weeding exercise

visiting tilden park is something we love to do
our dog can be off leash, there are rock outcrops and big oak trees.
we went up to the quarry trail and i spent a few minutes pulling out weeds before we went on our hike. According to the law this is an illegal act. We have collectively entrusted the management of our public lands to government agencies who protect us from ourselves by outlawing resource tampering. Tilden is overgrown, muddy, choked by eucalyptus and blackberry. The forest could use some maintenance, but the law would seem to limit the power of the individual to make a difference.

FROM East Bay Regional Park ORDINANCE 38, Chapter 8 "Park Features Protection" (M/I ) SECTION 804 "Damage to Plants"
No person shall damage, injure, collect or remove any plant or tree or portion thereof, whether living or dead, including but not limited to flowers, mushrooms, bushes, vines, grass, turf, cones and dead wood located on District parklands. In addition, any person who willfully or negligently cuts, destroys or mutilates vegetation shall be arrested or issued a citation pursuant to Penal Code Section 384a.

SECTION 807 "Special Permission" however, says...
Special permission (Section 103) may be granted to remove, treat, disturb, or otherwise affect plants or animals or geological, historical, archaeological, or paleontological materials for research, interpretive, educational, or park operational purposes.

weeding in tilden from Nathan Hodges on Vimeo.

maintenance

these are people that the government is forcing to do land maintenance, usually for vegetation suppression around roads and airports.
They're being forced to actualize a cultural belief about how land is supposed to function.



These are vegetables planted in the parking lot of a Chinese food drive through in Fort Bragg CA. It looks like it was recently converted from a mass of junipers, a prickly tough shrub. The owners removed the junipers, created small berms and planted bok choi, squash, cucumber, and beans. A single juniper was left in the beds and when we walked by a man was carefully pruning away the dead branches to reveal the trunk.

He was actualizing a cultural belief about how land should function.

maintenance

a beautiful, healthy, and abundant landscape requires a lot of it at small spatial scales
replacing humans with machines may also mechanize the ecology
but for maximum resiliency use maximum diversity
we just have to start tending every square inch

photo from peter sucheki: 1/2 mastermind behind redstart
taken in blake garden

how to build a tree

how to build a tree from Nathan Hodges on Vimeo.