Gotta Love That Pesticide!

I saw a commercial last night for a Reno hospital urging us viewers to consider their robotic surgery service for excising our cancers when they show up. Pinpoint accuracy. You're in and out and done, and can return to your busy schedule and your toxic neighborhood.


Here in the Outback, spring has sprung. Our compound is specific about lawn care. Needs to be neatly maintained, "uniform in appearance." Edged. Pruned. Weed-free. The HOA believes that this will "maintain the value of our properties." This pro-active stance is necessary, I'm sure, to safeguard the Compoundians' property investment regardless of the recession, the housing downturn, and Nevadans' falling credit scores.


The first thing the Compoundians do, naturally, is have their gardners reach for the Round-Up. And since the weather started warming here, and shrubberies started robusting forth, the rich perfume of herbicides and pesticides thicken the air, rich, redolent, and clearly the right thing to do. Their lawns indeed look like the sanctified ground, the proprietary moat, the expression of gentrified control over otherwise uncontrollable Nature, that Fritz Haeg describes with such accuracy and humor. Fritz, you are so way on target!


Meanwhile, at our house... I happen to like dandelions. They support an amazing microcommunity, from the ants that run aphid "nurseries" on tender new leaves, to the sphinx moth savoring dandelion nectar. I happen to like thistles. The native finches here cannot suppress their impatience for these plants to hurry up and bloom. They love its seeds. I like the other "weeds," too, for their amazing ability to look so lush--ie, extract so much nitrogen--from a clayey desert soil, or produce a leaf oil that repels all other pesty pests. Maintaing a lawn, in a desert, is just as absurd as supporting an automobile manufacturer that produces irrelevant cars. But what I like happens to be directly opposite the community sentiment here at the Compound. I am grateful we are JUST renting.

On my list of things to do today is pull my 6 buckets of weeds--and, finish my research with the Nevada Extension service. They provide all kinds of herbicide and pesticide alternatives for people with sanctified, verdant moats. From there, I'm off to the HOA meeting to present my petition for our Compound to become a shining example of how NOT to kill green, living things. Meanwhile, on a slightly different tangent...I found this list of how to buy organic fruits and vegetables. It makes choices so much easier! I suppose that's what the Reno hospital wants us to think, too. When you get it, a robot will clean up the cancer like Round-Up does weeds. This technology should make your choices so much easier! Maybe some avoidance-therapy should be the first choice.