Wasting Garbage

If people put wasted food into a compost pile, they wouldn’t have so much trouble with bears and raccoons overturning their trash cans. You don’t need a bin to compost; just place scraps into a pile in an out-of-the-way spot away from the house where bears, raccoons, opossums, and other critters can recycle the material by consuming it. Anything they don’t eat will be broken down by microorganisms into rich soil for your garden.

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

You may have heard that humans are made of “stardust”. Although you could imagine this ethereal statement springing from some poet’s imagination, it’s quite true. Your body regenerates most of its cells every seven to 15 years, but the elements that comprise those cells have been in existence for millions of millennia.

The hydrogen atoms in your body were produced at the beginning of time when the universe originated with the Big Bang. Carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms were created in burning stars, and the heavy metals or elements essential for human health in trace amounts (such as iron, copper, and zinc) are the result of stars that exploded (supernovae) long ago.

 

In other words, humans and all life forms are dependent upon the recycling of matter, especially that which is organic—carbon-based matter that comes from the remains of other life forms, such as plants and animals and their waste products. Because existing matter must be reused in the creation of new lives, it should never be sent to a landfill where it’s essentially locked away and unavailable.

 

Most landfills contain little dirt, very little oxygen, and therefore few if any microorganisms, which means any biodegradation of the discarded, tightly compacted material takes place extremely slowly. A landfill study conducted by University of Arizona researchers uncovered still-recognizable 25-year-old hot dogs, corn cobs, and grapes, as well as 50-year-old newspapers that could still be read.

 

(Talk, Earth. "Do Biodegradable Items Degrade in Landfills?" ThoughtCo, Oct. 29, 2020, thoughtco.com/do-biodegradable-items-really-break-down-1204144.)

 

Yard trimmings that can naturally decompose on their own comprise 6.2% of waste put into landfills. Food, another naturally degradable substance, accounts for another 21.9%. Thus, about a third of landfill deposits consist of organic material that’s trucked from suburban homes, restaurants and other businesses, hospitals, and every sector of society to be buried along with the rest of people’s discarded paraphernalia.

 

Instead, it should be composted, whether at homes with yards, at the landfill, or at special composting facilities. The material of life is not the “garbage” many people consider it to be, a word suggesting organic matter is worthless or useless.

 

Yet it may be difficult to alter people’s feelings about keeping organic material around to decompose on their property. Consider the following exchange from a social media site.

 

A woman posted a photo of a large pile of yard trimmings in her driveway and wanted to let folks know she was looking for someone to take it away. In the background of the photo, you could see a fancy garden of well manicured shrubs and trees with nice wooden fencing delineating the different parts of the landscape.

 

Knowledgeable gardeners would never part with such yard “debris”; they would realize it should be composted to be used to enrich the soil for those garden plants. Indeed, someone immediately suggested just that, while another person wrote in support of that notion and to add that it would be broken down and gone by spring.

 

At this point, yet another lady chimed in to ask which spring (2022? or 2023?) and to make clear it was already summer—the obvious intent of her comment being that she wouldn’t want those yard clippings sitting around in her yard for at least a year or more! For her and the lady who posted the original query, this material simply had no place in their well kept yards. They saw the unwanted organic matter as garbage that would rot and destroy the ambience of the beauty they had painstakingly created.

 

Introducing such folks to the realities of life is the only hope we have of possibly getting them to recognize the many reasons it’s vital to recycle organic matter. Even in space, stardust is recycled.

NATURE ADVICE:

 

Woody yard trimmings can be composted via a brush pile. It’s easy to build one. Simply pile logs and larger debris in the desired location, then add smaller branches, twigs, and even leaves on top of the assemblage. As with a compost pile, rich soil will be found at its base within a few years. Place the pile in a far corner away from the house where you or Mother Nature might plant flowering vines to grow over it.

 

NOTE: A brush pile can provide shelter, nesting areas, and “homes” for numerous kinds of wildlife. During summer, ground-nesting mammals and birds might build nests at the bottom. After the logs have begun to rot, salamanders can hide in them during the day, waiting for the cover of darkness to start hunting for food. If the logs are rotted enough, Eastern Five-lined Skinks and other lizards may lay their eggs there.

 

In winter, the brush pile will be used for shelter from harsh weather and for protection from predators. Birds will forage nearby so that they will have a place to hide if a hawk comes hunting. At night, some of these birds may sleep among the interlocking branches. Amphibians (such as treefrogs), reptiles, and many kinds of insects will spend the cold months in a dormant state inside the rotting logs.

 

The brush pile can also provide a learning experience for children (and adults!). Poke carefully at the decaying tissue and you may find millipedes and pillbugs, all of which dine on dead plant material, thus breaking down the brush pile. Bacteria and fungi are also present, drawing life from the lifeless wood and decomposing it in the process. Lichens (complex plants composed of an alga and a fungus in a symbiotic relationship) grow upon the wood surfaces, releasing a weak acid that breaks down plant tissue. Spiders and centipedes prey upon the scavengers (those organisms feeding on the wood), while skunks, birds, and other predators tear apart the logs in order to make a meal of the variety of creatures living there.

 

A brush pile is valuable in so many ways!

 

Oriental Bittersweet—A Murderer Who Kills by Strangling or Smothering His Victims?!

A Northern Mockingbird defends its larder of Oriental Bittersweet fruits that would help it to survive the winter of 2019-2020.

Thanks to misguided human intervention, the vine was cut on this tree that had stood alongside a dirt road for decades, which resulted in the mockingbird losing its dependable food source for the following winter. The Oriental Bittersweet started to regrow in the spring of 2020 (seen here at bottom up to middle of photo), but wasn’t ready to make fruits by the winter of 2020-2021. How was depriving this bird (and possibly other animals) of food throughout the harshest time of the year helpful to our natural world?

ALL TEXT AND PHOTOS © Marlene A. Condon

 

A “fact” sheet from the Blue Ridge PRISM (https://blueridgeprism.org/factsheets/), a group whose “mission is to lessen the negative impact of invasive species on both private and public land within 10 counties located in Virginia’s northern Blue Ridge region” (https://blueridgeprism.org/) declares that Oriental Bittersweet “murders forests, strangles trees, [and] smothers [the] understory.”

 

Wow. This statement exemplifies perfectly how people concerned about “invasive” plants tend to employ derogatory accusations to prejudice the reader’s opinion right from the get-go. And that’s not all.

 

Continue reading and you find an emotional essay that, rather than straightforwardly supplying facts, instead infuses this vine with uniquely human behavior: “[T]his attractive vine has an aggressive agenda.” Honestly? For bittersweet to have an “aggressive agenda”, it would have to have brains to carry out a conscious and deliberate plan of assault upon the trees of the forest.

 

This type of barrage—one that accuses so-called invasive plants of behaving in the manner of disreputable human beings—is typical of much nativist rhetoric. It has always struck me as odd because we’re talking about plants.

 

So! Let’s move from the fantasy of plants behaving as if they are bad people to the reality of plants behaving quite naturally as plants.

 

What do plants need to do to perpetuate their species?

 

·    They need to grow to reach maturity; in the case of vines, that growth is usually upwards. Many vining plants cannot flower—which they need to do if they are to reproduce—if forced to grow horizontally.

·    Plants need to get their offspring into the wider world in case catastrophe strikes their original position. This feat is often accomplished with the help of animals that enjoy eating fruits produced by the plant. Whether the animal eats the fruits on the spot or carries them away, the seeds within the fruits may successfully get through the animal’s intestinal tract to land far away from the parent plant, allowing the species to spread for the continuation of its kind.

 

In other words, what people see as an “infestation” is simply a species doing what it must to keep from going extinct. It doesn’t know some people have a problem with that.

 

The aforementioned “fact” sheet notes that Oriental Bittersweet “thrives in disturbed soil and tolerates full sun and dappled shade. It may occur abundantly around old home sites, in fields and fencerows, along road edges, and in forests throughout the Blue Ridge.” The sheet goes on to mention that, “This invasive vine now infests the eastern U.S.” and “has been a serious pest in New England since the 1970’s [sic].”

 

What does this paragraph tell us? It says that rather than being “a real beast” as the fact sheet opines, Oriental Bittersweet is doing what comes naturally: It’s responding to what people do to their environment, a fact pretty-much always overlooked by nativists in their diatribes.

 

Disturbed soil is part and parcel of home sites, fields and fencerows created by people to grow crops, roadways because you can’t make a road without disturbing the land, and forests throughout the Blue Ridge because these mountains were denuded by logging—more than once in the history of the country.

 

And let’s not overlook another fact: People intentionally brought bittersweet here to grow in their gardens. This species is not the “invader” suggested by use of the term “invasive”. It should more accurately be described as an escapee.

 

Is bittersweet problematic? This question can’t be answered by a simple “yes” or “no” because the answer depends completely upon a person’s point of view, which is dependent upon what is most important to him.

 

For the person (such as I) who truly cares about wildlife and disappearing habitat in developed areas, the answer is no. Because most folks maintain very few plants around their homes (and even farms nowadays), there’s not much available for animals (especially birds) in need of food, shelter and nesting sites. Bittersweet that has climbed high into a tree on the edge of someone’s property or along roadways provides these necessities that are absent from most yards (and farms).

 

Does it matter if the vine’s presence kills the tree? In the natural world, there is nothing sacrosanct about a tree, and from the human perspective of someone who wants to help our feathered creatures, it shouldn’t be a problem either if the vine is providing more for wildlife than the tree does.

 

Now, if you’re managing a forest for lumber, your perspective is totally different. Since you look at every tree as a source of income, you want what’s best for your purposes rather than what’s best for wildlife.

 

And what if you’re an environmentalist who wants the natural world to more closely resemble its former self before Europeans arrived? Well, that’s a fantasy that can never become reality. Yes, you can work endlessly on your (and perhaps others’) property to get rid of the many plants people brought here some time ago, but the cat’s out of the bag. It’s a waste of your life, especially if your efforts don’t improve living conditions for wildlife, the main reason often given for “invasive-plant” removal. And if you’re employing pesticides that poison the Earth to accomplish this goal, you’re just adding insult to injury.

Lastly, I’ve been asked if I would be unhappy if a neighbor planted Oriental Bittersweet along my property line where it could spread onto my land. Mother Nature—who’s certainly a neighbor—has done just that, as I find this vine growing here and there around my yard. As it has yet to show up where I could let it grow without it being a problem for my preferred plants, I pull it out if it’s small enough and persistently cut it if it isn’t (so it can’t flower).

 

Gardening is the perpetual process of making decisions about which plants you want to encourage and which you don’t. Anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling himself.

 

NATURE ADVICE:

 

If you believe poisoning (pesticiding) our environment is better than allowing so-called invasive plants to grow, you really ought to rethink your perspective. Instead of buying into denunciations of these plants, get out into the world and observe it carefully with an open mind that will allow you to recognize the truth: The presence of nonnative plants that assist wildlife to survive is far better than the barren area that’s typically left when people remove “invasives”.

 

Few people make an effort to replace the plants removed because they mistakenly believe native plants will (magically) show up. It's possible they might, but the usual reason “invasive” plants grow where they do is because they are more suited than native plants to the environmental conditions in these locations.