Process vs prescription

My children might disagree, but I feel I can confidently say that I am not totally technologically illiterate. After all, I am able to successfully produce and publish this blog, complete with stunning photographs, engaging videos, and links to related content, using only my smartphone. I'm not a complete Luddite, merely a partial one. For example, when it comes to learning how to make digital maps of my property, my attention span is extremely short. After about three minutes have elapsed, with great relief I give up and put my boots on to go for a walk.

I love maps, but only when someone else has made them. I feel it is a waste of my time to take what's in my head and what's evident outside, and try to represent this with pixels. Plus it's loads more fun to walk around looking at twigs and beaver tracks and hawks. Due to the global pandemic, I had more time at home this winter and was able to walk the land nearly every day. I learned lots about what plants grow and where, how water flows through the property, which spots are uncomfortably windy and which ones are best to soak up the winter sun. Since much of the land is in the process of forest succession, I have been able to observe changes that have occured since I started walking the land when the children were small.

In some parts the change is astounding. Twenty foot sycamores have shot up. Paw paws have exploded in population. I suspect that all the individual paw paw trees are actually one organism whose roots tunnel just beneath the soil surface, only to shoot up wherever they encounter a warm spot, signaling sunlight is available. It's a useful adaptation--the massive root mass can pick and choose where to send energy, so as to waste the least.

Even in the parts where we have interrupted this natural progression, nothing is really static. In the vegetable garden, each year perennial plants grow larger and cast more shade, or die and are replaced by something else. Fungal and bacterial populations ebb and flow as mulch is constantly broken down and replaced, and fresh compost is added. In the pasture, perennial grasses, clovers, and annual lespedeza duke it out with Japanese stilt grass, weeds, and wildflowers, with moisture, grazing intensity, and mowing pattern affecting each plant's performance.

To say the least, there's a lot going on, most of it impossible to show on a map. The processes in motion are intricate, intertwined, and shot through with feedback loops. This is the stuff of advanced modeling, so forget about your free mapping software. Fortunately, it's totally accessible even to the greenest initiate, as long as one is willing to step into the process and put aside prescription for a brief time.

"Prescription" can have various meanings. Merriam-Webster can help out with this troublesome word, with the following listing: "the action of laying down authoritative rules or directions." Making a map of your site and posing a question to those with experience online is a great way to gather ideas. You will receive extremely varied, creative, and practical solutions from a wide swath of folk from diverse backgrounds. But here is the rub: Without first understanding what your land has already planned and is in the process of achieving, you will have no ability to evaluate the suitability of proposed solutions. Soliciting help from an online community before asking the land what it is doing is prescription without acknowledging process.

Let's take an extremely common example that will allow me to illustrate this point. American homeowners, assisted by helpful writing from environmentalists and ecologically sensitive gardeners, are realizing that lawns are bad news. There's lots of interest in replacing turf grass with more environmentally useful options such as clover or creeping thyme. Those who attempt this transition through digging, pulling, scalping, overseeding, and heavily mulching may discover that it is surprisingly difficult to accomplish. They may find that their yard in fact wants to be covered grass and will resist efforts to eradicate it.

To your yard, turf grass, once introduced, is actually a good solution to keeping soil covered, which is one reason it became so popular in the first place. If you live in the humid eastern half of the USA as I do, you might find that not only do lawn grasses like being in your yard, they equally enjoy growing in your vegetable garden and flower beds. This isn't really a problem because grasses aren't bad in and of themselves; they are undesirable because they are taking up space that humans think could be more productive if other plants were growing there. It is true that lawns with introduced turf grasses, and also the compacted soil in which they grow, are not ecologically rich spots. The urge to replace them with something more productive is quite natural. It is the process we utilize to make the transition that makes all the difference. Grubbing out your lawn or using cardboard to smother it, and replacing it with clover, for example, is an example of prescription: You read up on the subject and decided clover was the better option, because you want to help pollinators and provide nitrogen, both admirable and worthy goals. And so you proceeded to install some clover.

But if we really want to work with nature we need to do things differently. Stepping back, observing processes, and figuring out the plan that nature has already put in motion are actions that anyone with a lawn can take. It doesn't require grubbing, yanking, dethatching, aerating, or buying expensive seed. It requires patience, humility, and quiet. You may notice clover and other broadleaf plants already showing up that you can encourage. If you have adequate seed rain in your area, and you stop mowing, you might even see native shrubs or trees volunteering, plus lots of invasive species. You might observe spots where the grass is much greener, indicating where moisture collects, and decide to enhance this phenomenon. You will save money, time, and have less frustration in the long run if you immerse yourself in the processes already occurring on your site, and follow nature's cues.

I do not mean to imply that your should take a hands off approach and let every volunteer plant remain. As a land steward it is your responsibility to decide how best to proceed to achieve maximum productivity, which means removing plants and adding features such as earth and waterworks. However, decisions concerning what to add, subtract, or modify should be made after you have some understanding of natural dynamics of your site. There will be plenty of time and space for all your ideas and creativity in the long run.

A common way to approach a project is with a mind full of ideas you wish to project onto a blank slate. A better way is to acknowledge a world of processes already in motion, which you enter with your mind as the blank slate.