free digger
Friday, April 01, 2005
Feral Visions
Gathering wild mint. Photo from wildroots.org.
I went last night to ABC No Rio to see the Feral Visions slide show: “A Slideshow about rewilding, radical homesteading, and realizing our wildest dreams!”
I must say their fashion sense was amazing. Lots of natural fibers in muted earth tones--similar palette as their website. And one of the women had a fabulous neck scarf and fanny pack fashioned from the pelts of road-killed animals. I’ve noticed that when people unplug from the grid, frequently much of their liberated time goes into making and maintaining a look. Which, speaking as a drag afficianado from way back, I think is a good thing.
The presenters see New York City as a ridiculous place, ripe for collapse. Cities in general drain the surrounding land; megacities even more so. However, the presenters, in the best tradition of anarchism, were clear that theirs was only one point of view and were very graceful about not intending their ideas to be dictates. According to them, the important thing is to try to find balance, moment to moment.
As far as plant food production, they’re in tune to a horticultural approach to plant growing as opposed to agricultural. Edible “weeds” are encouraged. One of their most fascinating slides was a little patch of earth growing with lambs quarters, purslane, galazonga/quick weed, salad mache--and one bedraggled beet. The point being that the so-called weeds can take being wild, and are perfectly edible and nutritious. The beet requires cultivation, which denudes the earth and reduces biodiversity.
They also challenged the disparagement of non-native plants, which is an issue that I struggle with. I’m quite interested in native plants, and appreciate the efforts of people like Sara Stein to encourage people to restore indigenous plants in surburban and rural areas. But that’s triply difficult to do in the city, where we garden in fragmented patches of land, frequently on imported soil. Non-native plants can help restore balance (that word again). I understand Sara Stein passed away last month--she will be missed. I’m sorry that I never got see her garden in Westchester.
A final thing that I really appreciated was their clear declaration that what they are doing at their small collective in North Carolina is an experiment, an attempt to get beyond theory and into active practice. Gardening is so like that: you just have to dig in and do it. You can plan and draw and buy the most fabulous tools. But until you begin to garden, and stay with a piece of land--or a pot, or a windowbox--you never really know. And of course, the practice is the point. Gardens are always in process, never finished.