Dec 9

Dec 9 46 Plants and Patterns

I didn’t plan on having such an erratic podcasting schedule. But my father, aged 92, had a fall on November 1st, and I have been living in Perth ever since. My sister and I tag teamed it at Charlie Gairdner’s, then, when he finally achieved a rehab bed, at Osbourne Park Rehab Hospital.

Tackling the behemoth that is the public and private health system is like descending into the land of Mordor – but with very friendly demons. Like most people who connect with these places we are fairly appalled by the scale and disconnection of the whole disease industry – but delighted by the workers who manage to remain calm, helpful and friendly within tough conditions.

Anyway, it has been an emotional and physically challenging 5 weeks – and that’s just from my sister and my perspective. Dad is hanging in there, regaining mobility, but it is an ugly and disorienting system to slot one’s beloved parent into. Any good that my sister and I – squeaky wheels and on the job everyday - have managed to effect – has been through absolute dumb luck.

So, while we have been frustrated at our inability to work the system effectively, we have learned that there are much bigger horror stories out there than ours. We have thought about taking to the press to alert the general populace about the dire state of an overloaded, disease-focused health system – but it is already fairly regularly hitting the front-pages and still nothing happens. Maybe Mark McGowan should make himself Health Minister as well….

It is all a bit raw to share– suffice it to say that I see why our borders are being kept so tightly closed – it would not take many acutely sick COVID patients to bring this system from its knees to laying flat out on the ground.

There are no quick fixes here, but I know something for sure, our elderly deserve better.

POWER OF LESS

Before Dad fell off his perch, what I was writing about in October was about the idea of LESS. So let me ease back into this thinking. We in the western world of continuing and rampant consumerism are rarely reminded about LESS.

All the big money and loudest thinking is still connected to more of everything…and this includes at the moment, more renewable energy, more electric vehicles, more technical whizzbangery, more dotcommery.

It is clear we are trying to fix the problems we are facing from the same mindset that caused the problem in the first place.

When will get started on the LESS? I’ll start with myself – in a purple patch around September and October I drove over 2000kms within WA – possibly using more fuel than a small, earth-connected village would use in a week, a month or a year. What does my LESS look like?

I feel like I am riding blindly towards a precipice but have no idea what this will look like, how my community will be impacted, where I should make change.

I have some ideas. I could catch the bus more. Public transport up and back on my journeys of 400 odd kilometres between Geraldton and Perth. I can do that. It has advantages and disadvantages for me but at this point I could easily be talked out of the bus because it is a bit more mucking about and it feels like virtue signalling. I have always liked public transport – but adding up living in Geraldton and what I need to do in Perth doesn’t make it easy.

I could walk more, which I do when it is feasible, and which I prefer. Driving in Perth, especially to unknown parts, is hugely stressful for someone as regionalised as I am.

And I am definitely going to eat less meat. Because I sleep better and my digestion works better.

THE ADVANTAGES OF LESS

Obviously LESS has huge advantages. I feel better for eating less meat, catching more buses and walking more. It is what I prefer. So my ideas about LESS might look like I am making sacrifices for the greater good – but it isn’t really a sacrifice when my life improves and therefore doesn’t qualify as virtue signalling. (I have not given up hope that I can do some subtle Humblebragging around these issues – and thanks to my nephew for such a fabulous new concept).

I am entering the territory described by that lovely book by a Melbourne duo called the Art of Frugal Hedonism; a lovely concept that needs to be re-floated. They outline what I know, that LESS can be more fun, connect you by more and deeper threads with your fellow humans and wider community and make you feel better.

Uncertain times are when we need to drop all certainty and listen to what other people are saying.

The noisiest of collective action is being pitched over the issues of vaxx/novaxx. Some are CERTAIN biological damage will be the outcome of COVID vaccination; some are certain that vaccination is the only way to protect human and economic life.

The problems are not the opinions – both have merit – it’s the certainty and the vehemence of the need to WIN the story without compromise that is problematical.

And it avoids what I see as the real problem underlying this plague. What about ecocide? What about the membrane, the delicate membrane that protects humans as they navigate life between the wild and civilised world. Something has been torn. Something needs mending. Why can’t we stop shouting at each other long enough to listen to and respect what the earth is telling us?

Stephen Jenkinson points out that the sign says: BE PREPARED TO STOP! **

If we ignore this, then that the next sign we see will be:

BE PREPARED TO BE STOPPED, a much scarier proposition. And one that has little or nothing to do with your favourite or least favourite premier and the positions assumed in relationship to authoritarianism vs personal freedom. It’s bigger than that, and it needs collective action.

LIGHTS OUT?

We are faced with having the lights turned out – with little or no back up plan for the dark. So is it going to be lights out everyone, and slugging each other in the dark? OR (cue beautiful music) are we going to embrace a new learning?

The biggest and best survival strategy is the one about strengthening relationships and widening the circle to include all those humans, plants or other species, even the ones who have different opinions to you that give you the shits.

I embrace what all indigenous knowledge systems tell us: wealth is in the networks, in the richness of diversity and reciprocity that flows between all life.

THE MYSTERY OF PLACE

So connection. ‘Connection’, rapidly becoming an overused word, needs context to make sense. So here is me in context, in my place, in my natural and human-made environment, acting on connection to country by paying attention. I have been getting down and dirty with the plants that appear regularly on my daily dog walks and rides around the ‘wastelands’ that constitute the inland zones of the Geraldton Port. This also includes designated cycle and walk paths that circle around the coast to the west of the city taking in the Point Moore lighthouse.

I love the beach spinifex plant that grows freely on the WA coast. Years ago, when I was young and silly, I even smuggled one of the spiky balls back home to Victoria so it could sit in my studio during the long cold winters and remind me of the Indian Ocean.

For some weeks now I have noticed that there seem to be two spinifex bushes presenting two different flower heads – one spiky ball about the size of a soccer ball and one with a spiky ball about half the size and with reddish, brown seeds that look like a skinny wheat seed.

Without particularly focusing on the plant, it has been sitting at the back of my mind that I might be looking at 2 different species, a formless thought that has probably been with me for years around this time of year.

Recently it dawned on me – it is the same spinifex plant, but the smaller one the seed carrier - is female - and the other is male.

I tell this tale not to make myself look stupid – although it does achieve this – just to demonstrate what riches await me if I start noticing. And keep on noticing…Part of the reason why I assumed I was looking at two different plants is because the two different flower heads tend to gather in distinct, separate clumps.

And this is where I can draw inferences of a wider pattern in the world of humans that corresponds to the world of gendered humans and the principles embraced by masculinity and femininity.

My mytho-poetic take on this can be seen at a party in Geraldton - where the blokes gravitate to the bbq and women congregate in the kitchen.

I know it is a corny cliché of an example – and I am drawing a long bow – but as the spinifex plants segregate along gender lines, so do humans. There is a pattern here, and the deep patterns of co-creation are what I am interested in observing.

PATTERNING

Here’s another story that drills down into detail and then expands into pattern hunting. I have been worried about a plant called Verbesina encelioides or crownbeard. It has been marching steadily across suburbs, the port area and into the sand dunes – and not just in Geraldton, pretty much midwest coastal WA.

Verbasina is scarily ubiquitous and doesnt have much going for it. They are poisonous to grazing animals and unpleasant to the touch. Their little yellow daisy flowers are always bright, always smiling, and are a little off as is the green of its leaves and stems.

I decided to start an experiment, to pull the plants up before they started to explode with wind-born seed – this was in October, admittedly a bit late in the season - and watch to see what happened.

I have questions that need answering.

· How will other plants respond to a space covered by this dying plant matter?

· Will their decaying body release nutrients that become available to other less robust plants?

· If pioneers plants are toughies who are world-class accumulators, will their decaying bodies release useful plant available chemicals?

· Will a better class of seedlings be able to establish themselves given that we were still expecting rain late in spring?

I decided to weed in a spot that still exhibits a reasonable degree of resilience – resilience being defined as a pretty good diversity of species holding their own against the onslaught of other pioneers trying to find a foothold.

But here is the kicker. Once I’d parked the bike in my chosen spot, I realised the yellow daisy plants I’d been whizzing past and eyeballing weren’t Verbesina, they were – as I found out later from one of my Western Weed books – Reichardia tingarnia or false sow thistle. Similar size flower and plant, fluffy seed head, but round like a dandelion. Not verbasina. And I also noticed for the first time this spring that they are alive with butterflies – which gives me pause - something loves them.

ABSENCE OF WEEDS

Who knew? Well, I do now. I am pretty sure this area near the path was covered in crownbeard in previous years. So how or why did the conditions change effecting the establishment of this lookalike replacement plant. Now I have clocked the difference I am noticing that the crownbeard has been pushed to the scruffiest, barest edges of the roads and pathways. Why, I don’t know.

AND WHERE ARE THE BINDIS?

Another thing. In my bicycle zone, early and late spring came and went without any signs of doublegees or calthrops – the first produces a ferocious bike-tyre eating thorn, the second is just ferociously good at sticking on socks and shoelaces.

· Do they not perform well in good seasons?

· Have they been pushed out by other weeds?

· Has someone been out randomly pulling them up as I have over the years, and it impacted their spread?

· Did the Geraldton council decide this species warranted the blue poison…

Again, I don’t know.

UN/WANTED FAMILY OF PLANTS

More plant noticing:

When I returned to WA to live in Geraldton and first laid eyes on fountain grass (Cenchrus setaceus) I remember being delighted. Here was a perennial, with an ability to send up large bushy flower heads that were easy on the eye and lasted most of the year: like plastic flowers only better because they didn’t degrade in the sun. They grew easily along roadsides and in other disturbed areas. I subsequently discovered it was considered a weed in the northern sandplains of WA and characterised as a dangerous South African import. Books developed to inform players in the ag or pastoral industries about plants and their desirability in the landscape tell us sternly that fountain grass is not particularly palatable to grazers and is very hard to control once established.

Although, context being everything, I have noticed in Perth that landscape designers and gardeners seem to accept them as sturdy, attractively shaped fillers in hard to grow spots.

Fountain grass I just discovered is related to walkaway burr, buffel grass, and pampas grass, all are genus Cenchrus! (Fave grass name Bromus catatonicus)

My response to the buffel grass, Cenchrus Ciliarus, was not benign – I was sure I was looking at a biological apocalypse. I first noticed this plant on Edah Station in the Murchison where it grew thickly along creek lines and to a lesser extent on the plains. At the time I was learning about Themada triandra and other native perennials and I blamed the buffel grass for their absence – obviously it is a more complex landscape problem than one overpowering plant but….

In September I visited Lyndon Station. The homestead is sited on the Gascoyne River and buffel grass is thick to the point of choking along this complex, many armed, water channel.

Apparently, buffel grass has an ability to produce chemicals in its roots that can deter the establishment of other species – hence its monocultural presentation. But to pastoralists intent on running viable stock businesses this is one of those Patterson’s Curse/slash/Salvation Jane moments – the general feeling is that buffel grass chokes out native plants, but it is fodder for cattle and holds the creeks together. Another problem is that in the absence of gentle cultural burns at the right time of the year, buffel grass becomes rank and inedible, building up to add fuel to potentially scary fire events sparked by lightning.

I do know that only a whole-of-landscape approach will make a dent in its ascendency in the Rangelands and allow for the return of other perennials.

Pampas grass (another one of the Centhrus genus) grew to great heights with dramatic plumes the size of feather dusters in the suburban house I grew up in, in Perth. But over the years I became aware that it too became a designated weed and I rarely see it anymore. I wonder what happened. Has it gone the way of camelias and hydrangeas – just a fashion thing – or was there a concerted anti-Pampas campaign that wiped it out?

THE HUMBLE QUESTION

So many questions. So many things to wonder about. Over the years I have picked up lots of bits and pieces about plants – but this relational concept is starting to push me to start to connect the dots, to put it in the context of an ecosystems – and not any old ecosystem, the one I am swimming in.

Things are getting a bit more 3D. Once you stop deliberately looking at the way things interact rather than just looking at the thing, the idea of pulsating networks takes a hold of you – the world is full of fairy lines and unknowable vibrational effects that nudge me towards a more alive and bigger space. I might be waking up to a more mythic/poetic way of looking at things.

In late October my vegie patch is exploding with seeds from coriander, flax, rocket, marigolds, tomatoes. I started collecting the seeds and on impulse just poured them all into the same bowl (the tomatoes I’ll deal with separately as they need to be squeezed out of the fruit and fermented). Next year I will have a jar with these five separate species to plant together – it’s a messy way of gardening but will give me the crazy abundance and diversity that I crave – and I now know these plants all like growing up together. Mizuna and silverbeet should be in there but seem to have been swamped by their companion plants, so next season I will give them more attention to make sure they hold their own. Soon I will collect some broccoli and seed.

My vegie patch over the cooler months was, for the first time down the back of our house block. It is the only place that gets enough winter sun and has for years been a ‘wasteland’ of a mainly monocrop of marshmallow weeds. As this was where the clothes-line was, the ground was compacted and dry from many feet.

We relocated the clothes-line and over months I pulled up and slashed the metre high marshmallows whenever they got big and started to grow piles of compost to get some activity in the soil. In Djilba, early spring, in this fairly unpromising bit of dirt, I planted some carrot seeds and a few months later was stunned to behold some beautifully-shaped and edible carrots. Inspired, I helped the remaining carrots in the ground with a bit of weeding, pulling up a marshmallow. Took a bit of energy and the use of a running hose because they have taproots that are themselves like sinewy parsnips and as I pulled it occurred to me that is why the carrots look so good! They are growing in soil that has been loosened up/pierced/whatever by the fabulous root of the marshmallow.

The humble marshmallow is doing the work of a garden fork – only without disturbing soil and losing carbon to the atmosphere and to a much deeper level than I could have gone without using a lot of force and water. And then there is the action I can’t observe but only infer, the marshmallow roots have their own sweet and sour microbial ecosystem happening that is clearly making the carrot plants feel comfortable and expansive.

Look at the principle I can work with here: Marshmallow, with their characteristic little heart shaped leaves will sprout in my garden, so I don’t even need to plant it – just let it do its thing in compacted infertile areas where I want to grow root vegies. I have the perfect soil conditioning species to go. Another great parsnip-like pioneer root to consider is the double-gee – get these fast-growing, easy-going super plants going in August/September, then slash them back, let them regrow and recondition your soil for some root vegie planting. It’s a plan…..

PATTERN RECOGNITION

So if recognising patterns is the next big system idea to get my head around – then what better way to learn than to actually recognise patterns. The male/female plant to the male/female human life is just a start.

I have been thinking about the plants that have swept in and out of my consciousness over the years, like the Geraldton carnation that created a stir for a year or two. We watched it march over the sand dunes and thought that was it for the local vegetation – but somehow it all receded and although I see it every now and then, it has not established itself like the Verbasina or the Reichardia.

If we can observe these moving patterns, then whatever we decide to do will have a chance of working with, rather than against, the natural flow. Poisoning weeds is the official response and the one where we have the least chance of judging the side effects. Better to observe what is going on to start to get an understanding of the relational flow between all the elements of the ecosystem we are working within. I have to remember I am as a child in this zone, doing interventions within systems that are much bigger than me.

I try to remain humble and curious, while citing the mantra at all times: assume you are wrong.