The Wisdom of Solomon

It is Spring, and flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land.[1]

Sadly I expect turtle doves will be in short supply this year, despite the best efforts of bird conservation organisations, Chris Packham et al to explain the catastrophic decline of this species - along with the cuckoo and other precious summer visitors. According to Project Turtle Dove, its numbers have plummeted by 91% since 1995.[2] Cuckoos have declined by 65% since the 1980s.[3]

Instead, the voice of the lawn-mower is heard in our land, as some people strive to achieve uniform, level, striped surfaces. I suppose such lawns are the outdoor equivalent of a plain fitted carpet. The result is just lawn. It is not even 'lawn with flowers', or 'lawn with flowers and bees', or 'lawn with flowers, bees, ants and moles'. Lawn means lawn. It is monoculture.

Here is an example of a lawnista's approach to gardening.[4]

I'm delighted to have some of these species on my lawn. What is a weed?

About 15 years ago, the Bungalow garden was visited by a local TV reporter. Somehow she had discovered a web page I'd made explaining that I have notable biodiversity here, including Testacella haliotidea, a rare carnivorous, subterranean slug living in the vegetable patch. As we wandered round the garden trying to find the slug I wittered on about the wildlife, for instance the seven species of grass and sedge I have identified on the lawn, and its notable anthills. She then asked why I did not destroy the ants. They are "bad for lawns", she said. I was dumbfounded. I did not know what to say. I didn't say how much I love watching green woodpeckers probing around in the anthills or that all the piled up earth must indicate the existence of a phenomenal network of subterranean tunnels. I fell silent, struggling with my disgust at her question.

I feel a similar disgust when I see uniform lawns. A biodiverse lawn is more useful to birds, mammals, insects and plants; it has more ecological value. From a biosemiotic point of view, a biodiverse lawn is more meaningful than a monocultural one because it intrinsically contains more encoded 'difference', and hence more meaning. In my eyes that makes it more beautiful. Where a card-carrying lawnista might see disorder I see beauty and a wealth of meaning - and my heart rejoices. This wealth is not just there for me to perceive but for many other organisms to thrive in, as they search for home habitat and food. This is a shared world.

I suspect the lawn here is the last remaining fragment of the ancient parkland surrounding Brome Hall. The rest was been ploughed up many decades ago.

Uniform lawns are instances of the tide of biocidal monoculture flooding through the world. Rainforests are being replaced by plantations.[5] Faced with this creeping impoverishment of biological meaning, I invite all lawn owners to cherish their biodiversity in practical ways. For instance, wait a few weeks before first cutting, and see what species are already present. (It was only after doing this that I discovered I had two orchid species.) Don't use fertilisers or herbicides. Use a rotary mower with a grass box. Leave areas uncut until later in the summer and cut other areas in rotation. Don't kill all moles. 

Perhaps we should also go out and buy a kelim or Isfahan rug for the house - one featuring a Tree of Life or floral design !

Lesser Celandine

Spotted Orchid

As a joke currently doing the rounds has it, God and St Francis would surely approve of both designs.

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FOOTNOTES

[1] - The Song of Solomon 2.12.
[2] - Project Turtle Dove - http://www.operationturtledove.org/ [accessed April 2017]
[3] - 'Cuckoo decline' - https://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/bbs/research-conservation/cuckoo [accessed April 2017]
[4] - Lawn Weeds website - http://www.lawnweeds.co.uk [accessed April 2017]
[5] - 'The Impact of Industrial Agriculture in Rainforests' - http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0811.htm  [accessed April 2017]

Out on the heath

Out on the heath, low September sunlight and a warm, southerly wind over close-cropped turf and bristly gorse bushes. There are paths worn by dog walkers.

The heath is a place I read nature's stories: of rabbits and heather, sand wasps and moths, reindeer lichen and sundry, tough grasses.

The sands and flints below ground have their stories too; so does the ancient river terrace they belong to. One could imagine the life story of each and every stone. Of course, stones are not living things, but how else to describe their individual histories?

A spaniel is running over the heath, as though driven – tongue lolling, galloping, ranging to and fro, panting over hummocks and hollows. Driven by its own hyperactive, doggish lifeworld of smells and impulses.

Rabbits are burrowing here, unearthing reams of sandy soil. They nibble clumps of heather and turn them into green pads. They scent-mark anthills with small marbles of brown dung. This is their lifeworld too.





















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I stray into some woodland. A goldfich sings from the top of a birch tree, a brief twitter from a sunlit summit, hidden from sight.

Then for a fleeting moment I perceive the world as it shines in the eyes of six year-old boy. He has been given a collection of old cigarette cards called ‘British Birds’; he studies them intently, trying to spell out their names. The pictures are icons; the words are puzzles - both holding a key to the world. Taking both in his imagination, he ranges out into the garden and woodland beyond it looking for birds, driven by joyous curiosity. This is his boyish, hunter's lifeworld.

The man who gave him the cards had no idea quite how far this gift would run, how far the joy would travel down the years.

I dunno - it just happens

How can a wasp fly?

The question is a 'how' question, asking about means and mechanisms. One answer would be to explain about wings and muscles, body fluids, centres of equilibrium, the physics of aerodynamics, and so forth. These biological and physical explanations are ones many people can agree on, although they do not explain how a wasp, in-itself, is able to fly.

How can I lift my legs to walk? Once again, I can give physico-chemical explanations involving, muscles, energy, etc. However, they do not explain how I - me in-myself - am able to lift my legs and walk.  

Those scientific explanations represent a 'view from nowhere', a universalised and objectifying perspective. That is valid, as far as it goes, but it is not able to explain my experience of walking. For the act of walking or running is something directly experienced by me, and this experience is prior to, and underlies, my experience of walking understood as scientific information.

I have lifeworld information given by experience that is prior to the world understood as objectivised information.

How can I lift my legs to walk? "I dunno - it just happens!" If I am unsatisfied with that answer I now have to start investigating my experience of myself as agent. This will yield a different kind of explanation of how I am able to move my legs purposefully in order to walk.

One thing's for sure: I know that I am embodied will-to-walk.