If this is your kind of thinking, my book was just released last week. You can order a signed copy here. I'm also having a book launch on 9/30 at 2pm, complete with prize raffle (seeds, plants, books, tools, local goods). Here's the Facebook event page. The book launch is in the Hardin Hall auditorium on UNL's east campus and will include a one hour presentation based on the writing. Come party with me!
When we are pushed to think in a new way, from a new perspective that challenges our world view or concept of self, we feel defensive. We feel as if we are being judged or criticized. We feel shamed, guilted, talked down to. This natural response may in some ways be tied to the burgeoning realization that we've broken personal or cultural ethical codes and are being asked to think critically about why and how, as well as the ramifications of our thinking and acting. When I ask what other species some plant supports, what value it brings beyond aesthetic function to humans, I'm not telling you to screw off and that you blow chunks. I'm asking a question meant to draw you out of a single perspective, out of human supremacism, and out of an assumption of power and freedom. I'm asking you to connect to the world in what is now an almost foreign way -- through the other. I'm asking you so much, and certainly too much, as our ethics have not evolved nearly as fast as our ability to induce climate change and mass extinction. I'm asking you what love really is, who we are as a species or culture, and if you will dare to be empowered enough to fight for the equality of all of us.
If this is your kind of thinking, my book was just released last week. You can order a signed copy here. I'm also having a book launch on 9/30 at 2pm, complete with prize raffle (seeds, plants, books, tools, local goods). Here's the Facebook event page. The book launch is in the Hardin Hall auditorium on UNL's east campus and will include a one hour presentation based on the writing. Come party with me! Don't clean up your fall garden. It's not the living room after the kids have gone to bed, strewn with foot-impaling LEGO pieces. Butterflies and caterpillars will be overwintering in leaf litter, as will some bee larvae in hollow stems. Countless other creatures will be doing the same, while birds will come for shelter and seeds on the snowiest winter days. Plus, all those plants look gooooood in winter -- way better than a moonscape.
Over the years I've written several pieces tackling our penchant to clean up the garden, as well as to assume fall isn't the ideal time for planting. Why is fall so perfect for new plants? Cooler weather puts less stress on them and you, and we tend to see more rains. Mid to late fall is also ideal tree and shrubbery time, especially once the leaves fall off (no leaves = far less stress). Come spring your fall-dug plants will be better rooted while likely flowering sooner than if you planted them in the spring. 7 Reasons Not to Clean Up Your Fall Garden Get Year-Round Good Looks With Matrix Gardening Why Fall is the Best Time for Planting 10 Native Flowers to Beautify Your Winter Garden |
AboutBenjamin Vogt's thoughts on prairie gardening in Nebraska. With a healthy dose of landscape ethics, ecophilosophy, climate change, and social justice. Archives
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In a time of climate change and mass extinction how & for whom we garden matters more than ever.
"This book is about so much more than gardening." |