Greening Your Backyard: Pissing off the Neighbors, or Spreading the Green Love?

So, I grew up in a nice neighborhood on the north side of Bloomington.  It has nice, older houses, manicured lawns, and is obviously well cared for and maintained by its residents.  I think there is even a neighborhood association that sets standards for lawn maintenance and general upkeep of the individual houses.  All in all, it was a very nice neighborhood to grow up in.  Occasionally, when I go home to visit with my family, I’ll take my parents’ dog out for a walk. I enjoy taking that time to pause and enjoy the day, appreciate the nice weather and light breezes, and admire the natural world around me.  As I walk, I notice a house’s newly painted door, a freshly manicured flower garden, or a unique flagstone path leading up to a doorway.  It seems like every house provides its own touch to the overall picture of the neighborhood. 

But then, there’s this one house.  Amidst the manicured lawns, shady trees, and coiffed shrubs, sits the black sheep of the neighborhood.  The house whose yard seems to follow no rules or laws except those of nature.  A huge ink stain on an otherwise crisp, white dress shirt.  The moldy spot on a big, juicy apple.  The unsightly piece of lettuce sticking out of a nice, white smile…. Okay, I guess I’ve made my point.  The house I am referring to is all but engulfed by the masses upon masses of overgrown trees, shrubs, plants, weeds, and grasses that encroach it on all sides.  It’s like the cute, quaint little cottage deep in the woods in familiar fairy tales, except…. not cute.  Or quaint.   In fact, you can barely even see the house itself.  This house is simply lost in the woods.  You look at this house on its corner lot, compare it to its’ neighbors (with their mown lawns, neatly raked leaves, and mulched flower beds), and you wonder if the owners have gone completely AWOL.  Certainly the neighborhood association would not allow such an atrociously-kept lawn to exist in their neighborhood?  Yet over the years it has remained as it is, maybe even grown a bit wilder, so obviously the neighborhood association has disbanded.  I constantly hear my parents complaining about this eyesore, and can only imagine what other parents and retired residents may be saying.  The poor neighbor on the left has been forced to put up a fence in the side yard, just to block from view the jungle that exists next door.  What can the homeowners of this Yeti house be thinking??

All of this I ponder each time I pass this house on my dog-walking excursions.  Each time, I pause in wonder as I notice another ghastly element of the lawn I hadn’t seen last time.  Until, one day as I was passing, I noticed a sign posted to the side of the driveway, nearly invisible beneath the leaves of the massive, over-arching tree in the front of the yard.  It is a sign that proclaims this property to be an official “backyard habitat”, certified by the city of Bloomington.  This surprises me.  To think that this house has been made to look this way ON PURPOSE?  Not just neglected and forgotten, but actually cultivated to be this way?  But as I re-examine the lot  through newly-informed eyes, I see purposeful elements instead of scattered and misshapen plants.  The shrubs and small trees placed haphazardly around the yard are actually structures providing shelter for squirrels, rabbits, birds, and chipmunks.  The weird, large stones situated at the edge of the property act as a water-break, channeling storm water more effectively into the drain at the edge of the street.  The unattractive arrangement of flowering plants, upon closer inspection, plays host to bees, butterflies, and other insects who seem to be in perfect bliss in their surroundings.  “Aha!” I say to myself, as I realize that this is a perfect example of the backyard habitats that I’ve learned about in my Roseland reading for this week.  Of course, *my* backyard habitat would not be quite as “messy” as I perceive this one to be, but it is just that perception that kept me from really seeing what was right in front of me the whole time.

In conjunction with the numerous examples of greening efforts given in our Roseland reading this week, I found this video online, which gives another real-world example of a bigger greening initiative undertaken by a community:   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY85oaBjoOs.

 If I were gonna be a bird, I would totally be the bird in minute 1:15… just sayin’.  This video reinforces the importance of taking action in your local community, and doing something NOW with what resources you have available to you.  Whether your ambition is to start your own backyard habitat, green roof, sustainable garden, or Japanese bathhouse, the key is to reach out and become *involved*, rather than just think (as I often had before taking this course), “Oh, it would be nice to someday participate in a tree planting…”  DO IT.  As Roseland says, “Getting involved brings you closer to the natural environment and strengthens communities by creating opportunities to know your neighbors.  Plant a tree!  Restore a stream!” (pg. 48).  Not only will this serve to ease your sustainability-minded conscience (oh eco despaaaaiiir!), but it will provide opportunities to increase your social capital, offer your own unique perspectives and knowledge, share the green love, and perhaps take it further.  Challenge your existing perceptions.  See what you’ve always seen from a newer, “greener”, perspective.  Maybe this is not quite as much of a challenge for those of us in this class now as perhaps it was before, but taking these new perspectives and ideas and “growing” them by putting them into action and sharing them with others, is surely a huge step in the right direction…

                       

Individual Project

For my individual project, I would like to learn how to cook using local, sustainable, and organic food available in Bloomington.  To do this, I will research the food available at Bloomingfoods, Kroger, and Marsh, through information available on their websites and by talking to store employees.  My hope is to not only gain insight into how to cook more healthy meals for myself, but to gain a greater understanding of the food markets in Bloomington (as in, where are the primary places the stores buy from, etc).  My project will include not only some new recipes that I've learned to cook, but also a write-up of the research I've done on the three main grocery stores in Bloomington, and possibly how these compare to larger, more sustainable chains such as Whole Foods or Trader Joe's, as well.

Thanks for the comments!

For some reason I was having trouble just using the comment box to reply to everyone's comments... it was asking me which account I wanted to post under, and when I selected my google account, it wouldn't work.  Hmmm.... if anybody know what I'm doing wrong, please feel free to share!

Anyway, I appreciate everyone's comments!!  In particular, to address Katie's remarks... while I agree that it can be extremely difficult sometimes to maintain a positive outlook (oh the eco despaaaiiir!), and I see your point about how helping people to become self-sufficient can create additional strains on already scarce resources, I think that the social captial in these types of situations outweighs the economic and environmental costs.  One of the points of the H2O Project (at least how I read it), was to not only provide third world countries with basic, clean drinking water, but to teach them how to utilize and access it in a sustainable way.  Education plays a huge role in these types of endeavors.  Showing people how to best utilize resources in different ways not only pays dividends in their own lives, but the lives of their children and grandchildren after them.  I think the long-term outlook of this is to ensure that people have the tools they need to provide for themselves and their families, and teaching them to do so in a way that will put the least stress on their resources will eventually lead to an equilibrium, or self-sustaining lifestyle. 

The H2O Project

     For my first blog, I wanted to address the general concept that we're all aware of as we delve into this multi-faceted course: the gross disproportionality of resources in the world.  It has always boggled my mind that every day, I have access to so many things that SO many people the world over need desparately, and that I unintentionally take for granted, just by virtue of where I am in the world, and to whom I happened to be born.  Chief among these resources is one of the most basic resources necessary for life: water.  I came across the following online article, about a Houston non-profit that is dedicated to providing clean drinking water for third-world countries:

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/spring/news/article_a3eaa49c-7944-5232-80d6-8b8c21730bd7.html

Some startling facts from the article: 
1) Every DAY, water-related illnesses claim the lives of 5,000 children under the age of 5.
2) Half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from water-realted illnesses.
3) 90 percent of the world's diseases are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygeine. 

I know you can all read the article yourselves, but essentially, the H2O Project is a direct example of the positive social and economic impact that only ONE organization can have when they utilize their resources and social capital towards bettering a situation.  Imagine if one other non-profit organization in each of the remaining 49 states dedicated themselves specifically to eradicating dirty, unsafe drinking water...  Our Roseland reading for this week talks about the idea of sustainable development as" a mobilizing of citizens and their governments towards strengthening all forms of community captial" (pg. 27).  Whether that involves affecting change in your own community's backyard, or the community backyard across the globe, sustainable development involves real people, with real visions of change, coming together to improve existing conditions for the greater good of the world's population.