TWO WAYSIDE WEEDS, flowering SCOTS THISTLE (Onopordum acanthium),
& young RUSSIAN THISTLE—(Salsola tragus) (700 m., VII.7.2010) [ click photo for next . . . ]

Here we have two notorious wayside weeds,
growing side by side on a remote dirt road in
Northeast Oregon. Scots thistle, a Composite
biennial which can easily reach two meters in
size, and a young, still green Russian thistle,
an Amaranth annual that becomes a thorny, brittle
tumbleweed once it ages.

On the road in the American Northwest.

[ tweet 3,030 ]

A weed is a species of movement

which FEEDS on CHAOS &

ROOTS in IMBALANCE.

The idea of "WAR ON WEEDS"

is itself a "weed"

FIVE TOUCHSTONES OF HABITAT ENRICHMENT

In our relationship with the Earth, it is not only the
preservation of wildness that is of prime importance.
I feel that the habitats we ourselves create deserve
equal attention, for they in their way bear striking living
witness to how we see and have solved the Culture /
Nature interface problem. My thinking here has been
shaped in many ways by my years of experience working
together with mountain farmers, high in the European Alps.
The ruggedly beautiful, and especially in the winter season,
extreme environment there have created a keen sense
of appropriateness of scale and natural limit that seems
lacking to me at lower altitudes. In gentler, more
forgiving climes, excesses of all kinds and a dearth of
proper measure go unnoticed for longer periods of time.

If we are always to leave the land better than we first
found it, here a five things I've come to look for:

(i) increased ecotone, or border complexity

(ii) increased species and niche diversity

(iii) increase health of air, soil, and water

(iv) increased sustainable energy output and
independence

(v) increased spiritual and aesthetic value,
working to benefit the whole human+environment
community

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All Photographs & texts by Cliff Crego © 2012 picture-poems.com
(created: VII.24.2012)