In Defense of Nature

 CONDON’S CORNER—Out of Touch with Reality

© 2026 Marlene A. Condon All Rights Reserved

 

 [Published October 8, 2026, by The Daily Progress, the daily newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia and The News Virginian, the daily newspaper of Waynesboro, Virginia]

Out of Touch with Reality

When I was considering going to graduate school, I thought about perhaps studying climate and weather—which seemed more necessary to everyone’s everyday life—than to become the astronomer I had planned on being since the age of seven. Thus, I visited the local climatologist at the University of Virginia to discuss this idea with him.

 

We had a long discussion, which included a revelation (to me) about what climatologists need to consider when deciding what to tell everyone about expected future weather. He informed me that even if a severe drought was expected, you could not just put that information “out there” as it could seriously affect the economy.

 

Predicting a drought typically causes share prices to rise because traders become concerned about probable reduced crop yields and fewer livestock raised. This reaction in the commodity markets typically causes the prices for grains and cattle to increase, and because no one considers driving prices up to be a good thing, climatologists needed to be careful about what they reported to news outlets. This revelation bothered me because it could mean not being completely above board with all of their knowledge, a situation that I considered dishonest and thus appalling.

 

I consider our current weather forecasts to follow this same type of deceitful practice. I live west of Charlottesville and my yard has only received 21 inches of precipitation for the first nine months of 2026. That’s a good 15 inches below the amount that formerly was expected by now to be on course for getting a yearly total of 48 inches. Yikes! Yet the Virginia Drought Monitor [https://www.drought.gov/states/virginia] claims the area where I live is simply “abnormally dry”, which is an outrageous understatement.

This stream, down the road from where the author has lived for four decades, does not typically go dry. The fact that it is doing so in 2026 is significant and scary.

 

In reality, most of the streams in my area have completely dried up, not just back, including one on my road that I have never seen go dry in the 40 years I’ve lived in this location. This highly unusual occurrence suggests everyone living here needs to restrict water usage so our wells don’t go dry. People need to do their best to limit evaporation of soil water from their yards by keeping longer blades of grass, or better yet, flowers, shrubs and trees to keep water in the ground longer. (Yes, plants use water, but not as much as the Sun can take away.)

 

Yet just this morning, I saw two mowers unnecessarily cutting vineyard grass that wasn’t so tall as to be a problem in any way. (Large estates often get mowed every week, whether grass has grown or not). Later I heard mowers in two other directions, and when my husband got home in the afternoon, he reported seeing two trucks hauling lawn mowers at one of the country stores about three miles from where we live. As if that weren’t bad enough, as he continued his drive home, he saw a third truck hauling a lawn mower leaving our area.   

 

In other words, precious little thought is given to conserving our ground water by keeping it shaded by grass, which is also evident along the main roads in this area. People maintain a cut swath of plants all along their properties at the roadside. It’s all well and good to limit the growth of plants on curves so drivers can see if there’s oncoming traffic or people walking or bicycling on the road, but no, I’m talking entire roadsides cut short simply out of a misinformed sense of “neatness”. And, as you may realize, our highways are maintained similarly, which means we are talking about hundreds of miles of land exposed to sun and drying out.

 

But it’s not just the weather folks who play loose with facts. Consider the Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR). Those folks are in charge of maintaining our wildlife populations, yet we’ve been overloaded with White-tailed Deer for numerous years now and the DWR apparently doesn’t see this as a problem. But it is!

Booming numbers of deer easily destroy not only home gardens, but also natural areas, which means they exert a huge influence over the health of the environment for both humans and wildlife.

These mammals eat plants, which means their booming numbers easily destroy not only home gardens, but also natural areas. When plants are wiped out, there’s no food for other critters, from insects looking for nectar or pollen to birds searching for fruits, berries, or nuts and/or insects that can only be found where there exist plants for them to feed upon. The overpopulation of deer desperately needs to be addressed because our birds are disappearing in no small part due to starvation and/or a lack of nesting sites as deer clear areas of native trees and shrubs.

 

And this provides a good reason for the Department of Parks and Recreation in Charlottesville and elsewhere to STOP getting rid of nonnative plants they consider “invasive”. First of all, these plants often only appear “invasive” because the deer have paved the way for them to fill areas the deer depleted of native plants. Another reason they often seem “invasive” is because most people don’t landscape properly.

 

Yards and playgrounds and other such recreational areas should be mostly filled with plants to create habitat for wildlife. That is the main reason plants keep trying to come up where nothing is growing. A bare bit of earth is a complete waste of a precious resource—land that should be supporting plant life for wildlife so dependent upon it. But removing plants to then replace them with other plants, doesn’t feed our wildlife for some time. Consider an e-mail I received the afternoon I was writing this article, in which Releaf Cville imparted this wisdom: “Preserving existing trees is even more important than planting new trees, which can take 15-20 years to provide the benefits of existing trees.” 

 

When “government-sponsored” deer are depleting native plants and local government agencies, such as Parks and Rec, are depleting nonnative plants, what on Earth is supposed to feed our critters?

 

It’s high time for folks to contact their government officials to tell them to stop managing the landscape in a manner that is so truly out of touch with reality.