Chaos & Rebirth

Over a period of approximately the last three years, we Floridians have seen a massive increase in individuals moving into every neighborhood. We see almost every single form of community being affected, whether it’s urban, suburban or rural. It presents itself as both a blessing and a curse. It’s really a mixed bag because the majority of these individuals only know of what the media tells them makes them our state is like.

Florida is in a constate state of chaos and rebirth, and while many states can obviously make this claim, not many can boast that in less than a week the entire state will go through all four seasons in the span of just a few days. During the winter, we frequently will see the weather swing rapidly from high eighties in the daytime to low 20’s in the evening.

This weather pendulum puts plants through something akin to the military’s hell week, and those that are weak will not survive and be culled. Many times, we will see an explosion of insects such as aphid go on the attack and feast on certain plants. Unfortunately, not only do most current Floridians not understand these natural actions but new recruits to our state don’t understand them either.

The ecosystem doesn’t have emotions like humans do, though there are many politically leaning individuals who will try to convince you otherwise. The reality is that nature is programmed in such a glorious way that it is ever busy cleansing itself thereby allowing natural rebirth to take place. Humans are however, very emotionally charged and will take the sight of bugs as some sort of personal attack. Surely, they have a personal vendetta against your garden bed.

If you do enough research and have an open mind, you’ll discover that the more humans try to solve a perceived problem, they in fact will exacerbate the problem. For thousands of years, the Karuk and Yurok peoples have been great shepherds of the forest floors within California. They had this practice down pat where they would routinely cleanse the forest floor by burning the brush and removing any trees that were dead or dying. This was a practice that was common up until the government of California decided that they knew better.

The government went through a process of intimidation with the native peoples, going as so far to threaten them with fines and arrests if they did not cease their practices of controlled burns. Since neither seemed to deter the entirety of the people, they decided to spend millions to erect a chain link fence to prevent them from entering the area. Unfortunately, a fair portion of the peoples were kept at bay because destruction of government property carried a much higher risk and fine. Over the years, this reduction in controlled burns saw significant wildfires break out and destroy thousands of acres and millions of dollars in property damages. One lone fire in 2017 saw over 250,000 acres of forest that destroyed forests, homes and businesses.

Lest you assume that the indigenous using controlled burns were the main preventative of California wildfires, the reality is that there were timber companies who would come in and use selective processes to remove certain timber and even do underbrush removals. All of these together would create a better environment that reduced the risks of fires getting out of control. Enter of course, the busy body environmentalist who lobbied the government to cease these practices under the guise of these actions putting air quality in danger. If we can simply see ourselves as good shepherds using the practices of controlled burns, timber collection and underbrush removal, while dealing with the inconveniences of short-term undesirable air quality we might no longer see ourselves as needing to rebuild such large portions of the infrastructure.

But rather than winging about it, see the reality that chaos in the form of below temperature freezing (or natural fires) has an actual intended natural purpose and that if your plant or entire garden did not survive due to frigid temperatures or a bug infestation, then there is a natural reason. The more educated a resident is, the more valuable a shepherd they can prove themselves to be. If you absolutely can’t stop wringing your hands over the loss of your plants, simply give them a good application of both water and mulch and wait to see if they bounce back. Patience is a hard-fought virtue in general but especially within gardening. If your plant is meant to survive, it will show its beauty once again when springtime rolls around.

“From the end spring new beginnings” – Pliny the Elder