In my corner of the universe, I am looking out for wildlife. Most animals are in trouble, after all. Even the common ones are declining year after year.
For this reason, my spring “clean up” is different than your average lawn care commercial would recommend. I leave most things, except invasive plants, alone. I work quietly and slowly, with only my hands and a trowel, getting close to the soil and being careful not to destroy the homes of pill bugs, centipedes, ants, ground beetles, spiders, and others. If I encounter them, I gently move them out of the way. When I’m done, I put them back.
These animals are precious and beautiful. I feel a kinship with them: they are silent, calm and simple, eking out an existence in a loud and frantic world. They are also important, and when I see them, I feel a sense of relief, since a diversity of soil organisms indicates that an area is safe. It means that the nature machine is operating smoothly, keeping itself in balance though competition, predation and decomposition.
The “radical inaction” that I take in my island of outdoor space, however, is a direct challenge to American “yard culture,” the signs of which are all around me. There is a lawnmower roaring in the distance, for instance, and dueling leaf blowers out on the curb. In what has now become a sign of spring, ads of pesticide peddlers are popping up on corners like crocuses.
American yard culture is not the only threat to nature, but it is certainly one. It imposes tidiness and order on something that is essentially messy. It uses Orwellian logic to promote its products: selling a “life without bugs” as a clean life, when, in fact, it is a dirty one. It regards nature as the enemy and offers an arsenal of weapons, both physical and chemical, to eradicate it.
At the center of yard culture is fear: That big tree in your yard will fall on your house. The mosquitoes and ticks will certainly cause disease. Critters are at the gate, invading your castle and out to destroy. “Bugs” are the enemy: the beetle grubs in your lawn, the carpenter bees in your eaves. Insects bite and sting. They are a danger to children. Just look at that earwig: its mandibles have been fashioned by evolution to gnaw on human flesh.
But if danger is unconvincing, unsightliness may not be. Nature is annoying, disturbing your perfect edges with crooked lines. That big tree is dropping sap and detritus all over the place, which will suffocate your grass unless you remove it. Aggressive weeds are attacking from all directions, daring to emerge from the cracks in your asphalt and threatening your perfect green carpet with color.
All of these are either absurd exaggerations or outright lies. A tree falling on a house is a rare event. Mosquitoes and ticks carry disease, but the more we use pesticides to control them, the worse the problem will become. Most crawling and flying critters are innocuous and beneficial. Plants can easily push through leaves. Earwigs are timid and couldn’t harm you if they tried, they just want to munch on aphids and mites.
Maybe nature is villainized because it is the competition: offering much better service for free. A big tree, for example, is a sprinkler, air filter and air conditioner all in one. A plethora of wasps, dragonflies, ground beetles and others will keep the “pests” in check without a need for human intervention. Soil ecosystems supported by mats of leaves will keep your plants fertilized.
In the wake of the biodiversity crisis, the assault on nature must end. That does not mean the end of the “lawn care” industry, it just means shifting priorities: promoting nature as a solution instead of a problem. A garden of native flowers or a pond feature must still be maintained.
Along with a change in behavior, comes a change in attitude: better to fear asphalt and pesticides than sap and earwigs. An outdoor space is a wildlife sanctuary, not a living room.
These changes will not mean more pests, it will mean fewer. It will not mean your children won’t have a place to play — nature is a playground. It is also a classroom that teaches powerful lessons that we need now more than ever: like the importance of compassion and patience in a loud and frantic world.
Caelin Graber lives in Greenville. She can be reached at caelingraber@gmail.com.