My weeds stand against that

Kabat, Powell, Standefer, and a story about a mountain lion

not a weed but growing like one

In the last couple of weeks, we’ve planted so many things in those wild (weed) beds in the front yard! There are now a beauty berry and a goji berry, a few varieties of milkweed, some creeping juniper, a blueberry bush (in the alpine meadow), pumpkin and zucchini, tomato and cucumber. Oh, and I unpotted my clematis and put it in the ground. It hated being in a pot and only produced two sickly flowers this spring. The sunflowers I planted last month are now hip height.

I’ve been reluctantly sharing my raspberry crop with the dogs, who love fruit, all fruit.

My friend just sent me a link to this great short essay by Jennifer Kabat about weeds and capitalism/colonialism called, “The Secret History of Weeds.” As you probably know by now, I get really jazzed about these plants we call weeds. In fact, my first year paper for herbalism school is going to be about plantain and its cousins (Plantago genus, not the banana).

I just learned that there’s a movement (and book by the same name about weeds of NYC; here’s an article by the book’s author) to call weeds “spontaneous urban plants,” and, well, yes!!!!

Weeds are spontaneous diversity, acting against the homogeneity of monoculture farming and landscaping (think perfect grass lawn), or so says Kabat, like this:

“The US spends $20.5 billion annually on pesticides for monocultures to grow crops, spreading 23 million tonnes of fertilizer on high-yield varieties of corn, soybeans and wheat. Most fertilizer is nitrogen-based and requires methane to be produced. Methane is the main driver of climate change. 

My weeds stand against that. They grow outside the rows, outside the lines, asserting other narratives. These plants no longer deemed useful, which capitalist farming sets out to destroy, can help reclaim those lost landscapes.”

Late-Stage Capitalism & Environmental Havoc

I’m spending this week prepping for a discussion I’m hosting at the Greensboro Bound Literary Festival (11 a.m. at the history museum if you’re around) between Mark Powell, author of the novel Lioness, and Katherine E. Standefer, author of the memoir Lightning Flowers. I can’t wait to hear from these authors, and what an interesting pairing! It’s always nice to chat with authors about how their books were born, and an added plus to be able to talk about environmental issues.

Though very different in terms of story, each book is set against a backdrop of environmental and political decay, misuse and overuse of resources—a corrupt water bottling operation in Appalachia metal mining in various African countries that change the landscape in so many ways. It occurs to me now that they are both also stories of grief and loss. The narrator of Lioness has lost his son to cancer and his wife has left because of that grief; Standefer charts the story of her diagnosis of Long QT Syndrome, a heart signaling disorder that could kill her at any moment, forcing her to change her life and leave the landscape that makes her feel most alive, alongside other losses that are a direct result of illness.

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Sidebar: Mountain Lion Sighting

Lioness, as you might imagine, conjures the mighty mountain lion (aka cougar), supposedly extirpated from North Carolina, and generally from the Appalachian region, in the late 1800s…and while there are numerous sightings reported to this day, the authorities on the subject have not found more direct evidence that they are still around. In fact, the NC Wildlife website actually says it’s often a matter of forced perspective that makes people think a regular house cat is a mountain lion! What in the fuck? So they don’t exist.

Thing is? I’ve seen one. It could have been nothing else. Certainly not a house cat. Definitely not a bobcat. Definitely not canine. You know when you see something that should be unseen? The air stills. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Time does something weird for just a minute. It was just across one of those cut areas where they put electrical towers between treelines. The lion came out for just a second, both Aaron and I clocked it, the lion saw us and moved along the treeline for just a few seconds before loping back into the trees. Now, this isn’t typical lion behavior and certainly not in your typical habitat, so maybe it was an escaped big cat or...a specter? But it was no trick of the eye.