October 24, 2023
Miscanthus giganteus
The third Thursday in October has historically been our time to take down the Master Gardener demonstration gardens at CCE and prepare them for winter.
Not this year. We couldn’t do it. Of course we could cut back the Hostas; they are always the first to go mushy even if there has not yet been a frost. Some of the Solomon Seal was ratty enough to merit the clippers. But with no frost yet and temperatures still in the zone of warm, most of the garden remains vibrant. We couldn’t bring ourselves to cut it down. Climate change? Here is living proof.
We did, however, proceed with our ritual removal of the massive Miscanthus giganteus that forms one end of a garden bed filled at the other end with a stand of Joe-pye and an elderberry bush. All hands gather and with loppers and clippers and conversation we dispatch it.
Globally speaking, this giant plant has much to recommend it. It offers a potential alternate source of ethanol with far fewer downsides than corn. It can grow on marginal land, is water efficient and non-invasive and is good at absorbing carbon. Various sites inform me that miscanthus’ high carbon to nitrogen ratio makes it inhospitable to many microbes, creating a clean bedding for poultry, cattle, pigs, horses, and companion animals. Miscanthus can also be used as a fiber source in pet food. Perhaps I should have brought some home for Tanner to sleep on or eat!
Much as we are challenged by this massive grass, we also honor it. Hence the ritual bracketing of the season with its takedown.
This year as we performed our ritual reduction of this giant grass to stubble, we got to talking politics. A sense of gloom and doom came over us as we considered the global situation and our American mess. One of our number honestly copped to a sense of relief in knowing they would not be alive to see the results of our failures.
In the midst of our talk on contemporary failure, I mentioned that I had recently watched the first half of the Ken Burns program on the American buffalo and was sickened by what it portrayed. As fellow choppers chimed in on whether or not they had seen it and as many suggested that we were all to blame for the slaughter that occurred, I heard myself say, rather forcefully, “I am not copping to responsibility for the disappearance of the buffalo.”
I am more than willing to cop for the many mistakes I have made in my life and for the failure as well of my generation of feminists to secure the changes we brought about. But thinking about the buffalo I insisted that white men of a certain kind were responsible for their destruction – white men constructed by patriarchy and living under unregulated capitalism. I got rather vehement.
Driving home, I asked myself why I was so insistent on my innocence in this matter. Here is my answer. A universal assumption of guilt implies something about the essential and hence inevitable nature of human beings. If we all, given the chance, would have slaughtered the buffalo, then there is no hope for a better future. And I do not believe that. I believe we live in a culture that is patriarchal in the extreme, one that fosters greed and violence, and, to put it most simply, one that constructs men as mean and women as stupid.
To me, the slaughter of the buffalo was made possible by the presence of three things: the technology of mass destruction; the capitalist market that rewarded such destruction; and the stomach for doing it.
Native tribes lived for 10,000 years in harmony with the buffalo, killing what they needed to keep their own people thriving, creating a relatively stable ecosystem. Would they have had the stomach for mass slaughter had they had the technology and the market? I don’t think so, because it seems they lacked the third requirement – the stomach for it. Their culture according to the Burns documentary, was quite different from that which propelled certain 19th century white men to murder buffalo en masse.
The possibility of a different culture is what I cling to. I don’t believe human beings are inevitably destined for patriarchy or the kind of unbridled capitalism that flourished then and even now. I believe we can be different.
While I was on vacation this summer, I read Frans de Waal’s book about the bonobos, the creature he calls “the forgotten ape.”
Unlike the culture of chimpanzees and gorillas, bonobo culture is female-centered and non-violent. There is neither sexual assault nor infanticide. If a male bonobo attempts any form of unwanted sexual activity, the female bonobos unite to drive him off. Because females may mate with many males, the killing of one male’s offspring to support another male’s dominance doesn’t happen because ownership of women and children is not present.
We share as much DNA with bonobos as we do with chimps and gorillas. This fact is conveniently forgotten under patriarchy which seeks to insist that its constructs are natural – look at the chimpanzees – and hence inevitable. I say, look at the bonobos and take heart and strength and energy. There is nothing in our DNA that says we as humans must be patriarchal.
It is not clear that we will be able to take down the gardens this coming Thursday either. No frost is predicted for this week. Perhaps this year we will be working well into November. If so we will consider it a blessing. More time spent with each other and our plants. An alternative culture.
Yes, we are living under patriarchy. And, yes, we can and must create alternative cultures. And, yes, even in the midst of global and local chaos and violence.
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