Life and death in the "Natural" World

[jraabe]

You can't live without killing something. It's the natural condition of all life.

A man ask the vegan, "Why are you a vegetarian, is it because you love animals?"

No, he answers, "it's because I hate plants!" (Now, let's go out into the garden and listen to the radishes scream when we pull them out of the ground!)

Living in the land of tall trees (Coastal WA) these giant plants are clearly a renewable resource here. If I were in the desert there would be different priorities, but here there are trees growing and dying all around me. I have to fight them for light.

Some are favorites and we have names for them, some are broken or dying and will be firewood, and some are left to go back into the soil. It's just a little 5 acre patch of the planet I somehow got to take care of.

[benevolance]

John

I agree that as trees reach their maturity and are at the age where they are going to deacy and die....They need to be harvested...selective thiining forest growth encourages growth in younger trees.

I agree we need plants and animals to survive.... However we have been a greedy species that has culled  wildlife and raped the forests...

we have a unquenchable thirst for resources we are always thirsty...

Glenn I think everyone should plant a few trees every year...Even if they never cut one down....Think about wiping yer arse or blowing yer nose... We all use paper products we all rely on wood....

It would not hurt everyone to plant at least one tree a year

[glenn-k]

Good point, John.  I cut off the life force of green blood flowing through one of my cabbages the other day again - you can actually see the veins  and  Sassy made 24 more of those great cabbage rolls.

The friend who gave me the cedar logs for my cabin roof said that the 8" to 10" dia. cedars were actually like weeds and it was necessary to thin them so that the rest could be healthy and grow.  National Park Service burns thousands of acres of trees and brush per year to make the rest of the surviving trees healthy.  It was a natural occurrence in the old days.  We stopped the fires for years and created a disaster by making the fires that do occur gigantic from too much trash fuel.

[jraabe]

Yep, plant husbandry is real work! Whether it is garden thinning or tree thinning, death is part of life and we're required to do the responsible thing. My own patch of the planet would be healthier if I were a harder working forester out doing more thinning.

I read an interesting book recently talking about the early American forests in the New England area. The first settlers reported that they could ride horses through what they perceived as the "wilderness" and find scattered wild nut trees, wild herb patches and lots of game. That's why they described the New World as an "untouched God-given Paradise".

Within the next 50-100 years, however, the forests filled up with underbrush, fast growing aggressive "weed" trees and the game and wild nut trees died off. The reason? The native American population was disturbed (as in wiped out!) and the little understood practices of intentional fire control, selective seeding and semi-wild cultivation died with them.

Huge patches of wilderness are only now being understood to have been human managed for thousands of years. The use of fire in the enormous Amazon basin in now credited with creating much of the topsoil and almost all the plant and animal diversity that was until recently considered to be "natures' way".

I think we will make more progress when we abandon some of our romantic notions of "wilderness" (a modern concept of urban folks visualizing a nice untouched place to visit) and roll up our sleeves to do the real work of assisting and channeling forgotten natural life processes. We have much to learn from plants and might start by [highlight]listening to them [/highlight]rather than merely projecting our own anthropomorphizing images of what we think they are.

[Sassy]

Interesting info, John.  That's why I have a problem with the UN's Agenda 21 - their ultimate goal is to herd the masses into dense urban areas, create huge corridors throughout the world where, basically, man is not welcome.  We've already seen what destruction these huge forest fires have caused when fire roads etc are intentionally destroyed so "man" will not sully the land.

Granted, there are a lot of greedy parts of society that don't care about anything but the bottom line of profits but there are also lots of people (like the CountryPlans folk) who seem to "get it" & are attempting to get back to a simpler life, own a piece of paradise & take care of it that way it was meant to be taken care of.  

I love looking at my gardens - the flowers & the veggies, the trees & shrubs & spend quite a bit of time taking care of them at both our places... that's why it hurts me when something dies after I've loved & nurtured it!  Glenn will tell me to "just let it go" but when one of the plants he's nurtured doesn't do well or if WE HAVE TO KILL IT TO EAT IT   - he is very personally involved!  

[jraabe]

You are a good gardener, Sassy.   So is my son, Seth (of Maui Wowee fame). We need more gardeners!  

That said, it is hard to imagine what we really should or could do on a global scale to help heal the planet.

Between political (arbitrary land boundaries) and economic forces (profit and extraction of no-cost natural resources) what place is there for the subtle interactive relationships that nature really asks of us?

I think it very unlikely the UN or any political entity will hold the key. A mass change of consciousness might, but that seems a bit unlikely.  

[benevolance]

I do not think fire is a  grave threat to forests where there is abundant water supply all year round...

Glenn was spot on out in Yellowstone with Fire...It is vital to keeping the bulk of the forest alive...My wifes uncle is a professor of forestry at Clemson University and got his masters in Yellowstone...He preaches the need for selective thinning and burning to me all the time. It is awesome to talk with someone that knows so much about trees.... We sit there over the holidays and talk for hours about forests and plant species...the rest of the family is looking at us like we are aliens....They are asking what each other got for christmas how are the kids....We just want to talk about nature and trees...

I think ultimately the UN is correct in that we need as a people to concentrate our cities more and more...Urban sprawl is out of control and vast swathes of pristine forests and wildlife refuges are being destroyed for mountain homes or whatever.

As the population grows it puts more pressure on our resources and the forest is a resource...we cannot diminish the total area of land used to grow trees and at the same time increase demand put on the forests to provide for us....There needs to be a balance and there needs to be restrictions put in place so that there is always a percentage of the world forested....If we plan on harvesting logs 100 or 200 years from now...

In California there are agricultural laws aimed at keeping land used for farming as farms instead of allowing it to be all bought by developers and have them pave and subdivide prime farm land...

We need more laws aimed at reducing urban sprawl...And more infrastructure to keep our mega cities clean...With better irrigation, water treatment and waste disposal cities will be cleaner, greener and a more desireable place to live... The more people that live in or near cities on the planet the more land there is for agriculture, forestry and wildlife...

[glenn-k]

There is a group that feels that too many people surviving is a major cause of the problems of urban sprawl.  

The world we live in is far from a "natural" world.  Millions of people in the world today would not be here without social service programs.  We are unnaturally defeating the age old law of natural selection and survival of the fittest, and we are paying for it.

The upper class and corporate desire for slaves (min. wage compensated, but stilll slaves by any other name)  has opened our southern border and even our government Border Patrol is being jailed for trying to enforce the existing laws.  Our legal citizens, overstuffed and sedated on Big Macs have no desire to do the work of the slaves.

This also contributes to the cause of losing our prime farmland and runaway growth in the cities.  Violence naturally grows in the cities as parents become more and more consumed earning a living to pay the near 50% taxes imposed by government.  That, drugs and alcohol abuse cause a breakdown of the family and unguided children grow up on their own up with government mandated non-child labor.  This means that many children wander around aimlessly destroying property of others - joining gangs, creating a future prison population and in general being a plague on society.  Our government regulations and rules we asked for create them.

[John_C]

John Raabe said

Now, let's go out into the garden and listen to the radishes scream when we pull them out of the ground!

Have you read   The Secret Life of Plants   by Peter Tompkins.     Lots of evidence, some scientific some anecdotal, that plants are sentient.  

I think I'll go eavesdrop on the tomatoes.

[glenn-k]

I haven't read that but I have read that plants respond to touch and care.  Maybe I should spend a bit of quality time with mine today -- a little heavy petting.

[John_C]

According to the book plants like music.  They respond best to classical.

The book was written before the emergence of rap.  I presume rap make them sorry they have roots and are therefore unable to flee.

[Amanda_931]

In the Southeast, I was told they could drive an ox-cart through the old-growth forests in Daniel Boone's time.  The native Americans groomed the woods to keep, for instance, deer happy and plentiful enough so that they could almost be gotten like sweet corn in season.

Now, my helpers and I fight privet deserts.  Where privet grows so thick that the surveyors who did my property refused to go through two of them, on opposite ends of the property.  Roots are so crowded that nothing much else will grow there.

But, Mike Davis in Planet of Slums says that in the next year or so there will be more people living in (some kind of) urban environment than in rural.  It's an interesting book.  No work in the countryside, big farms taking over, sometimes inheritance practices (why so many Irish came to the US), etc.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1844670228/nationbooks08

[glenn-k]

According to the book plants like music.  They respond best to classical.

The book was written before the emergence of rap.  I presume rap make them sorry they have roots and are therefore unable to flee.

It makes me sorry too.  That's part of why I stay away from the cities except for work.  I get urges to break stereos in nearby cars.  Who says rap doesn't cause violence?

[benevolance]

repeat after me man....

Satellite radio...Find a station you like and you can listen to it worldwide.....

I just turn the radio off if all I can find is a country or rap station in a new town while travelling...

I ty to make note of good stations in cities I frequent all the time...Such as charlotte, atlanta columbia and charleston