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Status:
"I don't understand. But I don't care, so it works out."
(set 5 days ago)
35,622 posts, read 17,953,728 times
Reputation: 50641
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheShadow
Uuuuhmmmmm......no, I don't. They're plants. Do you feel sorry for the wheat that died to make your bread? Do you cry over your salad at night? Or were they killed in a quick and humane manner, so it's okay? What about the grass on your lawn? It suffers horribly as it's beheaded every week, and it's never allowed to grow to its full flower. I have live lettuce imprisoned in a plastic clamshell in my fridge, call Amnesty International!
I think you're oversimplifying this discussion, and being dismissive.
As we humans very often are, of other life.
There are people who think only humans are intelligent, and all other beings, even apes, dogs, pigs and porpoises are only operating on instinct. Do you feel that way also?
If you're into gardening or even wild forests, the will to live that plants have will strike you. It's a will, not just an accident like a dustbunny that grows behind a dresser.
Plants contains a life force that is purposeful and intentional, like all forms of living things.
If you're only in the habit of eating plants, and basically beating them back as in the labor of mowing a lawn, you might miss the joy of nurturing and enjoying growth.
i feel like the OP more wants an excuse to be able to criticize what other people do with their plant life so they conjure up this whole "i feel sorry for the plant" to justify meddling in other people's business.
a friend told me a story about how he cut down a tree on his property and his neighbor came over and complained that it was his favorite tree. not your tree, not your business. do what you want with your plant life and leave other people alone.
Three stories: There is a large Oak at the end of our block. This poor tree is getting over run with Ivy and it's pretty much dead. We had several Junipers on our property. Over the years they have been dying from the inside out. I finally decided to put them out of their, or my misery. I cut them down. Across the street from us is a large pine. It got struck with lightning and seems to be slowly dying.
I don't feel bad when the grass is cut or when I prune my plants, but by gosh, I do feel real sympathy every fall when the commercial landscapers come through and commit mass "crape murder".
I tend to feel sorry for severely, sculptured bushes. I tend to think it's very cruel and even sadistic, to chop the "heads" off these bushes, as it's so unnatural. I can understand it better if they were interfering with telephone wires.
Around my community, they planted oleanders around the whole circumference of the property, and spaced too close together, and they chop them off at 6 feet high, whereas, Oleanders can grow up to 20 feet high. What a sad, pathetic sight. I talk to plants, and I even tell them to go ahead and commit suicide as why would you want to go through all that abuse, year round just to give privacy to the community. I just planted 2 in my backyard and I encourage them to reach for the skies as I'll never cut them.
Many people tend to think that cacti don't need much water, and I can certainly spot a very thirsty cacti in the summer here in Tucson. I just talked to one of my neighbors, saying 2 of her cacti were dying and I asked her how often she waters them. Once a month! Oh please! Put into pots, I told her you need to water them once or twice a week in summer, and even year round. I have cacti and I water them 2X a week and they're more than happy.
Someone in my community put 2 Cape Honey suckles in 2 pots that aren't big enough and every time I pass by I touch them and tell them how I sympathasize with them. I have 2 in my yard and I would never think of imprisoning them in pots.
The sight of a severely neglected plant saddens me. I know it sounds crazy, but perhaps the day will come when they create a Plant Abuse Hotline.
It doesn't sound crazy to me. I'm the same in a lot of ways. We used to have a heavily wooded lot in the country. (We've since sold it, and bought our current lake lot). My husband decided some of the trees needed to come down. I can see the benefit of thinning out some of the trees...makes it healthier for the remaining ones. BUT I felt like he was going a little crazy with the chain saw, cutting this tree, cutting that tree, like he had his toy chainsaw and wanted to play with it.
I got physically agitated by it...nervous and pacing. Finally I begged him to stop. I told him "Why did we buy a wooded lot, if you're going to cut down all the trees? PLEASE stop. And he did.
Also, while I don't really verbalize to my plants and garden, I check on stuff everyday. And I'm a counter. Currently my obsession is counting my Moon flowers and counting the seed pods. Every day. Almost everytime I let my dog outside. I go out with him, and count. Sigh. LOL
I hate to see Maples with most, if not all the limbs cut off. I'm pretty sure it kills them.
Everybody is anthropormorphizing like mad in this discussion. The natural order includes pruning. One of the reasons to do it is to extend the life of the plant. Have you ever seen a stretch of forest after a storm? Limbs fall -- the ones that fall are sick and weak. Our expression "cut out the dead wood" is based on the observation that when you remove diseased or dead limbs from trees, they can stop sending resources to limbs that are no longer contributing to the survival of the plant. The tree flourishes and makes new, functional limbs. Once the dead limbs hit the ground, beetles lay eggs in the rotting wood and birds and skunks party down on the grubs. Fungi grow, providing food for still more species. And Homo saps use the fallen limbs as firewood.
When we import trees like Bradford pears to the Midwest, where there is no insect that can eat them, we need to prune to keep the trees alive and blooming longer. (And to keep the limbs from introducing themselves unexpectedly to our kitchen tables, because Bradford pears are sh!tty trees that fall apart if you look at them too hard.)
On the other hand, it's obvious that the topiary animals at the Hotel Overlook attacked the Torrance family that time because they were angry at being shaped into animals. Probably made of Korean boxwood. You know how vengeful those bushes are!
Yes, every time I walk into Home Depot, I feel the need to rescue those poor plants.
Did you have to bring this up? If I'm buying a plant, and there's dozen of them to pick from, oh Lord! And then crazy as I am, I have a tendency to pick the uglier one because I feel sorry for it!
When I bought my last ferret, oh Lord! There's a litter of 8 ferrets, with 16 eyes one me, all saying: Pick me! Pick me!
I actually envy people who don't personalize or humanize plants!
I had read about this a few months ago...maybe here? It's kind of amazing.
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