t remember the flaxen haired Valkyries name but she
walked me to the first Greenhouse and it was a moment like no other. People
with glasses know how they fog up in changing conditions. Ten below zero with a
wicked wind chill and it was like Dorothy opening the door to the colors of Oz.
Tropical plants as far as the eye could see (once I took my
glasses off) and a temperature to match. Plants poised for the Valentines Day
sales. Here was a new experience to jump into, fer sure. Many tales I will
relate later and just one to keep the flow. Bosses such as Jim the asshole came
along and White Knight Dwight from out of state was a hired gun and a
spectacular dude. No college for him either and he was older than me and had a
wide variety of job experiences. He and his friend from Pittsburgh completely
refurbished the existing greenhouses and brought another one into service.
When all was said and done, our little family moved to the
field office of Consolidated Cigar that Dwight and Marian had previously lived
in. There was always a boss over me, and they all got fired or quit and I was the
constant for Stanley Greenhouses and now I lived across the street in the
cutest little white house you ever saw.
Summer of 86 with my firstborn who was a fun little baby
and it was an exciting time. I believe the wife quit her job to be a mommy
since I was putting in 60 hours a week, and making enough. A typical day would
have me at 7:00 walking over to begin venting around 15,000 sq. ft. of
greenhouse.
By then the Weather Channel had become the bomb, and I
would vent accordingly, depending on that days conditions. Weather forecasting
dramatically improved. Rolling carts waited on the very large loading dock and
sometimes I took a smaller truck and loaded from the greenhouse. Then I would
drive and deliver for ten hours going to Mattapan or Poughkeepsie or over Mt
Adams with a ton of wet plants. I’d come back and close the vents to keep the
greenhouses at 75 degrees, then walk home after a 13-hour day. But it was
interesting, you know? I set up plant displays at BJ’s Wholesale and delivered
to every Paperama in southern New England out to the Hudson in New York.
Work hard and be rewarded was the message of my youth but
then I learned from a friend that I had to work smart, not hard. That made
sense. But did it mean conniving and scratching and clawing my way above other
employees? Yes, it did. The secret to the American Dream, if you wanted
financial security, is that you needed to be the boss. You needed to be able
to manipulate people to work harder than they should but squeezing
productivity from underpaid employees was never a lure to me.
The boss at Walmart making sure no one talks to each other.
That’s working smart. The warehouse manager not caring about workers injuries. On
target. The head nurse that all the CNA’s hate? The Administrator likes her. My
philosophy is that I don’t like being
bossed and I don’t like BEING the boss.
So here I was with caretaking experience, a difficult mall
gardening job experience that included irrigation work, and then some
electrical work. A nursery job and greenhouse experience. I was training myself
in Horticulture and Botany. So, by 1987 Peter ratcheted down his business
because his mercurial bossmanship just wasn’t making the money he expected,
although of course he blamed the employees.
He even had me set up a retail shop the spring after Dwight
left and people recognized me from Tarnows and that was a fun spring with my
own perennials tripling and quadrupling. Then there were the BJ Wholesale sites
where I set up the indoor displays and returned weekly to replace plants in
‘86. I even drove to Syracuse a couple of times.
I reckon it was the end of the summer of 86 and I decided I
needed indoor plant experience on my resume. The good thing about interior
plantwork was that it was a way to work through a New England winter. I spent
nine months at Plantations who gave some very professional training to new
hires. I forgot how I left that job. Think it was to work a third season at
Stanley Greenhouses.
Then there was the Plantscape job where I was the only
dude. When they went big on a pink and black theme with uniforms and stickers
and what all else, I found it amusing and they found a way to frame and fire
me.
In spring of ’88 I got a job with probably one of the best
crews ever. There was the boss, a dairy farmers daughter. She had grown up with
machines and tractors and got the notion to start a landscaping business. Dwarf
Evergreens were trending and the plant selection was minty and the boss was
calm and organized.
There was Bob the biker. A big bear of a guy with a big
beard that the boss described as more a Teddy Bear than a Grizzly. There was
Randy the Redneck and there were many interesting discussions altogether
between all of us, usually starting with Randys whacked out views. A big gun
enthusiast and one of the first Preppers I ever met. He had enough food for a
year at least and he even an underground gasoline tank. Randy and his Super
Swampers were such a caricature.
Armageddon happens and people are hungry roaming the land
for food and shelter We asked him what he would do if dozens of hungry people
and their children were walking up his driveway looking for assistance. His
answer was that he would “mow them down like zombies.” Then there was Mike Two
Hawks, who said he was derided as “only” a quarter blood Mohawk by his peers,
but who seemed to be fully authentic. He taught me ceremony and quite a bit
else, though he was younger.
There was Dat Shenoy and his family. He was a tech
dude who quit the biz and wanted to be a landlord. He would be buying houses
and I would renovate the landscaping and help him clean and paint the indoors.
I’ve liked Painting ever since.
I don’t know what years those were with Dat and his lovely
family and where they fit in with all those other Connecticut jobs I had, but
it was certain that no one could cite my lack of hustle. A 50 hour week
was quite normal for me in the 80’s. I had packed in quite a bit of training in
horticulture and with Spielman landscaping I had the classic experience of
driving a 1949 Ford tractor down the state road, creating a traffic jam.
With my previous greenhouse experience, I stayed on with
the landscaper when it got too cold to plant Junipers in the frozen ground.
There was Joe Gidvelas with his mafioso persona. He cursed all the time and was
very gruff, except when he was planting tissue culture jet plugs which he
treated like newborn babies.
In ’89 we got an offer to come to Florida to be manipulated
by my in-laws. My dad drove my rusted Datsun King Cab pickup, and I
drove a Hertz rental truck like the ones I drove for Stanley. Without
cell phones and global positioning satellites, we always had a place where we
would meet if we got separated. This was important going on the six lane I-295
around Washington DC.
Susan and Nancy
Probably
more administrative skill than all the men in the Tarnow organization. A song
called “The Warrior” brought me back to that time. Susan had recently
been ghosted by a dude and she would sing this if there were no customers. And
really it all just brings me back to when I started getting into the groove
with a career in horticulture, botany, and hydrology and being in on the
beginning of tissue culture and all the rest.
With
this purposefully diverse background, I have developed the notion that the
Green Industry is about the least green of them all. All the pollution required
to make plastic pots. Once upon a time everyone used leaf mulch. They mowed
their leaves and put them in the garden beds. Now we buy chopped up wood for
mulch and every year a gazillion plastic mulch bags go to the landfill.
THE DULL GREENS
Immense tracts of irrigation pipes at Park Mall where I
worked in ’81/2. 528 sprinkler heads in an area so vast I had to use a bicycle
to reach the further ends of it. Today they have an easy, remote
thingy that lets you to change to different irrigation zones without
having to go back to the time clock. Anyways, there must be SO MUCH PVC pipe
underground.
I
started to point out the hypocrisy of using a lot of mulch for environmental
reasons when the plastic bags for one job created more plastic garbage than ten
families could make in a week! I really noticed it after I moved to Connecticut
and worked at Tarnow nursery as a loader. All day long loading “green” products
in thousands of plastic bags. Brian and I had to wind down with some California
bud and Motley Crues, “Shout at the Devil" after loading many tons of
bags.
Stanley Greenhouse was a joke
in the waste department. Thousands of hanging baskets. Thousands of throw away holiday
plants. It was about the profit. I went back to Tarnow for another
interesting spring but Stanley wanted me and I got another paltry raise to
$4.75.
I went
and did 18 months with two interior plant companies in the third largest indoor
plant market at the time, Hartford Connecticut.
After
I told Mike Two Hawks about my Indian sweet corn project, we began talking how
the natives here, The Podunks among others, lived cleanly and simply on the
east side of the Connecticut River.
I told
him about the Charter Oak and how it was also the ceremonial Oak. When the oak
leaves were the size of mouse ears, it was time to plant the corn. Later the
“Fundamental Orders of 1639” were hidden in the tree.
So I
learned ceremony at the start of the work day. It was the cusp of the
dwarf evergreeen trend and we planted many yards during the year and a half I
worked there. The same crew; a redneck - a biker -an Indian- a farm girl foul
mouthed fat guy and me the heirloom organic dude.
Orchid
Island; invasive plants A1A and Jungle Trail and cutting the pepper at
Stickneys. So much I haven’t even touched yet.
I made
TWO habitat reports for Orchid island and talked to two property managers and
if nothing else showed them up to be hypocrites. Headline proclaiming how they
gave $3726 to the Environmental Learning Center. A greenwashing of the
corporate sort. A showy gift of charity (probably some costume fetish ball) but
not able to comprehend how the 600 acre community should be managed in an
environmentally progressive way. No outdoor stewardship, it was about selling
memberships and empty million dollar lots. No fucks given for migrating animals
and enhancing nature. No one to notice the disappearing stands of native plants
on site so this was a battle I lost.
I saw an
opportunity for me to create a job with habitat at this place but these richy
rich clubs have their richy rich wanna be millionaire employees (bag boys /
shop girls / wait staff / department heads /real estate parasites) all stabbing
each other in the back as they kick and claw their way to the top of the
Torwest corporate organization. They didn’t care about being a stop on the
Atlantic Flyway for migrating birds.
Finally, I had enough of trying to get Orchid
island to do th e right thing environmentally, I started my own business, The
Garden Green. A humble, small company as there ever was. 2001 to 2021. Now I’m
off to start something new.
Diversions.
2022.
DIVERSIONS
2023
DIVISIONS
OF DIVERSIONS
THE
GARDEN GREEN
FANCY
PLANTS NURSERY
INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT
broccoli black thumb
Ancient Garden is the title of SECTION SIX in my
book, “Compendium” and I attempt to bring you a working knowledge of the plant
world, so we can all create a plan for the stewardship of nature.
Left to its own devices, nature knows
what to do. Humans however have taken resource extraction as a basis for
wealth, with very few giving back, and our ecosystems are on the ropes.
Everyone wants to park in the shade but no one wants to plant a tree.
Capitalism is like the Aunt emptying valuables from Grandmas house as me mere
is dying in the hospital. Capitalism has been allowed to run rampant and
are unable to create a true economy. The Free Market is the method people have
used to stip anything valuable from anywhere navigable
I like to use the example of the Astor
family to illustrate how we've gone wrong. John Jacob Astor made his money by
having millions of animals killed. A master of the Fur Trade, it's said he had
a golden touch, but I can't stop the image of the bones of skinned animals
drying in the sun. Slaughtered. Most wealth has illegitimate beginnings and of
course it take money to make money.
Dynasties of wealth were made from the
stripping of the ancient forests across the world. Proper society is filled
with illegitimate wealth that has been derived from development and destruction.
Understanding this is lesson one. Creating abundance is the only true
wealth.
Imagine
some little 4-ounce bird has just flown 250 miles hopping from one island to
the next looking for food and shelter as it migrates north. She goes to
the cookie cutter house in the gated community and sees oleanders, ixora,
plumbago, philodendron, and other non-native plants. Off to the next
house....no food here either.
Finally, she flies into my yard,
White Indigo Berry, Wild Coffee (psycotira nervosa), Tamarind, Elderberry,
Sugar Cane, Fiddlewood, Maypop (passion vine) Marlberry, Saw Palmetto,
Snowberry and others. If not fruiting, they are flowering which attracts the
many pollinating insects birds love to eat. Right now in early November
Fiddlewood is flowering and Marlberry and Firebush and Wild Coffee have large,
juicy berries waiting for migrating birds to arrive. Right now, during another
rewrite in July, the Simpson Stoppers are engorged with big red berries. For us
there is a bit of a turpentine taste, but if you were a hunter gatherer, you’d
find them a welcome site.
by Mr. Phyllode Pinnate
by Mr. Phyllode Pinnate RFD3
Then I realized that maybe Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts were far from the people we knew, and Enfield Connecticut was quite New Englandy in its own way with its old houses and farm stands. At the end of April, I had been at Norms for two weeks. They spent a month or something in Cape Cod and I was house sitting which, all in all, was a pretty cool transition to New England. Taking care of Freddy the dog and shepherding the arrival of Dickens and Rocky, our cats.
I applied at Tarnow Nursery which was down the road about a half a mile and got a job. Minimum wage had risen to $3.35 an hour and despite a pretty good horticultural resume by this point, I started at $3.50. Owner John was a well-known skinflint as I found out from his nieces Nancy and Susan who had set up the nursery the previous fall and ran the place. He barely paid them 4 an hour to run the place, and they were kin.
There’s that pattern emerging that most guys wanted to be millionaires. The nursery owner probably became a millionaire eventually, on the backs of 100, mostly dedicated young people of course. As did Tom Collins in later years with lots of turnover and probably 1000 employees at Captain Hirams in Sebastian Florida. As did the owners of Rock City leaving 500 disgruntled employees in their wake at least.
Joe from Springfield came along at Tarnow Nursery, and he was a young, but old looking, college grad and he became the boss and Susan and Nancy went back to the main store to work, except weekends when Joe was off, and they were the bosses. We spent a lot of time talking on the weekends and there was quite a bunch of interesting kids that came through that summer. That was a good crew.
At 32, I was the oldest at the jobsite and should have been well on my way to a capitalist career and accumulating assets and investing for retirement, but I wasn’t buying into this system. I had learned quite a bit about plants the previous four years with the mall and caretaker job, and I quickly learned about Connecticut's favorite plants.
I thought I had quite a good sales approach and we were taught to handle two customers and go between them while, you know, keeping the elbows and ankles flying when Joe was there. I started by being a loader and met many of the Enfield people who frequented the store who lauded the variety of the plants. This was no vegetable stand with plants, it was a slick professionalism that people like, and Tarnows quickly became Enfields favorite nursery.
The end of the summer came, and it was pumpkins and fall decorations and selling the fall planting concept. The kids went back to college, and I became the main salesperson (except when that lazy guinea schlub from the Main store worked there). He was lazy as fuck and immediately had an effect on productivity. By November, Michelle ran the Christmas shop, and I was the everything else person. She was sharp and knew how to please the little old ladies buying Christmas fluff.
So, my first winter since 1977-8 was set to arrive. We came back to experience the seasons, right? My partner and I had moved to the Thompsonville section of Enfield, and it was like a slice of Boston, a dose of “Southy” that had dropped down in the Connecticut River Valley.
There was Ragnos where they served the food I had missed out in Arizona. A little further away was the best Polish Deli I had ever hoid. Our daughter was born and then baptized at the ancient gothy church down the street. A little further down the street, a Norman Rockwell Christmas emerged at Freshwater Pond when the ice froze.
It was exciting and I realized at this point that I had truly created my own path. My peers were buying houses and working in cubicles, but I decided to carve my own path. I was creating my own horticultural college experience in a pull up your bootstrap's way.
There was Tiny’s Little criminal enterprise next door in a pool hall and a host of characters living in 8 rentals in two large houses. Add loose soap opera here.
I bought some choice little evergreens and had planted them on the side of the house. Rocky and Dickens would run up the steps to come in because the back steps were missing. I was planting in this grey dust they called soil and people were digging it. “Looks good” said local murderer Wilmer Paradise.
My partner was working downtown, and I went to the local employment agency to find another job when I got laid off after Christmas. When you make peanuts, the unemployment was very minimal and a couple weeks before Valentines day I got a job with a wholesale Greenhouse.
Former Ball Seed Vice President Peter Stanley was one of the most manic people I’d ever met. He had reconstructed two 440 foot greenhouses and was striking out on his own with his patented concept called Jet Plugs. Instead of the usual 75 cent plugs these were much smaller and only about 35 cents if I recall, so that was 40 cents a plant profit. I learned the long road from producer to purchaser.
One day running between greenhouses I caught the top of my head on a round eyehook. Shouldn’t have torn my head open since it wasn’t sharp in any way, but that was a trip to the emergency clinic and 13 stitches. My nickname was Zipperhead for a while.
So there I was off to a new job in early February with the temperature around 10 degrees and a dry wicked wind was blowing so it felt like it was well below zero and I was reminded of one of the reasons I moved to Arizona. It was COLD! Everything was frozen and the loading dock area looked to be abandoned with 4’x4’ flattened boxes blowing around and other litter was being blown around. I was looking for a job here? It looked like a disaster area.
Peter was short on employees and this was his problem. So he hired me on at $4.25 an hour which was 25% more than I was making at Tarnow Nursery. An employee was walkie talkied to come and give me an orientation. She was one of those tall Nordic women who cursed very fluently. We got on pretty good, I was always monogamous, so there was never sexual tension with any female co-workers.
In the world of capitalism, men are sheltered from the minorities and they were the bosses of the women and this is why so much sexism remains. You treat a woman like a dude, and they respond in kind. At the mall I also talked with dozens of the employees from every demographic. I reject the notion that I “don’t know how to communicate”. At Tarnow Nursery I met practically everyone in town who came to check out the place. I had the gift of gab when I was younger. I spent the entirety of the 80's meeting people. 9 different jobs 9 different experiences.
I don’t remember the flaxen haired Valkyries name but she walked me to the first Greenhouse and it was a moment like no other. People with glasses know how they fog up in changing conditions. Ten below zero with a wicked wind chill and it was like Dorothy opening the door to the colors of Oz.
Tropical plants as far as the eye could see and a temperature to match. Plants poised for the Valentines Day sales. Here was a new experience to jump into, fer sure. Many tales I will relate later and just one to keep the flow. Bosses such as Jim the asshole came along and White Knight Dwight from out of state was a hired gun and a spectacular dude. No college for him either and he was older than me and had a wide variety of job experiences. He and his friend from Pittsburgh completely refurbished the existing greenhouses and brought another one into service.
When all was said and done, our little family moved to the field office of Consolidated Cigar that Dwight and Marian had p reviouslylived in. There was always a boss over me, and they all got fired or quit and I was a constant for Stanley Greenhouses and now lived across the street in the cutest little white house you ever saw.
Summer of 86 with my first biological child who was a fun little baby and it was an exciting time. I believe the wife quit her job to be a mommy since I was putting in 60 hours a week, and making enough. A typical day would have me at 7:00 walking over to begin venting around 15,000 sq. ft. of greenhouse.
By then the Weather Channel had become the bomb, and I would vent accordingly, depending on that days conditions. Rolling carts waited on the very large loading dock and sometimes I took a smaller truck and loaded from the greenhouse. Then I would drive and deliver for ten hours going to Mattapan or Poughkeepsie or over Mt Adams with a ton of wet plants. I’d come back and close the vents to keep the greenhouses at 75 degrees, then walk home after a 13-hour day. But it was interesting, you know. I set up plant displays at BJ’s Wholesale and delivered to every Paperama in southern New England out to the Hudson in New York.
Work hard and be rewarded was the message of my youth but then I learned from a friend that I had to work smart. That made sense. But did it mean conniving to scratch and claw my way above other employees? Yes, it did. The secret to the American Dream, if you wanted financial security, is that you needed to be the boss. To be able to manipulate people to work harder than they should. Squeezing productivity from underpaid employees was never a lure to me.
The boss at Walmart making sure no one talks to each other. The warehouse manager not caring about workers injuries. The head nurse that all the CNA’s hate. My philosophy is that I don’t like being bossed and I don’t like BEING the boss.
So here I was with caretaking experience, a difficult mall gardening job that included irrigation work, and then some electrical work. A nursery job and greenhouse experience. I was training myself in Horticulture. So, by 1987 Peter ratcheted down his business because his mercurial bossmanship just wasn’t making the money he expected, although of course he blamed the employees.
He even had me set up a retail shop the spring after Dwight left and people recognized me from Tarnows. Then there were the BJ Wholesale sites where I set up the indoor displays and returned weekly to replace plants in ‘86. I even drove to Syracuse a couple of times.
I reckon it was the summer of 87 and I decided I needed indoor plant experience on my resume. The good thing about interior plantwork was that it was a way to work through a New England winter. I spent nine months at Plantations who had some very professional training. I forgot how I left that job.
Then there was the Plantscape job where I was the only dude. When they went big on a pink and black theme with uniforms and stickers and what all else, I found it amusing and they found a way to frame and fire me.
In spring of ’88 I got a job with probably one of the best crews ever. There was the boss, another Lori with an I, who was a dairy farmers daughter. She had grown up with machines and tractors and got the notion to start a landscaping business. Dwarf Evergreens were trending and the plant selection was minty and the boss was calm and organized.
There was Bob the biker. A big bear of a guy with a big beard that the boss described as more a Teddy Bear than a Grizzly. There was Randy the Redneck and there were many interesting discussions altogether between all of us. A big gun enthusiast and one of the first Preppers I ever met. He had enough food for a year at least and even an underground gasoline tank. Randy and his Super Swampers were such a caricature.
Armageddon happens and people are hungry roaming the land for food and shelter We asked him what he would do if dozens of hungry people and their children were walking up his driveway looking for assistance. His answer was that he would “mow them down like zombies.” Then there was Mike Two Hawks, who said he was derided as “only” a quarter blood Mohawk by his peers, but who seemed to be fully authentic. He taught me ceremony and quite a bit else though he was younger.
There was Dat Shenoy and his family. He was a tech dude who quit the biz and wanted to be a landlord. He would be buying houses and I would renovate the landscaping and help him clean and paint the indoors. I’ve liked Painting ever since.
I don’t know what years those were with Dat and his lovely family and where they fit in with all those other Connecticut jobs I had, but it was certain that no one could cite my lack of hustle. A 50 hour week was quite normal for me in the 80’s. I had packed in quite a bit of training in horticulture and with Lori I had the classic experience of driving a 1949 Ford tractor down the state road creating a traffic jam.
With my previous greenhouse experience, I stayed on with the landscaper when it got too cold to plant Junipers in the frozen ground. There was Joe Gidvelas with his mafioso persona. He cursed all the time and was very gruff, except when he was planting tissue culture jet plugs and he treated those like newborn babies.
In ’89 we got an offer to come to Florida to be manipulated by my in-laws. My dad drove my rusted Datsun King Cab pickup, and I drove a Hertz rental truck like the ones I drove for Stanley. Without cell phones and global positioning satellites, we always had a place where we would meet if we got separated. This was important going on the six lane I-295 around Washington DC.
Susan and Nancy
Probably more administrative skill than all the men in the Tarnow organization. A song called “The Warrior” brought me back to that time. And really it all just brings me back to when I started getting into the groove with a career in horticulture, botany, hydrology, being in on the beginning of tissue culture and all the rest.
My first notion is that the Green Industry is about the least green of them all. All the pollution required to make plastic and then there’s the toxic particles when it burns.
First there is the immense tracts of irrigation pipes at Park Mall where I worked in ’81/2. 528 sprinkler heads in an area so vast I had to use a bicycle to reach the further ends of it. Today they have an easy, remote thingy that lets you to change to different irrigation zones without having to go back to the time clock.
I started to point out the hypocrisy of using a lot of mulch for environmental reasons when the plastic bags for one job created more plastic garbage than ten families could make in a week! I really noticed it after I moved to Connecticut and worked at Tarnow nursery as a loader. All day long loading “green” products in thousands of plastic bags. Brian and I had to wind down with some California bud and Motley Crues “Shout at the Devil" after loading many tons of bags.
Stanley Greenhouse was a joke in the waste department. Thousands of hanging baskets. Thousands of holiday plants. It was about the profit. I went back to Tarnow for another interesting spring but Stanley wanted me and I got another paltry raise to $4.75.
I went and did 18 months with two interior plant companies in the third largest indoor plant market at the time, Hartford Connecticut.
After I told Mike Two Hawks about my Indian sweet corn project, we began talking how the natives here, The Podunks among others, lived cleanly and simply on the east side of the Connecticut River.
I told him about the Charter Oak and how it was also the ceremonial Oak. When the oak leaves were the size of mouse ears, it was time to plant the corn. Later the “Fundamental Orders of 1639” were hidden in the tree.
So I learned ceremony at the start of the work day. It was the cusp of the dwarf evergreeen trend and we planted many yards during the year and a half I worked there. The same crew; a redneck - a biker -an Indian- a farm girl who loved tractors, -a foul mouthed fat guy and me the heirloom organic dude.
Orchid Island; invasive plants A1A and Jungle Trail and cutting the pepper at Stickneys.
I made TWO habitat reports and talked to two property managers and if nothing else showed them up to be hypocrites. Headline proclaiming how they gave $3726 to the Environmental Learning Center. A greenwashing of the corporate sort. A showy gift of charity (probably some costume fetish ball) but not able to comprehend how the 600 acre community should be managed. No outdoor stewardship, it was about selling memberships and empty million dollar lots. No fucks given for the sake of migrating animals and enhancing nature. No one to notice the disapearing stands of native plants on site.
I saw an opportunity for me to create a job with habitat at this place but these richy rich clubs have their richy rich wanna be millionaire employees (bag boys / shop girls / wait staff / department heads /real estate parasites) all stabbing each other in the back as they kick and claw their way to the top of the Torwest corporate organization.
Finally, I started my own business The Garden Green. A humble, small company as there ever was. 2001 to 2021. Now I’m off to start something new.
Diversions. 2022.
DIVERSIONS 2023
DIVISIONS OF DIVERSIONS
THE GARDEN GREEN
FANCY PLANTS NURSERY
INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT
broccoli black thumb
-6-4-
THE FINAL SLAUGHTER
and my resume
Ancient Garden attempts to bring you a working knowledge of the plant world so we can all create a plan for the stewardship of nature.
Left to its own devices, nature knows what to do. Humans however have taken resource extraction as a basis for wealth, with very few giving back. Everyone wants to park in the shade but no one wants to plant a tree. Capitalism is like the Aunt emptying valuables from Grandmas house as me mere is dying in the hospital.
I like to use the example of the Astor family to illustrate how we've gone wrong. John Jacob Astor made his money by having millions of animals killed. A master of the Fur Trade, it's said he had a golden touch, but I can't stop the image of the bones of skinned animals drying in the sun. Slaughtered.
Dynasties of wealth were made from the stripping of the ancient forests across the world. Proper society is filled with illegitimate wealth that has been derived from development and destruction and understanding this is lesson one. Creating abundance is the only true wealth.
Imagine some little 4-ounce bird has just flown 250 miles hopping from one island to the next looking for food and shelter as it migrates north. She goes to the cookie cutter house in the gated community and sees oleanders, ixora, plumbago, philodendron, and other non-native plants. Off to the next house....no food here either.
Finally, she flies into my yard, White Indigo Berry, Wild Coffee (psycotira nervosa), Tamarind, Elderberry, Sugar Cane, Fiddlewood, Maypop (passion vine) Marlberry, Saw Palmetto, Snowberry and others. If not fruiting, they are flowering which attracts the many pollinating insects birds love to eat. Right now in early November Fiddlewood is flowering and Marlberry and Firebush and Wild Coffee have large, juicy berries waiting for migrating birds to arrive.
Integrated pest management (IPM)
SUGGESTIONS FOR STEWARDSHIP AT THE LAURA RIDING JACKSON HISTORICAL HOME AND GARDENS
this is the current working copy
I went through the master gardener program in the spring of
1989 in Connecticut, and in Florida in the fall of 1991. This was thirty years
ago, back when people still had bags of toxic powders such as Chlordane in
their chemical sheds. The Cold War was over there somewhere, but the war
on insects raged continuously my entire life here in the homeland. Most garages
and sheds had a toxic stink with the dizzying compounds of the day. But, after
all, there was a war on insects. And weeds. Poisoned groundwater be damned.
I’ve promoted the idea of adding native
plants for 33 years. Diversity is the key. So, I plant natives and tear out
some invasives. I work with what people have. Move a few things. Add natives
and check monthly on the gardens progress. The places I take care of currently
don’t get sprayed for insects.
Established sites with diverse insects' populations.
I added two native Porterweeds to the Firebush
area. The Porterweeds that were planted, are actually not the native. Native Plant choices is an important part
of Integrated Pest Management. (IPM)
HERE IS A LIST OF PLANTS THAT ARE NOT NATIVE BUT ARE BEING
USED ON THE SITE OR BEING PROPOSED
WEDELIA
extremely invasive and University of Florida recommends its removal.
LANTANA only the white Lantana is not invasive or toxic. Most Lantana is invasive and one of its problems is the unripe toxic berries that make them a dealbreaker. Livestock, pets and people can be poisoned by all parts of the Lantana and they should all be slated for replacement. With their rapid growth, there will be proportionally more time spent pruning it back.
A native plant like White Indigoberry attracts pollinators with its flowers, and birds with its fruit. It grows 90% slower than something like lantana and never needs fertilizer. White Indigoberry has small shiny leaves and white fruit that is purple inside. This color surprise is the kind of thing a child would appreciate.
I would be cautious about changing too much. Replacing
Lantana with Gopher Apple would be a great idea.
TURKS CAP naturalized in Florida, but not a native. It
is useful for Hummingbirds and others. One to keep, but keep only one, and
don’t let it spread. Needs a lot of pruning
BOTTLEBRUSH from Australia, not even from this hemisphere. Fixin’ to
bloom so it looks good. Dwarf is a good choice since Bottlebrush needs room to
grow and time devoted to pruning it. Otherwise, I think the native plant
palette is lacking at this site because of the effort to be pretty like a dinner
party setting. This is not Hershy Gardens, this is something new. People stopped planting Bottlebrush twenty years ago because of its pruning needs to keep it from over growing its location. It’s supposed to be wild.
It doesn’t matter how far Gopher Apple Spreads or where it grows. It's useful anywhere.
JASMINE Night blooming Jasmine has great blooming time
three or four times a year and is easy to keep under control. Native to the West Indies, not Florida, but a worthy exotic and will delight nightime visitors to the garden. Has a wicked
caterpillar problem but grows back quickly after it's pruned. Confederate Jasmine is a 40 foot
vine and I’m not sure how compatible it will be with a 2’x4’ trellis in that
tiny childrens scent garden. It will probably bloom nice in March, but maybe
consider moving it somewhere else after that. Maybe to hide the rat killing
box near the house. I think some of the students are finding the rat
killing boxes distasteful. Two people walking by went Ewwww. I don’t know if it
was that or the smell of Fish Emulsion fertilizer.
CITRUS Key
Lime seems to love where it is and more of them would be recommended. What
would Laura do? Maybe have ten of them and make it a U-Pick for a yearly fundraiser.
SESBANIA punicea (RATTLEBOX) an invasive escaping into fragile wetland
areas. Extremely not recommended.
CARDBOARD PALM at the old LRJ site at the ELC, the Atala Butterfly made a spectacular display after eating the COONTIES leaves.
Cardboard Palm has been mistaken for Coonties or something. Cardboard Palm (Zamia furfuracea) is
a prickly plant to prune and quite invasive and too large to be next to a path.
My encounters with it are as a notorious, invasive plant. Difficult to
prune back or dig out, it is also extremely not recommended.
HONEYSUCKLE all types are invasive. Japanese particularly,
not even worth it for the flowers. Pulled some out that had escaped a pot
today. The exception is a Florida Honeysuckle that is valuable for wildlife.
Plant choice is a very important aspect of Integrated Pest
Management. Time management also.
We have to decide right from the start whether big showy flowers from plants from countries on the other side of the world are going to seem practical. Or do we want to illustrate the more subtle delights of our own native plants. To the young people coming to learn green alternatives, they aren't really going to experience that. i don't think we want to create some comfort zone for Boomers. The use of Lantana is laughable to young radical horts (horticultualists) who see that people with degrees don't use the internet to see if Lantana is poisonous or invasive.
I see a complete abandonment of the basic principles that were supposed
to be behind the garden. The first
mistake was putting in an irrigation system. Google PVC production and pollution. Greenpeace was aware of the hazards twenty years ago.
At a Sebastian Tree Board meeting in 1998 it was suggested we plant a native garden between the Annex buildings. A chronically flooded area with a couple of sad Queen Palms, it was the intention of the Tree Board to exhibit alternatives to the same old, same old, hackneyed landscapes. My co-advisor, Janice Broda, was busy with other projects and suggested I draw a plan. So I did and the Tree Board tweaked it and the City Council approved it.
To make a very long story very short, I'd like to point out I took care of it the first ten years and never added fertilizer or mulch. The total cost at that time was $326. It never needed mulch and fertilizer. It replicated itself with native wildflowers. AND, its still there 24 years later. 33'x90'. In 2010, the Town added benches and a sidewalk, and they trim the two hedges. These two hedges are, Florida Privet (Forestiara segragata) and the other one is Necklace Pod. (Sophora tomentosa)
Unfortunately,
in most cases these highly not recommended plants, in general, have no
wildlife value. Zero. For every plant we
should ask. Is it useful, or just pretty? Cardboard Palm isn't even pretty. This isn't an arrangement for a dinner party, we want to show people how to be a healthy cell in a sick world.
Necklace Pod, Firebush, Live Oak, Coral Bean and Buttonwood are solid choices for a native plant garden. Sea Grape is a 30'x30' monster and I am wondering about the thought process that placed them 3' from a pathway. Recently I saw hundreds of Dragonflies flying between the Buttonwoods. Definitly impressive. The Dragonfly needs high vantage points to rest, and look for their next hunting area.
"Don't need to prune Button woods" is what I'm told. The problem with that would be when unpruned side branches grow sideways twenty feet, impeding mowing. So in this case, I'd prune the tallest ones at six feet (they are the most vigourous growers and will fill in quicker). This way the sideways branching occurs higher up the tree and never interferes with mowing or walking. As they get tall and grow a canopy, lower branches can't compete. Something as simple as this saves many hours of pruning time in the future.
Back to the bugs, in '89, as a phone volunteer for The
Extension service, I was supposed to be recommending Sevin to kill Japanese
Beetles on roses. Then two days later, "aren't those a beautiful bunch of
roses" were on the dinner table. Little chunks of Sevin falling in
the mashed potatoes. Today people still use it, but in many countries Sevin has
been banned.
Instead, I'd tell people to knock the Jbeetles into bags (they were all paper bags back then) and burn the little bastards in the Bar-B-Q. Wink wink, nod nod. No one likes to kill anything, but University research says to kill them. Kill kill kill. Some people don’t have it in them to kill every bad bug they see, and I totally get it. Tomato Hornworms are so gross, I throw them in the street instead of trying to crush them with a brick or something.
I’ve been fortunate to no longer have insect problems in the seven gardens
I currently take care of, other than occasionally spraying horticultural oil.
Luckily, I only see an occasional Japanese Beetle where I live but I know how bad
they can be. How would we deal with an infestation?
I designed the Atrium Garden at The Emerson Center in 2010 and have taken care of it since. Briefly I want to point out this garden is surrounded by four high walls and is at least 75 feet from any other plants. How can birds and insects find this area? What plants could survive the summer heat and direct sun in June July and August?
Another self replicating area, it has a native Aster that blooms every November when the snowbirds arrive. This year I spent about $25 for new plants. One was Goldenrod and the little plant grew quite a few branches and I'm waiting for it to bloom. Another area that only uses fish emulsion for fertilizer. No mulch because there are fallen leaves and groundcover.
The Atrium is about 30 feet from the Emerson Center Box office inside the Unitarian Universalist church if you want to see it. There are always at least ten different plants that are blooming. A very nice example of how good a White Indigoberry can look, is there. Birds stripped the Simpson Stopper that had hundreds of berries.
In the Atrium, a young Palm became
infested with scale. I had been cutting the fronds off, but kept the stems that were infested
with Scale. As an experiment I didn’t smother them with horticultural oil but
waited to see how the problem would develop further. As it turned out three
months later, the Scale was completely gone. I suspect Lizards ate them. Another important part of IPM is knowing when to leave things alone.
With
long term customers there is always a plethora of insects. I was fortunate
to be working on a site when there was a hatching of Atala Butterflies. I was
like, …endangered species, gotta get a count... there was 23. I was ecstatic as
they flew all around me because I knew that was why so many Coonties were planted. This was at the ELC site of the Laura Riding Jackson
house.
In
general, pest insects abound and invade quickly, while beneficials are slower
to reproduce. I worked with Biogreen once
upon a time and learned there was a registry of chemically sensitive people.
These were among Biogreens customers, who did natural shrub and lawn fertilization. With the proposed cement dust replacement of the shell paths, I have to say we shouldn't be encouraging any kind of cement since it is the ... From BBC news, "
People
have been programmed to think that all insects needed to be killed. Annoying
little buggers. But there’s a Dragonfly resting on that tall dead flower stem
you were just going to prune because no one wants to see dead things. For every
plant, ask the question, pretty or practical? People don’t want to see dead
things, but the insects do. I
use logs with prominent branches for Lizards to climb and live near. I use Leaf
Mulch to harbor food for birds and encourage as much of the web of life as
possible.
Luckily,
people are beginning to learn that we shouldn’t be trying to attract European
Honeybees. If we do things right, we can create a favorable environment for the
400 Native Bee species who can be doing a lot more to pollinate crops here in
Florida where we grow things all year long. Shipping Bees a thousand miles to
pollinate crops is the height of absurdity in my opinion, and illustrates how
dead our ecosystems have become. We need to educate but the LRJ Foundation
seems poised to go back to the poisonous 80’S and the ignorance that has led to
what is now being called the Insect Apocalypse.
In central Florida, once the mosquito problem
begins in earnest, the Dragonflies follow about two weeks later. When I moved
to Florida 33 years ago, I was expecting far more mosquitos and I found out
that Indian River County was foresightful many decades ago in its mosquito
management plan. The spray trucks gotta go but people don't have that kind of patience it seems.
Chemical companies come in and spray a site with chemicals before parties so there are no mosquitos. “Safe once is it dry” is a big fat lie. The green alternative that is becoming popular, is for people to use fans because mosquitos can’t fly when there is more than a 15 MPH breeze.
This is the main reason for the garden,I thought. To show people there are non-toxic alternatives to yardcare. Lauras
house at the ELC was a Hornet and Wasp magnet. So, should we spray the typical
Hornet Killer that contains petroleum distillates? The idea I had was to use
poles to knock them down. I can make bamboo poles of any size at home. So, I
kept one at the site and when I saw a Hornets I knocked the nest down with an 8
foot or 12 foot pole and ran like the Dickens. Non-toxic pest control. That’s
IPM.
People are used to having pest control
companies come and spray, but I convinced customers that they didn’t have to
spend all that money every year and encouraged the use of leaf mulches. I never
charge for fertilizer and mulch. Leaf mulches could keep the plants green
without the pelletized fertilizer, which is something a chemical free, organic,
historical home with many visitors would want. There are many lesser-known good
guys such as Assassin bugs we need to bring to the garden. Master Gardener educators will tell you 99% of
insects will not harm your plants, and this is a good basis for a LRJ ted talk.
How we deal with insects? A panel of three IPM knowledgeable people (who know all
the facts better than I do), taking questions, would be very educational forum
on site for the public.
THE
PLANT OF THE MONTH DISPLAY SOUNDS LIKE A REALLY GOOD IDEA
JAN Firebush
FEB Saw Palmetto /// Gopher Apple
MAR Cabbage Palm /// Rouge Plant
APRIL Live Oak MYRSINE
MAY weeds or wildflowers native poinsettia No Mow May
JUNE Longleaf Pine
JULY Simpson Stopper
AUG Sea Grape
September Coral Bean -flowering currently
OCTOBER Coco Plum still has fruit on it
NOVEMBER Erdonia /// White Indigoberry
DECEMBER Beach Sunflower /// Fiddlewood
It was
the end of an era when I got to Indian River County in September ‘89. I remember one of the first
times I went to cross the Wabasso Bridge there was a tractor pulling a 500
gallon tank in a field right after the tackle shop. Then …splip… all this gray chemical on
the windshield and side window.
Having No scheduled sprayings is the essential aspect of IPM. This is what happened. Companies figured out it was cheaper to monitor and only spray when necessary. We did it with the entire community of Orchid Island during its foreclosure (91-94). Orchid island was a grapefruit grove that became a town. There were 11 houses there during foreclosure and many acres of citrus groves to drive through.
Many were dead and ready for the burn pile but the soil there was very similar to Lauras, two miles away in Wabasso, a sandy gray marl. There were five of us to take care of 60 acres of grounds and 160 acres of golf course. Letting much of the rough go, iit left 100 acres to mow.
Master Gardener class
in ’91 in St. Lucie County was a lot about citrus and how things were changing
in the groves. Golf courses and groves were all about saving
money on buying all those expensive toxins, when a little monitoring made a big
difference. I saw both industries change in the early 90’s. Extension agent Dan
Culbert came to visit our skeleton crew at Orchid Island in 1992 to see if he
had any advice on managing the property. He said we were the first commercial
account he visited, and conversely, he learned a lot from us.
Integrated pest management begins
with knowing your plants. Knowing your site. Is that leaf spot on the Gumbo
Limbo a problem? “It looks like it’s dying”. A few weeks later, the new growth
covered it up and the spotty leaves fell off. Leaf spot rarely kills plants. I trimmed off a branch that was
headed for the house and noted “crisis averted.”
A natural, unsprayed garden in
2022 will look like Laura’s citrus in one way. Brown dead looking things are
normal for citrus with its thick hide, as Laura knew, and dead things are normal for gardens that
endeavor to create habitat for wildlife. A real wildlife habitat is not elegant
but when there was a baby Sand Hill Crane to feed, I’m glad we didn’t have
pelletized fertilizer spread around. The parents were spending the mornings
hunting for any insects that moved on and on both sides of the site. The baby Crane
grew quick in June and July and now they are gone.
I imagine Laura had gotten many regular
customers who understood that organic growing was just the old school way of
growing. She didn’t need Arsenic to sweeten her grapefruit, as was the
custom with the big companies. She probably wouldn’t use pelletized
fertilizer either, but would add organic compost of some sort. Probably by the
seventies, Scotty’s was selling it in bagged form. Horse manure was probably
readily available during her business years. i wonder if she kept any garden diaries.
I have to mention the most interesting insect invasion so far. Elliot and I were talking about the property, and he wanted me to take a second look at the Pine Trees. We were in a semi-drought condition from May through July and it rained just enough, just in time, to avoid a severe drought. I had thought the Pines were a bit drought stressed and it would have been natural for them to have yellow needles ready to fall off because of the dryness.
So, I hadn’t noticed a problem up to that point. Let ‘em drop, makes a good mulch. ‘Better take a second look’ he said, and I did and it was the most caterpillars I’d seen in a long time. What the goody two sticks, I thought, there were millions of them. They were absolutely destroying this tree. A couple more nearby were rapidly getting devoured and this looked like a terrible infestation.
Here they are, the much harder to find, Long
leaf Pines, doing really well, but covered with, what reminded me of Gypsy Moth,
on trees up north. We are just outside the range of the Long Leaf Pine which is being re-introduced in Northern Florida. Hopefully we have introduced an up north pest to the area.
Turns out they were not even moth or butterfly caterpillars, but Sawfly larvae. This is knowing the bug part of IPM. I see that docents from the nearby college and high school are going to be recruited and this is a concept that is going to be worked on for future planning. I think you will find some enthusiasm for this garden with the many sciences that are involved and the issues we can explore.
Put the word garden where the childrens garden is now. The Mimosa is a shoveling out nightmare. Pull the Wedelia out by the entrance, and put the Mimosa there. The Conferate Jasmine will never survive in that spot. It wants to grow forty feet. So that’s the best place for a word garden or over to the right to replace the ferns.
-6-6- THE GARDEN GREEN
In 1984, as a salesman for Tarnow Nursery, I was supposed to recommend Diazinon to kill moles or something. Birds were eating the Diazinon pellets and dying and it was finally banned in 2004. Unfortunately today, people still use weed and feed whose pellets look like seed and in most neighborhoods it’s like it’s still the eighties and chemcicals will fix everything. Don't claim to be for nature if y’all do stuff like this. Imma put another picture of the baby Crane who was feeding in the garden this summer. Food only, it’s why I was only going to use fish emulsion and time release fertilizer. All the oaks got a proportional amount from the $24.99 bucket of slow release fertilizer from Busy Bee. And some iron plus or something for anything that looked yellow and weak. Something from Home Depot. Slow release over three months is the only way to go. Some pelletized materials go below the root zone in a two-inch downpour! It’s that soluble.
At the time, in the mid-eighties I
was reading permaculture literature, primarily, Michael Pilarski.
There wasn't a need for chemicals in a food forest he would explain.
Permanent Agriculture is called permaculture and I was able to do that in
Hazardville Connecticut. So I would like to introduce the idea of a food forest
to the LRJ site.
I was reading and purchasing
the Rodale books about organic gardening and really started gardening
organically with heirloom seeds when I got to North Street for the summers of
87 88 and 89.
Seed Savers Exchange was my
other primary source of information. Seed Savers Exchange - Wikipedia Magazines such as
Harrowsmith promoted no-till pesticide free farming while the Rodale books on
organic gardening laid out the basics for keeping chemicals off your own
food. Why the wholesale genocide then? At a gated community, they seemed
to have no birds for a while. For a good six months it was like, there … are …
no birds. Wading birds, sure, because of the ponds. There were no insects and
consequently no songbirds. It was spooky.
Integrated pest management is about knowing the
insects. In the last few years Bagworms seemed to become prolific. I thought it
might make good nesting material. Tiny sticks and food ready to hatch. When I
researched it, it seems that bagworms are not a useful bird food so I rinsed
them off the persons house. Maybe some ground feeders would enjoy them, like
Doves. We've all been poisoned, the younger ones less so, since many of the
worst chemicals have been banned. Chemical warfare on the Boomers
has subsided once the worst of the WW2 chemicals had been expended. None of the
last seven presidents have wanted to tackle the Trillion-dollar Toxic Waste
cleanup that waits for us at military bases here in the homeland. La Jeune
military base in the news lately. It’s really important for us to illustrate.......
-6-6-Ruminate
I was thinking about the grass and the poets need to ruminate.
Then I wondered what Laura would say.
That's what cows do, she might speculate.
After they came over for the next bale of hay.
Then I realized that maybe Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts were far from the people we knew, and Enfield Connecticut was quite New Englandy in its own way with its old houses and farm stands. At the end of April I had been at Norms for two weeks. They spent a month or something in Cape Cod and I was house sitting which, all in all, was a pretty cool transition to New England. Taking care of Freddy the dog and shepherding the arrival of Dickens and Rocky, our cats.
I applied at Tarnow Nursery which was down the road about a half a mile and got a job. Minimum wage had risen to $3.35 an hour and despite a pretty good horticultural resume by this point, I started at $3.50. Owner John was a well known skinflint as I found out from his nieces Nancy and Susan who had set up the nursery the previous fall and ran the place. He barely paid them 4 an hour to run the place, and they were kin.
There’s that pattern emerging that most guys wanted to be millionaires. The nursery owner probably became a millionaire eventually, on the backs of 100, mostly dedicated young people of course. As did Tom Collins in later years with lots of turnover and probably 1000 employees at Captain Hirams. As did the owners of Rock City leaving 500 disgruntled employees in their wake at least.
Joe from Springfield came along at Tarnow Nursery and he was a young, but old looking, college grad and he became the boss and Susan and Nancy went back to the main store to work, except weekends when Joe was off, and they were the bosses. We spent a lot of time talking on the weekends and there was quite a bunch of interesting kids that came through that summer. That was a good crew.
At 32, I was the oldest at the jobsite and should have been well on my way to a capitalist career and accumulating assets and investing for retirement, but I wasn’t buying into this system. I had learned quite a bit about plants the previous four years with the mall and caretaker job, and I quickly learned about Connecticuts favorite plants.
I thought I had quite a good sales approach and we were taught to handle two customers and go between them while, you know, keeping the elbows and ankles flying when Joe was there. I started by being a loader and met many of the Enfield people who frequented the store who lauded the variety of the plants. This was no vegetable stand with plants, it was a slick professionalism that people like, and Tarnows quickly became Enfields favorite nursery.
The end of the summer came, and it was pumpkins and fall decorations and selling the fall planting concept. The kids went back to college and I became the main sales person (except when that lazy guinea schlub from the Main store worked there). He was lazy as fuck and immediately had an effect on productivity. By November, Michelle ran the Christmas shop and I was the everything else person. She was sharp and knew how to please the little old ladies buying Christmas fluff.
So my first winter since 1977-8 was set to arrive. We came back to experience the seasons, right? My partner and I had moved to the Thompsonville section of Enfield, and it was like a slice of Boston, a dose of “Southy” that had dropped down in the Connecticut River Valley.
There was Ragnos where they served the food I had missed out in Arizona. A little further away was the best Polish Deli I had ever hoid. Our daughter was born and then baptized at the ancient gothy church down the street. A little further down the street, a Norman Rockwell Christmas emerged at Freshwater Pond when the ice froze.
It was exciting and I realized at this point that I had truly created my own path. My peers were buying houses and working in cubicles, but I decided to carve my own path. I was creating my own horticultural college experience in a pull up your bootstraps way.
There was Tiny’s Little criminal enterprise next door in a pool hall and a host of characters living in 8 rentals in two large houses. Add loose soap opera here.
I bought some choice little evergreens and had planted them on the side of the house. Rocky and Dickens would run up the steps to come in because the back steps were missing. I was planting in this grey dust they called soil and people were digging it. “Looks good” said local murderer Wilmer Paradise.
My partner was working downtown, and I went to the local employment agency to find another job when I got laid off after Christmas. When you make peanuts, the unemployment was very minimal and a couple weeks before Valentines day I got a job with a wholesale Greenhouse.
Former Ball Seed Vice President Peter Stanley was one of the most manic people I’d ever met. He had reconstructed two 440 foot greenhouses and was striking out on his own with his patented concept called Jet Plugs. Instead of the usual 75 cent plugs these were much smaller and only about 35 cents if I recall, so that was 40 cents a plant profit. I learned the long road from producer to purchaser.
One day running between greenhouses I caught the top of my head on a round eyehook. Shouldn’t have torn my head open since it wasn’t sharp in any way, but that was a trip to the emergency clinic and 13 stitches. My nickname was Zipperhead for a while.
So there I was off to a new job in early February with the temperature around 10 degrees and a dry wicked wind was blowing so it felt like it was well below zero and I was reminded of one of the reasons I moved to Arizona. It was COLD! Everything was frozen and the loading dock area looked to be abandoned with 4’x4’ flattened boxes blowing around and other litter was being blown around. I was looking for a job here? It looked like a disaster area.
Peter was short on employees and this was his problem. So he hired me on at $4.25 an hour which was 25% more than I was making at Tarnow Nursery. An employee was walkie talkied to come and give me an orientation. She was one of those tall Nordic women who cursed very fluently. We got on pretty good, I was always monogamous, so there was never sexual tension with the female co-workers.
In the world of capitalism, men are sheltered from the minorities and they were the bosses of the women and this is why so much sexism remains. You treat a woman like a dude, and they respond in kind. At the mall I also talked with dozens of the employees from every demographic. I reject the notion that I “don’t know how to communicate”. At Tarnow Nursery I met practically everyone in town who came to check out the place. I had the gift of gab when I was younger. I spent the entirety of the 80's meeting people. 9 different jobs 9 different experiences.
I don’t remember the flaxen haired Valkyries name but she walked me to the first Greenhouse and it was a moment like no other. People with glasses know how they fog up in changing conditions. Ten below zero with a wicked wind chill and it was like Dorothy opening the door to the colors of Oz.
Tropical plants as far as the eye could see and a temperature to match. Plants poised for the Valentines Day sales. Here was a new experience to jump into, fer sure. Many tales I will relate later and just one to keep the flow. Bosses such as Jim the asshole came along and White Knight Dwight from out of state was a hired gun and a spectacular dude. No college for him either and he was older than me and had a wide variety of job experiences. He and his friend from Pittsburgh completely refurbished the existing greenhouses and brought another one into service.
When all was said and done, our little family moved to the field office of Consolidated Cigar that Dwight and Marian had p reviouslylived in. There was always a boss over me, and they all got fired or quit and I was a constant for Stanley Greenhouses and now lived across the street in the cutest little white house you ever saw.
Summer of 86 with my first biological child who was a fun little baby and it was an exciting time. I believe the wife quit her job to be a mommy since I was putting in 60 hours a week and making enough. A typical day would have me at 7:00 walking over to begin venting around 15,000 sq. ft. of greenhouse.
By then the Weather Channel had become the bomb, and I would vent accordingly, depending on that days conditions. Rolling carts waited on the very large loading dock and sometimes I took a smaller truck and loaded from the greenhouse. Then I would drive and deliver for ten hours going to Mattapan or Poughkeepsie or over Mt Adams with a ton of wet plants. I’d come back and close the vents to keep the greenhouses at 75 degrees, then walk home after a 13-hour day. But it was interesting, you know. I set up plant displays at BJ’s Wholesale and delivered to every Paperama in southern New England out to the Hudson in New York.
Work hard and be rewarded was the message of my youth but then I learned from a friend that I had to work smart. That made sense. But did it mean conniving to scratch and claw my way above other employees? Yes, it did. The secret to the American Dream, if you wanted financial security you needed to be the boss. To be able to manipulate people to work harder than they should. Squeezing productivity from underpaid employees was never a lure to me.
The boss at Walmart making sure no one talks to each other. The warehouse manager not caring about workers injuries. The head nurse that all the CNA’s hate. My philosophy is that I don’t like being bossed and I don’t like BEING the boss.
So here I was with caretaking experience, a difficult mall gardening job that included irrigation work, and then some electrical work. A nursery job and greenhouse experience. I was training myself in Horticulture. So, by 1987 Peter ratcheted down his business because his mercurial bossmanship just wasn’t making the money he expected, although of course he blamed the employees.
He even had me set up a retail shop the spring after Dwight left and people recognized me from Tarnows. Then there were the BJ Wholesale sites where I set up the indoor displays and returned weekly to replace plants in ‘86. I even drove to Syracuse a couple of times.
I reckon it was the summer of 87 and I decided I needed indoor plant experience on my resume. The good thing about interior plantwork was that it was a way to work through a New England winter. I spent nine months at Plantations who had some very professional training. I forgot how I left that job.
Then there was the Plantscape job where I was the only dude. When they went big on a pink and black theme with uniforms and stickers and what all else, I found it amusing and they found a way to frame and fire me.
In spring of ’88 I got a job with probably one of the best crews ever. There was the boss, another Lori with an I, who was a dairy farmers daughter. She had grown up with machines and tractors and got the notion to start a landscaping business. Dwarf Evergreens were trending and the plant selection was minty and the boss was calm and organized.
There was Bob the biker. A big bear of a guy with a big beard that the boss described as more a Teddy Bear than a Grizzly. There was Randy the Redneck and there were many interesting discussions altogether between all of us. A big gun enthusiast and one of the first Preppers I ever met. He had enough food for a year at least and even an underground gasoline tank. Randy and his Super Swampers were such a caricature.
Armageddon happens and people are hungry roaming the land for food and shelter We asked him what he would do if dozens of hungry people and their children were walking up his driveway looking for assistance. His answer was that he would “mow them down like zombies.” Then there was Mike Two Hawks, who said he was derided as “only” a quarter blood Mohawk by his peers, but who seemed to be fully authentic. He taught me ceremony and quite a bit else though he was younger.
There was Dat Shenoy and his family. He was a tech dude who quit the biz and wanted to be a landlord. He would be buying houses and I would renovate the landscaping and help him clean and paint the indoors. I’ve liked Painting ever since.
I don’t know what years those were with Dat and his lovely family and where they fit in with all those other Connecticut jobs I had, but it was certain that no one could cite my lack of hustle. A 50 hour week was quite normal for me in the 80’s. I had packed in quite a bit of training in horticulture and with Lori I had the classic experience of driving a 1949 Ford tractor down the state road creating a traffic jam.
With my previous greenhouse experience, I stayed on with the landscaper when it got too cold to plant Junipers in the frozen ground. There was Joe Gidvelas with his mafioso persona. He cursed all the time and was very gruff, except when he was planting tissue culture jet plugs and he treated those like newborn babies.
In ’89 we got an offer to come to Florida to be manipulated by my in-laws. My dad drove my rusted Datsun King Cab pickup, and I drove a Hertz rental truck like the ones I drove for Stanley. Without cell phones and global positioning satellites, we always had a place where we would meet if we got separated. This was important going on the six lane I-295 around Washington DC.
Susan and Nancy
Probably more administrative skill than all the men in the Tarnow organization. A song called “The Warrior” brought me back to that time. And really it all just brings me back to when I started getting into the groove with a career in horticulture, botany, hydrology, being in on the beginning of tissue culture and all the rest.
My first notion is that the Green Industry is about the least green of them all. All the pollution required to make plastic and then there’s the toxic particles when it burns.
First there is the immense tracts of irrigation pipes at Park Mall where I worked in ’81/2. 528 sprinkler heads in an area so vast I had to use a bicycle to reach the further ends of it. Today they have an easy, remote thingy that lets you to change to different irrigation zones without having to go back to the time clock.
I started to point out the hypocrisy of using a lot of mulch for environmental reasons when the plastic bags for one job created more plastic garbage than ten families could make in a week! I really noticed it after I moved to Connecticut and worked at Tarnow nursery as a loader. All day long loading “green” products in thousands of plastic bags. Brian and I had to wind down with some California bud and Motley Crues “Shout at the Devil" after loading many tons of bags.
Stanley Greenhouse was a joke in the waste department. Thousands of hanging baskets. Thousands of holiday plants. It was about the profit. I went back to Tarnow for another interesting spring but Stanley wanted me and I got another paltry raise to $4.75.
I went and did 18 months with two interior plant companies in the third largest indoor plant market at the time, Hartford Connecticut.
After I told Mike Two Hawks about my Indian sweet corn project, we began talking how the natives here, The Podunks among others, lived cleanly and simply on the east side of the Connecticut River.
I told him about the Charter Oak and how it was also the ceremonial Oak. When the oak leaves were the size of mouse ears, it was time to plant the corn. Later the “Fundamental Orders of 1639” were hidden in the tree.
So I learned ceremony at the start of the work day. It was the cusp of the dwarf evergreeen trend and we planted many yards during the year and a half I worked there. The same crew; a redneck - a biker -an Indian- a farm girl who loved tractors, -a foul mouthed fat guy and me the heirloom organic dude.
Orchid Island; invasive plants A1A and Jungle Trail and cutting the pepper at Stickneys.
I made TWO habitat reports and talked to two property managers and if nothing else showed them up to be hypocrites. Headline proclaiming how they gave $3726 to the Environmental Learning Center. A greenwashing of the corporate sort. A showy gift of charity (probably some costume fetish ball) but not able to comprehend how the 600 acre community should be managed. No outdoor stewardship, it was about selling memberships and empty million dollar lots. No fucks given for the sake of migrating animals and enhancing nature. No one to notice the disappearing stands of native plants on site.
I saw an opportunity for me to create a job with habitat at this place but these richy rich clubs have their richy rich wanna be millionaire employees (bag boys / shop girls / wait staff / department heads /real estate parasites) all stabbing each other in the back as they kick and claw their way to the top of the Torwest corporate organization.
Finally, I started my own business The Garden Green. A humble, small company as there ever was. 2001 to 2021. Now I’m off to start something new.
Diversions. 2022.
-6-10- WEEDS WILDFLOWERS & MULCH
The blog is fun because I can have a lot of pictures. We really need to cool it with weed eradication.
Lawn vs.
oaks and lawns versus wildflowers. Golf leaf surface and carbon dioxide respiration.
On the golf course we heard that there
was more leaf surface on the grass than in the Oak Canopy nearby. And, per
square inch, I could believe that for a while.
Think of covering a kitchen table with grass
and leaves. A lot of photosynthesis going on in both cases.
Weeds tend
to bring a lot of dirt with them when you pull them. So keep a weed pile. Sea
Grape leaves to cover and kill.
Cover
with sea grape leaves. Now there is a product with potential. You cant beat it
for weed control. But the look is
unacceptable.
A lot of
what is unacceptable is common sense.. We nearly emptied the swamps of Cypress
Trees in our green initiatives in the nineties. The demand for irrigation and
PVC surely didn’t decline. Suddenly everyone seemed to need irrigation.
the green industry wants us to abandon. The Farmacy
maxim of “Using what you got.”
I go out
and I need a bit of soil and go to pull the weeds out of a small 30 sq ft area.
But here is Merrimia diseccta and there is the TASSELFLOWER. It sprouts about. but
no real problem. It’s easy to pull out. But it has a unopened Dandelion look,
and a lovely purple color, so leave it.
Learn the
weeds. The worst is Spurge. It has ten different kinds around here and its easy
to identify. They breed in like 5 days and can quickly take over a brick
sidewalk.
The
scourge of Spurge is how I remember it.
Learn to
spot Sedges. They will tell you when something is being over watered. Keep the
ones you like and put the others in your weed pile.
It’s not
about knowing so much its about learning what tends to not work and in
gardening the exception to the rule is the rule. I got A Blue Eucalyptus to survive down to 5
degrees in Connecticut and took it to Florida later in the year. 1989.
Dollar
Weed too is a problem. Many irrigated lawns have Dollar weed and people call in
the herbicides to et rid of it but, and today the recommendation is not to
spray it but turn down the time on your irrigation in that zone. Oh! But then
an area that needs it will get dangerously dry.
So see, doing
without irrigation simplifies life. Keep Dollar Weed at least two feet away
from the garden areas but otherwise its green and shiny. Mow it with everything
else.
We should try and identify these nice looking
daisies and other wildflowers that pop up and dominate the lawn. In February
and March.
Most
importantly now we have to realize how much photosynthesizing goes on with a
wildflower meadow. You don’t need a forest canopy.
Give our
native flowers and worthy exotics a chance to get established and they will do
the work from there on keep bare areas covered to prevent wind erosion.
-6-11- FAVORITE
QUOTES FROM HISTORY OF THE PAGANS Copyright 2008
“… a slow turning of
the patriarchal screw. The richness of pagan cultures was sacrificed to the square
peg of patriarchy banging itself into the round holes of nature.”
Pagan News Network “….another pagan village was destroyed
today in southern Poland as Christian……” If there was an honest media in 1354.
“Motivation to be good
is derived from wisdom, knowledge and a sense of civility most of us have, not
the thought of demon pitchforks poking us for 363,000 years.”
“Give them some
ancient hand gesture if you are told by pagan intellectuals to be neo-pagan.
Pagan is as pagan does, there is no neo about it.”
“Come on evil dudes, make up your
own symbol and stop using positive ones like the swastika and the pentacle.”
“Colonial foreclosure
took place as Christians helped themselves to the goods and wares and property
of the accused”
Not from a monkey as we’ve been told but another
primate they haven’t found the skeleton for, a relatively quickly evolving
‘missing link’ the goddesses used to achieve the final evolution”
“…… The richness of pagan cultures was
sacrificed to this square peg of patriarchy banging itself into the round holes
of nature.”……
“The Ten Commandments is a dumbed down version
of morality.”
“ …It wasn’t me. Pilate took his magic, his
sorcerers did!’
“You
liar, I dispose of you not as revenge for my son but because you are no damn
good.” She held her hands out, Drudd style in the fence of protection, and
instantly Lucifer’s form turned to powder that floated briefly, leaving only
the iron molecules he used to assume his shape and these percolated through the
soil till they reached the molten core of the earth where they melted……
“
“If you are a scientist and go against conventional wisdom, such as
saying the pyramids and Stonehenge are 10,000 years old or more: you are
banned, fired, harassed, ridiculed and banned from publishing. In some ways
Science is even worse than religion…..”
” Worship with exuberance as
Julian the last Pagan emperor of Rome said….”………
”……..we also keep plunging into the tar pit of
technology and genetics, nodding our heads to anything that scientists say.”…..
“..do you see what I’m trying to
say? Pagans were building fire altars, kissing images of mother earth and
forgiving past wrongs, but the Christian propaganda machine has you visualizing
goat horned demons and bizarre rituals. The simple folk religion is harmless,
respectful and exemplary.”
“ Your favorite pagan neighbor
who traded potato soup recipes with you now had their head impaled on a spike
to scare other pagans into converting to Christianity”…
“ These Goddess believers were
no sissies, driving away the Vikings when no one else could and on the other
side of their land they were keeping gold grubbing sacred site smashing
Christians at bay. These were tough
people proud of their pagan past.”…………………………
“Paganism truly allows the
freedom of thought and choice and association and especially our freedom of
speech which we hold dear, unlike Christianity and Islam whose precepts counter American style
freedom. For instance neither religion allows you to use the tarot.”
“Christian Christmas mostly ends
up in the landfill while Solstice fills the heart……………………….”
“Know me in my simplicity
and awake to my
love and justice”
”………..xians and xlamics claim the moral high
ground when they have proven themselves to be hypocrites, terrorists, thieves
and perverts…”
“….If foreign goods began to
go up in price because of higher labor costs, then guess who benefits? We do! Get
it? American goods will still cost the same while those sweatshop sneakers cost
more. The more that these corporate slaves in other countries get paid, the
more competitive American products become. We can’t lose! It’s in our best
interest to promote safety and good pay in all jobsites around the world, no
matter what the grumpy neocons tell you…..”
“There will be a separation of church and state or there
will not be the United States that the founding revolutionaries intended.“
“There is no hell and I only
capitalize god at the beginning of a sentence. I kneel for no diety “The innovations of the future will come
from the garages of America, not the boardrooms of corporations.” They won’t be real victories till we encode
liberty, embed equality, ostracize criminality and vanquish cruelty. Let’s give
ourselves the chance for a new start, with the rejection of violence and the
ushering in of The Dawn of Civilization.
Try as they might to make mass murder
acceptable and patriotic, deep in our collective American hearts we know
it’s wrong.”
“In Republican America the severity of the punishment ensures the
authority as the warrior elite creates a necessity for war as our dominant
reality.”
“If
foreign goods began to go up in price because of higher labor costs then guess
who benefits? We do! Get it? This is when inflation is a good thing; American
goods still cost the same while those sneakers from Thailand will cost more and
the more these Corporate Slaves in other countries get paid, the more
competitive American products become. We can’t lose!
It’s in
our best interest to promote safety and good pay in all jobsites around the
world no matter what the grumpy neocons may tell you. This is the secret
corporate taboo no one is to speak of. Union is the word we dare not speak.”
“Churches serve quasi-governmental
functions, as do the Cub Scouts, the Rotary,
Homeowners associations and Garden
Clubs. Government should be our solid edge and border and all these civic
groups are a high thread count in the fabric of freedom”
I
made up a religion that I discuss in other parts of The History of The Pagans.
All adherents are known as Druddités or Drudds for short. I combined the words
Druid and the word Luddite. Here’s where I bump into a wall of pagan
snobbishness. They believe you can’t combine goddesses and gods from different
pantheons. Historically, Druids were
collectors of knowledge and were poets and bards along with leading
ceremonies.
The Luddites were people in the early
1800’s who rebelled against the quick acceptance of every new technology that
came down the pike.
The Luddites destroyed machines back
then but today would be questioning our overly quick acceptance of genetically
engineered food and plants along with the pandoras box of cloning. Druids of
course were hunted down and killed, many of course fleeing to outlying posts of
the once forested world to try and pass down Druid traditions. The Luddites
became the enemies of the newly emerging industrialized and predatory
capitalism so you can guess what happened to them.
I was a Reagan Era Pagan, and my best ever nature experience was the
overwhelming nature spirituality of a power spot near the Rincon Mountains in
Tucson Arizona in the early 80’s. I lived in the last house on Broadway in
Tucson. On one side was the Saguaro National Monument, a startlingly beautiful
desert preserve featuring the Saguaro Cactus. Travel then 40 miles to the next
town and in between was a mountain range, part of the 250,000 acre Coronado
National Forest. Nature was a powerful force in that area and I was fortunate
to be a caretaker on a 40 acre ranch which has since become a nature center.
I’ve extensively hiked everywhere I’ve lived, and the outskirts of Tucson was
the most remote wilderness I’ve ever known. On Google Earth go to 12,661 East
Broadway in Tucson to see where I’m talking
about.
One day I found this unique grassy area in some shady trees. Snowmelt
and storms created a network of temporary streams that ran nearby and this was
a very special place of peacefulness. Not much natural grass and not many deer
in the Sonoran Desert, but I have seen them scampering away from this place.
When I found a pair of antlers on the short soft grass it felt like some
special gift.
The antlers are a memory and a remnant of what I felt at that time in
that very special area. My atheism lapsed knowing that nature was the true
force in the world. Nature is my god I used to say. Then, I worked with this
quarter blood native American dude named Mike Two Hawks in the late 80’s
He was an enthusiastic modern native doing ceremony at work. He had a lot of respect for his surroundings
and enthusiastic about Mohawk tradition. People would say quarter bloods aren’t
real Indians but trust me he could wipe the floor with any 10 gambling moderns.
Most importantly he taught me how to feel the unseen energy of nature.
Regarding the human assault on mother Earth, Mike would often use a baseball
metaphor saying, “Earth bats last and she’s coming to the plate.” Nobody out with the three best hitters coming
up. Hurricanes earthquakes and volcanoes.”
Suddenly everything has come
alive for me again, this time for good. I’ve been a pagan all along. My message
is that you also may be a pagan and maybe you’ve been a pagan all along. Here's
History of the Pagans to help your curiosity.
Here are some more viewpoints that I hope cut through the fog of deception
and half-truths that will fill our media in 2020. As I mentioned it will be
presented by Fux News that there is some ‘Great Awakening’ going on and I’m
going to quote conservative historian Richard Hofstadter from his book,
‘America in 1750‘ about the original Great Awakening to start educating you
about it.
Richard Hofstadter, “The end of religious wars and
extreme persecution, the rise of mercantile cosmopolitanism and a more affluent
and luxurious life, had taken some of the terror out of existence. In America,
it had not been long since (slaveholder and witch executioner Cotton Mather had
seen the Protestant Vanguard as leading a direct assault on Satan’s wilderness
bastion, the cooling of religion could be felt, and men, even clergymen, leaned
unmistakably to Enlightenment heresies. A society that was beginning to produce
deistical leaders would soon affect the solid middle class, whose members
wanted the best and latest of everything, including freedom of thought.”
Americans continue to become more
logical and educated but still we have to live with this Christian fantasy of a
great battle between good and evil. 4000 other religions are not talking about
war but Dharma, Harmony, Community, and maybe we need to give them a listen.
Xianity and X lam by themselves, have subdivided into 4000 sects. They are
sectally promiscuous and they all have miracles and talk to God. Yeah the one
with the capital G. The Mason God.
Atheists are experiencing miracles at
this fortuitous time, except they call them, random, un- designated realities
fluctuating somewhere between the glass half empty and the glass half full.
Get lost ya mugs, and
just remember fellow patriots---
Liberty will always be in
ascendance over religion in the United States, or there will not be a United
States. Revolution time has come.
Christo Nazis fuck off.
-6-12- PAGAN MILLENIUM
Pagan Millenium
Author: Zone 9 Pagan
Posted: July 18th. 2010
Times Viewed: 1,154
The influence of paganism is everywhere and yet this word stirs up the ancient
hatred, a brainwashing that has been going on for many hundreds of years, by as
an illegitimate authority as there has ever been. My intention is not to preach
to the pagan choir but to grab the attention of those who are seeking new
answers. I want to explain to them that it is okay to be a pagan and to accept
others that call themselves pagan. If you are, then have confidence in what you
believe and "worship with exuberance" as Julian the last pagan
emperor of Rome told the population, Christians and Pagans all. Go right in the
yard and do a sun salutation. Instead of saying ‘thank god’, thank the Goddess.
Masons and Rosicrucian’s and all the other secret societies need to come
forward and peel away the Christian facade of their organizations and let it be
a secret no longer. There are many ways to seek the Creator or search for a
truth to guide you. The Inquisition is over and the tolerance of the American
people is beyond reproach. We cling to our freedom of speech as if it were life
itself.
Paganism is just below the radar of the media and there are so many issues
regarding our freedom of religion it will be like the 50's when the concept of
race equality was a wildfire in the shag carpeting of the day, or like in 1919
when the American Congress actually had to debate the merits of allowing women
to vote or like in 1834 one of the first organized strikes was started by child
workers who went on strike to lower the workday to 11 hours.
Paganism suffers from so many glaring misconceptions in the folklore of our
society that your average American will be shocked to realize that pagans are
not evil after all and witches especially can be considered do-gooders. We need
to act and pile on as the emergence of paganism begins to happen because people
will see the vigorous opposition pagans get from an outspoken minority as we
begin to surface. Open-minded tolerant Americans would be more supportive than
we can imagine… and they are the actual majority.
Back in 1774 when Israel Putnam heard about the first battle of our
revolutionary war he unhitched his horse from his plow and with the soil of his
homeland on his boots and hands he rode off to join the fight for independence.
Freedom of association, expression and the pursuit of happiness are compatible
with pagan lifestyles whereas followers of patriarchal religions are not
allowed to even use Tarot cards as one simple example. Writers such as Phyllis
Orcutt in 'The Book of Shadows' and Alan Butler in 'The Goddess, the Grail and
the Lodge' make a strong case that America was founded by masons, deists and
free thinkers of every stripe.
Thomas Jefferson’s ‘God of Nature’, Washington's and others ‘Providence’, and
the Masons’ deepest mysteries reflect the Goddess at Adelphi along with an
acceptance of the god and the goddess together. The phrase ‘under God’ was only
added in 1954 to the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance and ‘In God We Trust’ was added
to money in the mid 1800's. If a religion was involved in the founding of the
country, it was decidedly not the Christian religion. Considering the American
freedoms it doesn’t seem possible.
Allow to me to add some early American History to show pagans that we have a
stake in American freedoms:
With not a bishop in sight, George Washington took the oath of office in full
Mason regalia. Thomas Paine echoed the sentiments of Edward Gibbon denouncing
the attempt of religion to usurp the power that freedom brings. Edward Gibbon
noting how Christianity usurped the power of Rome in a book he wrote at the
time of the American Revolution. Thomas Paine, in his part of the world,
denounced the steady insinuation of religious strictures that contrasted with
the freedoms American colonists were seeking.
The Inquisition was still fresh in his 18th century mind. Among the first
people of America, the Iroquois and Mohawk had governing charters that codified
individual freedom. Women’s gifts were honored and women made certain important
tribal decisions. There was a lot of friendliness and trade between the natives
and the roughneck pioneers. It was the ‘elitists’ who actively promoted their
slaughter. The Native Americans were seen as far too pagan to be managed and
assimilated and, being extremely earth centered, they could never really be
Christians.
The natives helped the Mayflower gang with their sissy preachers who were
unprepared for life in the wilderness. Earlier than that in Jamestown,
indentured servants helped the rich preppies in an attempt to settle Virginia.
After the rich dudes left for England one cold winter, the workers fled to
purportedly live with the Croatans, a nearby Indian tribe, and were never seen
again.
The arriving black slaves were forcibly converted (Yemaya and voodoo went underground
or mixed with Christianity in some cases) and the red genocide was instrumental
in bringing down the Great Spirit who ruled our continent. Today, pagan
expression of the black and red people needs to be free to flourish once again
as guaranteed by our constitution.
There are thirteen stars on our flag in a circle, thirteen stars and stripes.
This despite “13” being considered an unlucky number. It is well known Lady
Liberty represents a goddess and Washington D.C. is laid out as an outdoor
Mason Lodge. Our first four presidents were downright antagonistic to the pesky
preachers pontificating their pernicious platitudes.
Our American mythology carefully sidesteps the pagan aspects of what actually
happened. But there is a clue in the Bible: The meek shall inherit the earth.
Well, guess who the meek are? The conquered people, the people whose cultures
included many goddesses, and yes.... when I say the pledge of allegiance I say
‘one nation under the goddess’. The people once pushed aside are today on the
rise.
Plymouth Massachusetts became the first permanent European town in 1620 and
other settlements began on the nearby east coast. The Puritans were a dominant
force and despite escaping the clutches of tyrannical royalty they proceeded to
impose a ridiculously restrictive theocracy on themselves when they got here.
If you said a curse word and you were found out, you might get your tongue
nailed to a board in the center of town.
It wasn't long before people tired of this religious extreme and the tally-ho
of English elitists became the westward-ho of those disenchanted with the
Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Thus began the westward movement in
this country. Many pioneers were handier with an ax than a Bible and these
unsung heroes never wrote down their history. These non-Puritans were
agriculturally independent and self-sufficient working slobs who were ruled by
good spirits and generally mingled with the natives and the Indians were
welcoming.
Then there is the case of Thomas Morton. He was a rich dude yet spirited and
fun loving. He and his mates wanted to grow their town after they started it in
1624. He often mocked Miles Standish and his Puritan Stormtroopers but when he
erected America’s first Maypole to show the local maidens how to party in 1626,
he was finally banished and deported. Exuberant pagan joy needed to be crushed
at every turn. The war had begun, the war to banish paganism in the New World.
The friendly Native pagans unfortunately were not aware that the war was already
over a thousand years old and the faith based genocide and deforestation had
landed on their shores.
Encouraged by a Podunk Chief whose tribe were settled on the east side of the
Connecticut River, settlers explored the west side and founded a Dutch trading
post in 1632 at the future site of Wethersfield. In 1633, the first permanent
settlement was built in Windsor. In 1634, Wethersfield became the first
incorporated town and in 1635, an area between the two towns, Hartford was
founded. Wethersfield, Windsor and Hartford commingled in trade and held town
meetings and in 1639 banded together into what they called, "One Publick
state or commonwealth".
Inspired by Thomas Hookers iconoclastic sermons, Roger Ludlow drew up a
document for governing this new organization and called it The Fundamental
Orders and he created what has been praised as the first practical constitution
to declare, "The foundation of authority rests with the free consent of
the people." Also at that time in 1636 Roger Williams said the king had no
right claim native lands and was banished for his efforts and went south to
Rhode Island where he started his town through legal means, purchasing land
from the Narragansetts at fair value.
By 1662, the Connecticut Colony was a proud and thriving region. The locally
appointed governor sailed across the pond to visit the King Of England and they
discussed commerce and other logical things. Meanwhile, most of the population
paid lip service to the preachers who were whipping up an anti-native frenzy.
To Christians, the New World was filled with pagans, and a popular T-shirt back
then would have been, "So little time, so many pagans to smite."
These moral high ground hypocrites saw the native population as troublesome and
ungovernable and sought their extinction from the start. Yet, the population
began drifting away from this religious extreme and according to Richard
Hofstadter, a famous historian, by 1750 only one in seven had a religious
affiliation. (An important statistic to those seeking to counter the urban
legend that this country was founded by Christians.)
Justice for all had to begin somewhere, it had to begin somehow and these
pioneers left us an enduring structure that has led to freedom for all today.
In 1687 a new king, James the second, threw a fit when he heard about the
Fundamental Orders and stated thusly, "Authority is created from the free
consent of the People!! This is an outrage!!" He appointed a new governor,
Sir Edmund Andros, to sail to the Connecticut Colony and demand they give up
their precious charter, the now controversial Fundamental Orders. Upon
arriving, Andros endured a town meeting and listened to people rant and rave
about his appointment and authority.
Meeting day fell on Halloween and as evening wore on candles were lit at the
center of a large table. Apparently either some magic happened or the town
narcoleptic fell asleep at the main table and knocked the candles over and the
room went dark and the original copy of the Fundamental Orders that was in plain
view had disappeared even though no one left the meeting. Tradition states that
the charter was thrown out the window to someone on horseback and hidden in a
giant oak tree. As years went by, the hidden charter was a source of pride and
mystery and an important part of the fuel that built our 1776 revolutionary
machine.
That hiding place, that infamous tree, became known as the Charter Oak. The
state of Connecticut chose this symbol for its state quarter as representative
of its ideals. As a pagan whose path is influenced by Europeans who venerated
the oak and often built shrines nearby or had eternal fires near them, this was
a triumphant moment. Then further research shows that the local native people
used this very same oak as their guide to planting corn.
As land was being cleared near the tree, in 1646, the local natives pleaded
with the farmer not to cut this tree because the tree was their guide. When the
leaves were the size of mouse ears on the consecrated tree they did their
planting and he obliged them. This famous symbol of defiance, the Charter Oak,
already an old tree, should also be a pagan symbol of the America we need for
the future.
Sacred sites desecrated, statues and altars destroyed; shrines and wells and
caves defiled and ancient trees and sacred groves incinerated: everywhere in
the world that pagans prayed and loved and appreciated the goddesses and gods
has been under attack. While the free consent of the people to express
themselves as a witch or druid is denied anywhere in this country, then the
full flowering of the Constitution has not occurred.
Yes, it may take some time but the millennium of patriarchy, war and slavery
has begun to shift into our peaceful spiritual future of the
Pagan Millennium. The People of the Short Corn
WIKIPEDIA--- “In the Hopi Prophecy, it spoke of a white man who would come to them and help transform the entire continent into a spiritual paradise. He would be recognized because he would carry the fragment of stone which would complete their Holy Stone, filled with Indian writing characters. The Holy Stone had been preserved for thousands of years. Thus, when the white settlers came to the American continent, remembering their prophecy, they were openly welcomed. The Indians shared all they had. But, in return, all the White Man did was to take. The Indians noticed that their White Brothers had brought a cross. However, it was not enclosed by the circle of the Great Spirit, showing the White Man had lost his way.
The Indians believe that at the beginning of the 5th World, when man was told to disperse throughout the planet, from Four Corners, the White Race was one of the original races that went East. Upon their return to our continent, they had become confused and forgotten the ways of the Great Spirit. Further the prophecy continued, either the White Man would bring peace and harmony or attempt to totally destroy the Indian's way of life and take all his possessions and the land. If the latter occured, (which is clearly the case today) there would come a time when the Indian people would appear to be almost non-existent. Yet, one day, they would rise out of nowhere, as the white race is falling due to their own ignorance and destruction, to lead a spiritual revolution, so all people on this continent would become attuned to the Great Spirit. To hold fast to the traditional ways even if it seemed that everything was against them. To protect Four Corners at all cost, because there is great power under the land that if it is allowed to escape, great destruction would result.
The Indians believe that at the beginning of the 5th World, when man was told to disperse throughout the planet, from Four Corners, the White Race was one of the original races that went East. Upon their return to our continent, they had become confused and forgotten the ways of the Great Spirit. Further the prophecy continued, either the White Man would bring peace and harmony or attempt to totally destroy the Indian's way of life and take all his possessions and the land. If the latter occured, (which is clearly the case today) there would come a time when the Indian people would appear to be almost non-existent. Yet, one day, they would rise out of nowhere, as the white race is falling due to their own ignorance and destruction, to lead a spiritual revolution, so all people on this continent would become attuned to the Great Spirit. To hold fast to the traditional ways even if it seemed that everything was against them. To protect Four Corners at all cost, because there is great power under the land that if it is allowed to escape, great destruction would result.
Today, the Indians are going through the test to hold onto their traditional ways and protect the land. The Pahana (or Bahana) is the "Lost White Brother" of the Hopi; a white, bearded deity who appeared to the Hopi and worked many miracles. The Hopi say that he will return again and at his coming the wicked will be destroyed and a new age of peace will be ushered into the world. It is said he will bring with him a missing section of a sacred Hopi stone and that he will come wearing red. Traditionally, Hopis are buried facing eastward in expectation of the Pahana who will come from that direction.”--- WIKIPEDIA
Wikipedia turns out to be very helpful with a writers needs. As I state elsewhere Romuvan paganism is the closest I can find for my own needs but the Native Americans are my sentimental favorites. Among them I find the Hopis are similar to the Romuvans. A Great Mother Goddess created the Hopi world and like The Romuvan Zemyna, the world is our mother. A child that is born will become part of the womans clan though naming is done by fathers clan. On the 20th day the child is taken to an eastward facing cliff and held out to be embraced by the rising sun. Did I hear someone say Lion King? Thanks for all those pagan fairy tales Walt. I know, he forgot about the good witches and demonized the bad ones. Most witches are god so I think Disney needs to straighten it up with a movie about a good witch. Sabrina and Samantha didn’t quite capture the authentico of witchcraft. Magic is real, supernatural powers such as turning people into monkeys is show biz. If you are open to it , Native American culture is all around when you live in Arizona. Papagos or O’odham were only 15 miles away when I lived on the west side of Tucson. Mother earth and the corn mother loom large and the west side of the city has Cat Mountain and Kitt Peak the famous observatory is not too far away. The Hopis live in cliff dwellings in northern Arizona, as many people know, and despite the harsh conditions they are able to sustain themselves with crops. The lost white brother is certainly a curiosity and since white dominated technocracy could easily fall if their computer system were put out with an EMG burst it could very well land in the laps of the Hopis to spiritually lead the remnants. Hopis have been on their land for over 11.000 years and I see a link between them and the Black Sea people who settled the land between the Black and Baltic Seas on Eurasian continent seven to 10,000 years ago, even 14,000 years ago according to my Pagan Fairy Tales in ‘The Song oF Ooglok’. Hopis believe in the 4 peoples who drifted from their lands and there could be some sort of unification that the Goddess has in mind with their ancient prophecy of the lost white brother. The Spanish vanquished many of the Pueblo people but were unable to conquer or convert the Hopis.
Corn is very important to the Native Americans, for instance a shaman gives an ear of corn to the young child that the growing child uses in various initiation ceremonies the next 20 years. I know an ear of corn can last 20 years because I want to tell you my own experience with corn. 1978 to 1983 I gardened in Arizona and found it true that the soil is fertile even if some years as little as 8 inches of rain can fall, this is why hoses were invented. I was an uncompromising organic gardener there and used a technique called sheet composting to enrich the soil, and grew some decent vegatables; carrots and peas doing especially well for me.
I may seem not so serious about some pagan ways but growing corn was very special to me and I was respectful to the ways of the First People. In ’84 I moved back to New England and worked very hard to re-establish myself in another region. In ’85 I got the notion to grow Indian sweet corn because I was disturbed by the hybrid corn that was exterminating the thousands of locally acclimated varieties in the Americas. I discovered teosinte which is the rumored wild relative of corn. Teosinte was grown in the corners of corn fields, primarily by natives in Mexico. It was believed to strenthen the corn. It’s a 120 day crop I plant in April to Harvest in October here in Florida. In Connecticut it matured in less time. Going back to New England in the 80’s I ordered open pollinated sweet corn and planted it in the rich 16 inch topsoil of the Connecticut River valley. Aztec Black among many other varieties including one or two Hopi varieties. Unlike most, I wasn’t going for some sort of purity but wanted to cross pollinate all the varieties to create the New England Rainbow. Blue corn (black aztec) was a dominating color and people would look at them and go, Blue Corn?, who would eat blue corn? Well, a couple of years later a blue corn chip came out that caught peoples attention and survives to this day.
After four years I was astonished at what I was producing. Some ears were getting smaller and smaller. I don’t know what scientists call it but I called it back breeding. There seemed to be majick in the pollen. My goal was to breed a variety I was going to call New England Rainbow. So I ordered different colored Indian sweet corn seeds and wrote to some of these seedsmen and women during my third year and got back some hand written replies. One dude named White Eagle sent me 5 different varieties to mix in with my open pollinated sweet corn and wished me luck. I don’t know if it is the same White Eagle The Hopi Elder coming up soon. It’s a name of high honor but the return address of the seeds was Nebraska, a company called ‘Corns’. I believe his seeds helped accelerate what I was doing. He gave me one pack of flint corn seeds and that didn’t make sense but I’ll bet he knew about breeding and there was something I needed to learn here. The genetic variety exploded that third year.
Hybrid corn is made to be harvested by Hexxus like machines all on the same day but open pollinated sweet corn is harvested over a 4 week period. So if I made 3 plantings, 3 weeks apart, I could theoretically harvest for 12 weeks. Mid July to frost and the teosinte tasseling in September. Another disadvantage was that it only was sweet for two days then it began to get hard and inedible. Another goal was to grind up those ears that were overripe and make corn meal, which I have yet to do. Note to self: go get a corn grinder to make corn meal, and get back to growing corn again. ED WHITE EAGLE
Hopi ElderHopi Elder
(79)I woke this morning and knew the spirit was inspiring me to write to you. Though I didn't want to think about it, because it takes time to do these things and I have much to do this time of year. I tried to ignore the feeling that filled my heart and went about my day. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to write to you anyway. Then in the afternoon, I was working at my son's house. I was helping him till his soil for his garden. The tiller hit a big rock, and I reached down to move it. When I put my hands into the soil I realized what the Great Spirit wanted me to tell those of you who will listen to the words of this old man. So once again I am here to share with you my knowledge.
I felt my wife's spirit in the rock I grabbed from the ground in my son's yard today. More than 20 years ago this year, my wife left the mortal life and became one with the ancestors. A day does not go by that I do not think of her, but every spring when I work the land with my son and grandsons, I think of her more. More than think of her, I know I am touching her because our world is made from the bones of our ancestors.
Some people believe in heaven, angels and things like that. Hopi do not in the same way. We believe that the Great Spirit is all around us, so we don't have to go to heaven to meet him. We believe that our ancestors live with us, guide us and share with us, so we don't have to call on angels to help us. Maybe those who believe in angels are right for themselves, but not for Hopi. The Hopi have a different view of their relationship to the Earth. Because when we look at a tree, a plant or a flower we see our loved ones who have gone. We see our mothers, fathers, grandparents. We see our wives, husbands and children. We see our past alive again.
When the Hopi die, they are buried in the ground in a simple way. Soon, with the help of the animals and bugs, they are returned to the ground and become one with the Mother Earth. They return to the Earth that they are made from. Their spirit --soul maybe -- goes on in some way to become one with the Ancestors. But also their spirit and their body becomes one with the Earth. Then, when they are one with the Earth, it is their being we are planting our food in. It is their body we are walking on. They fall as rain on our heads and make our corn grow. It is their body that is in the corn we eat. They hold the key to our continued life. They become a working part of the cycle of life on the Earth in a way they could not be as people. And when we each pass away from this life, we too, in our own ways, will return to the Earth. It doesn't matter if you are not Hopi. It doesn't matter if you are buried or burned or even lost at sea. Your body will return to the Mother that gave it life and you will become part of the chain that brings life to the world.
It is this chain of life that is very real to the Red Man. It is this chain of life that challenges us to remember that in every blade of grass and every ear of corn our Ancestors, and (thus) our own existence lies. Everything on the Earth is sacred. How could you not hold it that way? When you destroy any part of the Earth, you are destroying your past. When you care for the Earth, you are caring for yourself. Our Ancestors surround us every moment of every day. They are not just ghosts or memories. They are the water we drink, the ground we step on. They are the world around us. Our past is all around us. Our future too. For it is the dust that is between your toes that may someday be the things your children and grandchildren are made of. Nothing ever goes away. It is here with us.”(79) ----- Ed White Eagle
I was a Reagan era pagan(but never called myself that), and I did actually pray to what I imagined was the Corn Mother. I used a traditional planting stick to poke holes in the ground after praying and every year became more astonished at what happened. Ears were growing on the top of the plant and at the base. Strange configurations in the rows of kernels that I read were what the primitive corn “carbon dated” to three thousand years ago looked like. Double cobs and most assuredly cobs with both teosinte and corn on the same cob, the same row even. Even more primitive ears emerged that there were not even pictures for, but reconstructive drawings of what the early corn ancestors looked like. I really wish I could get someone who knows corn history to come and look at them. And yes, bring them to the lab to identify the genomic structure. I never quite came up with primitive varieties in my attempts in Florida. Happy ending here. I still have them, the genetic sports of the New England Rainbow Sweet Corn and they are nearly 20 years old, so I can prove I am not lying or kidding.
Back to Connecticut I was more interested in growing the corn as a genetics experiment, eating the ones that came out a decent size and good flavor was gravy. I have an ear that has teosinte like kernels and kernels that look like small kernels of sweet corn. As much as I’d like to believe the corn myths about the corn mother giving corn to people, I believe I back breeded right to the beginning. Corn must have started out as a genetic variation of teosinte, I have cobs with teosinte and blue corn in them; perhaps even triggered by the goddesses intelligent design, the Corn Mother, maybe Freya in disguise, providing the trigger to the change, evolution has to happen on its own. Not, Poof! you are now corn. In a catalog I found a real curiosity, it was a nearly extinct variety of PERENNIAL teosinte. Even though in the 90’s I was drifting back to atheism I prayed really hard to pollinate a perennial sweet corn. Imagine the implication of perennial corn!
As much promise as this breeding showed: my genetic bank is now threadbare and may no longer be viable. I kept ears for breeding in the nineties but have only been able to grow in 98-99 and 02-03. August ’07 and my teosinte comes up every year without planting from previous years seeds and will tassel as usual in October. With everything else I need to do, I’m determined to grow open pollinated sweet corn again. Genetics is an insidious intrusion into natural evolution. I suspect something is going on behind the scenes and I’d like to speculate about it. After the mid nineties, the perennial teosinte seemed unavailable. I think some corporation has bought all current stocks and are attempting to take a short cut to what I wanted to do naturally. They may be attempting to splice the perennial gene to their hybrid corn. Imagine the money that could be made if you could plant corn one year and have it come up a second year, or even a third. This seed would be expensive I’m here to tell you and the inventing company would slaughter competing companies with this product and could corner the market for ethanol. The way I wanted to do it would be not to make a sterile hybrid but a perennial rainbow open pollinated sweet corn I’d sell only to the poor farmers in the world. All they’d have to do was put manure between the rows. Then save the seed for the next year to expand their field and share with farmers in other climates and locales and elevations, although Mexico would be the most logical place because this is where the nearly extinct perennial seed was discovered and I presume there would be a minimum soil temperature that would need to be maintained along with otherc compatibility factors. Here’s an odd story from five years back. I went looking for the perennial teosinte again and my search yielded a result. My finger paused briefly, I held my breath, was I going to be able to begin the experiment again? I don’t care what it costs. I pressed to find out more and suddenly my computer had a spaz. Can’t go on line, reboot, fegeddabout it. The Bell South Help Center came on board to repair the problem, something strange here, search for perennial teosinte and get a virus.
People enthusiastically scarf down corn every year and I don’t really have a fundamental problem with this. What happened in the last 50 years, however, is that your average farmer was no longer able to save the seed for the next year because of the nature of these F1 hybrids. Farms became mechanized and ecosystems were torn apart for agricultural production. Small farms went deeper into debt, it was overplanted creating gluts and farms became corn factories. Pollution is created by the mechanized farm equipment, water tables dropped because the mega farms needed irrigation water, corn was shipped much furthur creating more pollution and trucks wear out roads (and especially bridges) increasing highway budgets and on and on. American topsoil has been reduced by 50% the last 100 years a good deal of that by corn. What will they be expected to farm on seven generations from now? The true price of 4 ears for a dollar is not really calculated as resources are depleted, critical resources such as topsoil. What is the diference between the earth and the moon? The simple answer is topsoil. When topsoil is depleted the land turns to desert.
Could the Indians, pagans all, have had such a bad life? Hopis have a strong sense of monogamy so STD’s weren’t common, and so I imagine what my life would be like if I was born an Inca or a Hopi. Get up early in the morning, mutual pleasure assured, go running and breath in air not polluted by automobiles and listen to the birds and animals and not loudmouths on their cellphones. Stop at some eastward facing cliff to stretch and greet the sun. Run back to the corn field to chase away birds or raccons, check for earworm infestation and squeeze them out (or eat them?). Get the bison shoulder bone tool to scrape out the weeds, greet your friends out in the field, because many were involved with growing the food they all shared.
Harvesting of fresh corn was done, the Indian Sweet Corn has only three days when it’s sweet. Take your sack and bring food to your neighbors. Go back home and appreciate and love your partner and help her with things, take a nap, look for people to play games and have fun or help people repair or upgrade living areas. Prepare the supper, maybe talk to the medicine man, wait for the evening star to come out or help other tribe members out with problems.
What are we about in our modern ways? Get stressed trying to go out early to work, feeding children with no relaxing time together as the children spend 7 hours a day learning virtually nothing while our polluting car may have a dead battery and so we are late for a meeting where cut throat competition is the order of the day. Is a community so bad then that is based on togetherness and growing corn? This is not socialism my friends, but a fundamental form of sustainable capitalism.
The Mayans and Aztecs devised calendars more accurate than any other known at that time, people know this if they watch the History channel but do the shows state the reason for these calendars? It was to know the correct time to plant the corn. Corn could be stored for the cold weather, corn meal and homemade food such as tortillas can be made at any time. Tribes concerned with famine would plant enough so two years worth of food could be saved.
People are taking a closer look at the Mayans lately and how many things are lining up for a shock to the earth. Solar flares will be doing their cyclical extreme and numerous other potential disasters seem to be all in the same 2012 basket. The best book on what could happen in 2012 is Apocalypse 2012 by Lawrence E. Joseph and he was guided by two Mayans who are modern day shamans. Here is one statement he makes, (50) “…the whole Bible-Quran crowd would feel aced out of the most important prophecy in the history of humanity by a bunch of pagans from the boonies of Central America.” Joseph goes on to explain how the three patriarchal religions are trying to make Armageddon happen, trying to force circumstances to fit Bible Phrophecy. The Temple of the Mount could become quite a contentious issue and the Christian Theme Park in the nearby area where the Great Battle of Good and Evil will happen seems kind of odd to me. The theme park should be opened just before 2012.
Mayans have no love of what archeologists do on their land and here a scientist gives his view. (38)”…in one such case I was told about the ruins that we have never discovered. Apparantly the Maya are to this day still keeping secrets from the general public about their great history in Central America. I was informed that some ruins were buried by people to preserve their temples till the Gods come back from the Stars. A Mayan informed me that the real temple where the Great Lightning Bolt will hit on December 21st 2012, has not been discovered. And most Maya do not know the location.”
A story to end Corn (38) “Yawpa the Mockingbird said, “There is still something to be done-the selection of the Corn.” The people gathered around as the Mockingbird laid many ears of corn on the ground; One ear was yellow, one was white, one was red, one was grey, some were speckled, one was a stubby ear with blue kernels, and one was not quite corn but merely Kwakwi grass with seeds at the top. The Mockingbirtd said “each of these ears brings with it a way of life. The one who chooses the yellow ear will have a life full of enjoyment and prosperity but his span of life will be small. The short ear with the blue kernels will bring a life full of work and hardship but the years will be many. (Meaning the longetivity of the entire tribe). The Mocking bird explained the life that went with each color they chose. The Navaho quickly chose the yellow ear, a short life of enjoyment. The Sioux took the white corn, The Supais chose the ear speckled with yellow, the Comanches took the red, Utes took the flint.
At last two ears remained , the leader of the Apaches chose the longest. It was the Kwakwi grass. Only the Hopis had not chosen. The ear that was left was the stubby blue ear. The leader of the Hopis picked it up and said, “We were slow in choosing. Therefore we must take the shortest ear of all. We shall have a life of hardship but it will be a long lasting life. Other tribes may perish, but we, The Hopis will survive all adversities. Thus the Hopis became the people of the short corn.”
The People of the Short Corn
-6-13-
This is the Folk Magic
We are at a crossroads here in the
21st century with magic, environmentalism and the future of pagan religions.
The pagan-curious are looking into polytheism and many of these people are
active in environmental stewardship and land preservation. As nature lovers,
greens and environmental activists are curious to investigate what paganism
might be, their first impression is generally that of the Wicca religion.
Pagan Traditionalists seem to prefer
initiated membership where people need to be trained. “Can I call myself a
witch since I live so close to nature in my work and home life?” No I was told,
I have to be initiated to call myself a witch. I need to listen to someone
else’s ideas if I want to become a Witch or Druid. Truthfully, I don’t want anyone
to interfere with the path I take, a path that lays somewhere between the Green
man and Greenpeace. A path I refer to as, Progressive Eclecticism.
I totally believe in the big
tent concept for Pagans and the freewheeling eclecticism I enjoy and what many
other solitary practitioners indulge in.
We need teachers and clergy and experienced pagans to provide guidance of
course, but it can‘t be like the Church with its cowering masses and kowtowing
hierarchy kissing each other’s rings. It should be more like the Unitarian
Universalists and their reality based morality. Remember the 6th principle of
witchcraft and that's, "We do not recognize any authoritarian hierarchy,
but do honor those who teach, and those who share their greater knowledge and
wisdom, and acknowledge those who have given of themselves in leadership."
Unity without hierarchy.
The pagan-curious would like to
consider becoming pagan but are a little put off with costumes they see at
gatherings or in the books. Pagan books seem to be all about spells and
ceremony and newbies end up trying to figure out the right candle color to use
in witch situation, then wonder why. A green living person will wonder why
there is not a big emphasis on ecosystem stewardship in Paganism as I was. Some
greens have been living as pagans all along and not realizing they are. They
appreciate the living relationship between the earth and sun and they see how
Mother Nature could be perceived as Gaia, a goddess.
The green pagan-curious are not
spiritual or religious necessarily, but they do feel something and they are
curious about it. The Mother, the earth spirit, lies somewhere between
perception and reality and there are many people looking for some sort of link
between spirituality and stewardship of the Earth.
I’m happy to walk outside to
look at the full moon or praise the north wind or pray to the corn mother for a
successful crop and feel no need to be initiated into any specific path. I made
up my own religion as a prototype to show how easy it is to be comfortable with
the path you are creating for yourself. There are many solitaries like me who
aren’t worried about any pagan or wiccan absolutes.
I believe that earth lovers
looking into paganism are put off with the ceremonial excess and often times
turn away. The gardener, earth activist or the tree planting green would be
considered, “just a tree hugger, you’re not a ‘real’ pagan.” Says you, Pagan is
as pagan does, earth lovers are real pagans, not neo-pagans. So here I am,
Martin Luther, creating a schism with pagans, but I’ll say it again--more trees
and less candles, more organic vegetables and less skulls and demons. The near
future will be less about ceremony and more about attaining full civil rights
for Druids and Witches who cannot openly practice or talk about their religion
in this sweet land of liberty.
Reality based morality will be
about restoring ecosystems worldwide after 150 years of profit taking by
industrial predatory capitalism. The future will be less about candle color and
more about creating new forms of governance and an economic model of
sustainable capitalism to get us to the end of this century. Pagans will
be there to replace war,
violence and greed with passion and compassion but there are bridges and rough
terrain to cross and it won’t be as easy as using your broomstick to get to the
Emerald City. “Did you bring your broomstick?” Most people worship the golden
calf, and walk that yellow brick road of greed behind the façade of the flag
and the cross.
The Wiccans have a strong form
of rituality and it works just right for them. I have found that witches, as a
sociological group, have a good focus on right living, and are the best
contributors to forums and websites all across the internet, and also exhibit
the passion and compassion to move us forward, but I do feel that it is not for
everybody. To be a pagan means you can do what you want, don’t let any book
tell you there are absolutes. Pagans may tend to be naughty and impulsive but
are not evil, get that straight right now.
There is the classic pagan
ceremony where a knife represents the male and a goblet of wine symbolizes the
woman, and everyone takes it so seriously and here is where I part company with
todays pagans. Why do I need to do that? It’s just not right for me, it’s like
kneeling and standing in church when I was a child, it seems kind of silly and
uncomfortable. I no longer kneel for any deity.
I’m a gardener and I have a few
knives around, like 15, and they have many uses. Cut open our modern
impenetrable packaging, slice fruit, cut string and tape, tighten glasses, open
up bags of mulch, carve pinewood derby cars and on and on. Do I really need an
athame, a double sided knife, one sharp and the other dull? I do have a
favorite knife that has a compass in the handle which is nice for outdoor
ceremonies and orienting to the 4 directions, but my favorite use for it is to
cut seed potatoes which I do every fall.
I have hope that potatoes can be
my sustainable crop and I call the knife my potato knife. Books and
practitioners say a pagan without an athame is like a mechanic without a
wrench, a dentist without a drill: you absolutely must have an athame. My
favorite potato knife is going to be my athame if I really need one, so does
anyone have a real problem with that? Let’s loosen up a bit here and start
setting up posts to make the tent bigger. Potato knives and Thors Hammer and
the double ax of the goddess, real tools for real life.
It’s time to discuss what
aspects of magic are needed for the future. Why is it that New Agers are so
into rocks…….huh?,,,,,,,oh, stones; they’re not rocks I’m told. I call them
rocks so bear with me. Rock magic seems interesting and I do have a stone
shrine indoors with some small but very interesting unpolished rocks…I mean stones.
A few years ago I found this
shrine fit on my dashboard and startling things, mostly good and some bad,
happened for three weeks straight when I placed it there till I brought it back
in the house. Stone Magic happens more readily than you might think. This is
why I indulge in what I call Oxoheartsvoken, the as yet discovered folk
religion of the Reindeer People, the cave painters. The magic of the people,
for the people and by the people and in synchronization with the presence of
the planet Venus that we call the morning and evening star. Venus is visible
far more often than the moon and helped early navigators such as the
Polynesians and the Phoenicians. Many know about the mysterious pentacle shape
that Venus traces across our night sky every eight years.
Today, pagans think they are
Druids, Priests or Priestesses and my point is that in every culture there was
the shaman or priestly class and the rest of us who would prefer less ceremony. As you begin
a journey into ritual and magic, you first have to question the books that
explain about magic and its practitioners. Are they capturing what 90% of us
did: the folk magic, not everyone can be a Priest, Druid or pagan clergy.
Experienced pagans might rail
against someone like me who has unconventional ideas and refuses to wear the
fairy king costumes. As I like to say, ‘Halloween is my new year, not what I do
all year.’ Costumes don’t seem natural and I know there are many people that
agree with me on that one, male and female, maybe we really don’t need to wear
robes. No offense of course.
Pagan Traditionalists have
created too big of a wall that conservationists and environmentalists try to
look over but only end up shrugging their shoulders and walking away because
all they see is ceremony that is about connecting with the divine. Getting your
hands dirty as a gardener or speaking at a town meeting in support of habitat
restoration isn’t even on the radar of all those city slicker pagans .
Neophytes to pagan initiation
may hear, “Your athame has to be blah blah blah” or some version of, “you’re
just starting, you don’t know anything,” which is highly insulting. In my
opinion, Paganism needs to be more about planting trees and less about spells
and candles and I think there are many people who would agree, and many of us
have a lot to bring to the table and this is why I’m promoting the big tent
concept of progressive eclecticism. There are those that say you have to be on
one specific path or another and you’re not a real pagan if you mix and match
your deities from different pagan religions. I’m a real pagan in my view,
although serious pagans would disagree with my notion of Progressive Eclectics
and my iconoclastic pantheon of 9 goddesses and 23 gods. Wicca may be the face
of paganism with its Lord and Lady Ceremony, but in time there will be ten
times as many progressive eclectics as there are initiated wiccans, so the
sooner you open that barn door and let us all in, the better.
I’m trying to catch people before they abandon paganism and I want them to
realize they can make it their own. It seems that if you have a simpler earth
loving set of beliefs this is somehow seen as less than pagan in many circles.
I’m telling you greenies, don’t kowtow to traditional, because we are creating
tradition now and are rediscovering some of the ancient rituals intuitively
which may very well outlast traditional which is, after all, little more than
60 years old since Gardners book purportedly revived witchcraft from the misty
past.
Don’t get me wrong about magic because I do believe there is magic and the more
in tune with it I get, the more readily it happens. But my approach is that you
shouldn’t summon or call upon magic any time you want. To all psychics,
sensitives, empaths and others: some of us don’t have these superpowers and the
phrase “getting in the zone” is the sometimes the best us ordinary folk can
manage. I would next like to quote Scott Cunningham from ‘Earth Power’ as he
explains his view of magic. “Magic was the first religion and that if you lovingly
utilize the forces of nature to cause beneficial change, you can also become
one with them. It is these powers that are personified as gods and goddesses.”
My vision is that we all find our own way as Pagans and a so-called “newbie”
has life experiences to draw on for their pagan expression. In my religion
there are no newbies. A newbie could have superlative insights when a
traditionalist may have lost their focus, spending an entire weekend “driving
300 miles in the Lincoln Escalade looking for coltsfoot root.” I would much
rather take a walk around the ’hood and imagine the tree roots and shrub and
flower roots all touching and entwining themselves for hundreds of miles as I
take a walk, and not be a slave to spells, ritual and ceremony. You love
nature, then call yourself a pagan if you like. Let those Reconstructionists
call themselves neo-pagans if they want. Don’t quote me, but I think it was the
Celtic tradition many hundreds of years ago that used severed heads to ‘see’
the future. If Celt Reconstructionists can pick and choose what practices to
take into their spiritual future, then why can’t I? No offense of course.
Native Americans didn’t realize that the basis for the faith based genocide by
Europeans was because they were viewed as pagans, pure and simple; and yet
today they don’t call themselves pagan to honor their part in the history of
pagan civil rights. The Great Spirit of the Indigenous People kept this
hemisphere in balance, and they have respected the Mother for thousands of years
here in the U.S.A. The Vikings created settlements on the mainland peacefully,
but Christopher Columbus thought the Caribbean islands they landed on was the
Garden Of Eden and it was his job to drive out the ‘savages’, or at least
enslave them and take their gold.
Is there an ancient mother and are there goddesses? What have the Goddesses
been telling us: we must encode liberty, embed equality, ostracize criminality
and vanquish cruelty? Maybe Hecate wants you to plant willow trees instead of
invoking her to help with your love life. Maybe Cerridwen would rather have you
using your creative will to help craft a cap and trade program that makes sense
in this polluted world. Sedena of the Inuit doesn't need prayers so much as She
needs a solution to the invasion of her cold northern arctic by Bernie Madoffs
with drilling equipment. Maybe Yemaya wants you to indulge your carnal side a
little less and take care of your little creations better.
Jurate wants you to be aware that humans have killed and fished with a profit
seeking rapaciousness that will leave future generations scratching their heads
at the depletion of fishing stocks and the lack of earth stewardship, and the
illusion of prosperity created by predatory capitalism. Maybe Freya is
unimpressed with your double axe zipper pulls and wants you to raise your level
of awareness about eroding topsoil and to learn how to certify organic growing
conditions to keep up with the demand for clean food. The dragon tailed goddess
Nu-Kua appreciates that you are beginning to understand about feng shui and
Dharma, but would be happier if you understood more about the ecological
devastation of war and the emotional toll on civilian populations.
If you talk about earth stewardship there is a big yawn on pagan forums, but
talk about dragons and the fingers hit the keyboard. On the other hand, did you
feel the dragons this spring, a slightly different feeling in the air, and the
new surging currents? Maybe Dexsiua and her dragons want us to plant trees and
bushes to enhance the local ecosystems.
Maybe the goddesses are trying to tell us to wake up before growing populations
and shrinking resources reach a point of perpetual crisis. For now it may be
more important to halt the degradation of our planet and I like to say 100
hands clasped in prayer cannot plant a tree. I wonder, is there a bridge that
can be built between pagans and greens? Who can tell, because now all I see is
a total disconnect.
In conclusion, I feel the less you use magic, the better it works. During a
pagan pilgrimage to Salem I went jogging and walking to sightsee that way. I
was up and down the multitude of brick sidewalks and roads because I got the
notion that maybe I could capture a bit of the magic of this place in a broken
piece of brick road. For 25 minutes I searched and found nothing. Jogging here,
walking there and finding nothing I could use, but then something came over me.
I did a secret ceremony to the universe and I heard, ’go here and turn there’
and sure enough 45 seconds later I found the perfect piece. I mean really, how
does this happen? Very simply, this is the folk magic.
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