Messiness of Life

I was listening to the May 22 episode of Science Friday, the interview with Doug Bellamy, a professor and recent author of a book about using native plants in your yard. See http://www.sciencefriday.com/program/archives/200905225

In one sense, he was talking about letting your yard go shaggy, but in another sense, it was about returning your yard's habitat to a natural variety of plants that native species can use. He talked about how trees attract caterpillars, moths, and butterflies, which in turn attract songbirds. Native trees attract a huge variety of insects. Exotic trees transplanted from far away attract few insects and form a beautiful but sterile environment.

I have often been at odds with the suburban desire for order and cleanliness. When did we decide that all the world is defective unless it looks like a golf course?

Not that I'm immune to the Stepford yard syndrome. I was running down the road the other day and looked down a hedgerow treeline, and I thought that it seemed ragged and would look better if it was trimmed up like a hedge bush. I immediately caught myself and thought about how the creatures in the treeline probably like the raggedness. They probably enjoy finding the branch that sticks out the most like a watch tower to get a good look, or building their nest in a little hollow, all nestled in by the limbs. It's interesting how life finds toeholds in the niches, how variety makes craggy locations for life. I remember hearing a reference about how beavers are usually found in the crags of life, and the speaker asked if god made the crags or did beavers just evolve to take advantage of the crags so that's where they accumulate.

The truth is that life needs rough edges to cling to. It's true on a bacteriological size scale, where crevices are where cultures hide and multiply. It's also true on a macro scale, where species like rough edges. Many animals, like deer, like to live in a fringe of forest and clearing. They find protection in the forest and food in the fields.

We have to make a concerted effort to let things go native, to provide for the messiness of life that all living things demand.