Gardener’s rant

Posted on Categories Uncategorized

By country roads they’re spraying herbicide

Let’s chop and mow and raise our ‘No Spray’ signs

Let’s say no to poison — send those trucks away.

 

Now is the time to plant new seed

not to cull in the name of noxious weeds

Roadside trims are still enough.

 

A gardener’s work is never done

We toil from dawn to setting sun.

 

Only when hungry bugs bite and prowl

do we surrender, throw down our trowels.

∼

I was working outside all day, both in the vegetable garden and in the yard mowing and putting up NO SPRAY signs, leaving little time to write. I thought I would write a haiku but ended up with this.

©2017 Ontheland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Published by Janice

My name is Janice.  I started blogging as Ontheland when I moved from Toronto to a rural area near Kingston, Ontario in Canada.  Over time I have found myself writing poetry, mostly in Japanese forms, such as haiku and haibun.  One of my deepest interests is the natural world: the joy of it and how we can look after it better.

17 thoughts on “Gardener’s rant”

  1. I share the feelings. Our local authority makes environmental swings from no cut regimes to slash everything. We never know until the season starts which hat they are wearing. This year is slash…..I am complaining.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. There is more growth here because of heavy rainfall but I think it’s about time we stop spraying poisons that hang around in the water, kill wildlife and so on. Our local Stewardship Council is against it but lost the battle.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  2. I’m pleased to say our local authority has stopped using herbicides and insecticides altogether. Weeds are pulled up by hand and in the parks they encourage natural predators to get rid of the insects. No authority that I know of sprays country roads. They trim back, often quite dramatically, but never use poisons.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. That’s good to hear. I was a bit shocked when I read about our spray program. They’ve always mowed beside roads. I have no idea what inspired this backslide.

      Like

      Reply

      2. It’s funny I was just thinking thoughts along those lines when a British blogger mentioned a sudden use of herbicides where he lives as well. It’s as if there has been a push on herbicides as a magic solutions for exaggerated issues.

        Like

    1. Thanks Denis…this is the first roadside spray since we moved here about 7 years ago….not widely publicized. I am hoping more concern will surface when people realize what is happening.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Good luck Janice. This could be one rare example where you can use social media to advantage. We also have elected councillors the council staff are employees who don’t care but the councillors are politicians who want re election. Also local media if they are not conservative can be used. Generally apathy in ordinary citizens has to be awaken with the “its hurting you and your family and animals” approach. Bottom line is pesticides don’t need to be used.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I am inexperienced with raising issues on my own (the group that the local paper reported as objecting doesn’t use media or try to recruit – – strange) but your thoughts fit perfectly. I’ve started by tweeting but I really should be doing a letter to the local paper…the county is mostly rural and I have a feeling many people haven’t seen the notice…I ‘m hoping they will care when they know about it.

        Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s