Law and Order

           There actually once was a time when police officers walked our neighborhoods, talking to people, and keeping order and peace between neighbors by discouraging disorderly conduct of all sorts.  You can see it in old movies, set before the 1970’s.  That was when they took to cars and stepped up traffic enforcement, searching for illegal drugs at every opportunity and trying to rack up “big” arrests—those with large amounts confiscated and heavy penalties attached.

Most other laws target disorderly and criminal conduct; their enforcement creates and preserves order, which is the aim of law.  Most laws, dealing with things like murder, theft and assault, have been around a long time, though people endlessly invent new ways to enrage their fellows, so new ones must occasionally be written.  Cities, where many people live close to each other, have special codes of their own to prevent people from annoying their neighbors, either by disorderly conduct, or disorderly neglect.

The battle for civilization has always included a war on weeds, which are plants growing where they are not wanted.  Apparently, before the late 50’s, people were pretty good about keeping up their properties, because Grants Pass didn’t have to write a nuisance code regarding weeds until 1960.  The advent of television seems to have started the trend of people living inside their houses and neglecting their yards. 

Our code forbids depositing or allowing any trash to lie on properties; depositing grass clippings or other detritus on pavements; allowing mature (flowering) or seeding weeds or any plants growing more than 6 inches long on pavements.  It is written by gardeners for non-gardeners, telling one the best and easiest time to pull most weeds: as they flower, and before they seed.

Sometime in the last 30 years or so, police in Grants Pass stopped enforcing landscape maintenance codes and firemen started getting people to cut their weeds before fire season.  Since about 2004, the city combined police with the fire department as Public Safety, and passed code enforcement to Code Enforcement, soon calling them “Community Service” officers (CSOs).  Safety hazards have multiplied as too few CSOs don’t try too hard to enforce only the safety hazard codes, and we had a forest fire last year right off 7^th Street, our main drag through town.

We need to get our police and public servants to enforce laws that create order rather than those that create disorder.  The first problem is to get them to see the problem.  People ignore problems that are not theirs to fix, to the point of not seeing them at all.

There are 4 petitions on Change.org for Grants Pass, Josephine County, Oregon, and the United States, asking our leaders to order every one of our public servants to pick up litter from public properties for ½ hour every day after their lunch breaks.  I have local paper petitions at my protests.

If they seek it, they will see it, see the problem, and want to fix it.  Please sign the petitions.

                     

Published at Yahoo Voices.

Law and Disorder

           To “police” is to make things orderly.  There was a time when police kept order in our neighborhoods, walking the streets and keeping the peace by discouraging disorderly conduct that is a nuisance to neighbors and visitors alike.  Over the last 50 years, police have started calling themselves Law Enforcement or Public Safety officers, and have become more interested in enforcing state laws, the higher the penalty the better, regardless of whether such laws create order or disorder. 

Prohibition of Alcohol caused extreme disorder and was repealed in ten years, but our nation did not learn its lesson: there is no substance so bad that a black market can’t make it worse, by putting a legion of addicted salesmen on the street.  The Prohibitionists and drinkers pretended instead that everyone else’s drugs were worse than that one, and that they could be and must be banned.  They kept bans on narcotics, added marijuana to their list, made new drugs legal only with a prescription from a licensed doctor, banned a few more over the decades, and continued to enforce laws that create markets outside the rule of law. 

This discourages the enforcement of laws that create order and keep the peace by making the people within those illegal markets afraid to talk to the police, and vice-versa.  When they are victimized, they can only let it go or take private revenge.  The gangs that naturally arise and fight for territory in a black market make police afraid to walk in neighborhoods and talk to people.  The money that such criminals make and spread around corrupts people within and without the government.

Worst of all, children have become our dealers.  The drug laws make them so by having lighter penalties for children, and heavy penalties for selling to children.  Some start making easy money in middle school and high school, and never try to get a real job.  By the time they are in their mid-twenties, they are stuck in the black market, without legitimate work experience or pay stubs to show a landlord, unable to get a job or rent a place of their own.

The black market created by our laws reaches around the world to destabilize governments that were never really stable to begin with: Afghanistan, Mexico, and Columbia come quickly to mind.  Fighting between the gangs and the government in Mexico is killing thousands every month; kidnappings spill over into Arizona. 

Last, but not least, the feds buy our sheriffs and police chiefs with federal grants to make drug war on us.  He who pays the piper calls the tune, and for the last 40 years, our officers have danced to the feds’ tune, including heavy traffic enforcement to try to catch smugglers.  Thieves, assailants, and disorderly nuisances are not their concern.

Governments should not be giving money to other governments; it only makes the recipients less accountable to the people who would otherwise pay their salaries.  And it confuses and enrages the people when unnecessarily evil goodies are funded, but our sheriff, his jail, and prosecutors are not, while weeds and litter take over our cities.

                        Published at Yahoo Voices.

How to grow Blueberries in S. Oregon

Blueberries can be tricky to grow in Southern Oregon.  They like to grow in full sun, but their roots demand cool, loose, rich, moist soil, which doesn’t naturally occur here.  So you have to make it.

They don’t like being planted in soil; they like to be planted in 6” of compost on top of the soil.  Young blueberries have a spongy root system only about 4-6” deep.  As they mature, they put down a deep root, but for several years the whole root mass is easily transplanted.   As the compost is worked into the soil by worms, the soil is worked upward into the root mass.  If you plant other “gallon” (#1) potted plants into plain compost, they will eventually be left high and dry as the compost evaporates; blueberries spread their roots through the compost and sink into the soil.

That compost will dry out fast if it is left uncovered, so cover it well with loose, coarse mulch which will shade and protect it.  Pine needles, walk-on fir, or ¾” nugget bark work well; avoid fine bark, which kills soil.  Blueberries need live, loose soil to thrive.

But those roots will be coolest and happiest if they are covered with a green ground cover with roots that grow through the blueberry roots to the soil beneath or grow on top of them.  Lysimachia, also known as Creeping Jenny or moneywort, and small sedums grow on top; violets and strawberries grow through.  Sedum is slow growing but easier to control, and is easily peeled off the soil and transplanted in large mats if you can find them.

Some ground covers grow in the same root zone and compete rather than cooperate with your blueberries.  Blue star creeper killed a huckleberry in one of my yards.  Sweet Woodruff has similar spongy roots and directly competes for space.

Water is critical to blueberry growth and survival.  They can take a little dry, but too much too often will make them unhappy and eventually kill them, one reason why they like their roots covered with mulch and ground cover.  They can take a lot of water in winter; the biggest, oldest bushes I’ve ever seen were growing next to a pond that flooded them most of the winter.  If practical, site them in the wettest spot in your yard that gets sufficient sun but is not flooded in summer.

Southern Oregon is very hot in the summer.  Northern blueberries might prefer a little afternoon shade.  Southern rabbiteye blueberries, available in catalogs and some at Bi-Mart, can take our heat better.  Northern turn brilliant red in the fall and lose their leaves; southern turn various colors in pink, yellow, and red and keep many leaves through the winter.  Both types cross-pollinate; all bloom around the same time, regardless of when they ripen.   Southern tend to bloom and ripen later, over a longer season.

A Plan For Weed and Litter Control

Speech to the Grants Pass City Council, 6/20/12

  

Honorable Councilors, Mayor, and Manager:

Last meeting, I pointed out that the most useful thing that City Police can do when not answering calls is to enforce our nuisance codes, particularly against weeds and litter. 

Litter is the easy job, and should be done first.  All the City has to do is tell the citizens that our code will be enforced; people better clean up their properties and frontages.  Police should then start doing foot patrols to enforce it.  Each officer can be assigned an area to cover each week, moving his car from block to block, walking that block, and moving to the next.

I lived in Everett, Washington, when that city decided to enforce its litter code.  A lot of unemployed men suddenly found jobs by offering their litter-picking services to businesses.  Many of our larger store parking lots are a mess and a source of blowing trash.

Weeds, however, cannot wait; fire season is here, and they are seeding and drying.  We don’t need another forest fire in town.  The City should tell residents that our weed code, which forbids mature and seeding weeds, will be fully enforced next year, but this year, all weedy vegetation must be cut to 2” high, and anything growing over pavements must be cut back, or pulled if it has stickers, including shrubbery and especially blackberries and puncture vine.  Puncture vine, star thistle and other sticker weeds should not be tolerated anywhere, anytime, once they start flowering.

The City should also encourage people to water their lawns and pull the false dandelions that have grown in, and promise to drop the water rates if they use enough to justify a decrease.  Water treatment is mostly overhead; we pay nearly the same overall for water whether we use a little or a lot.  The less we use overall, the more we pay individually.  As rates rise, people use less; it’s a vicious downward spiral.  Whenever we are not in a drought, we should use our water to keep our grass green and control our weeds. 

To be able to enforce a weed code, police must be able to spot them, and should be able to tell people how best to control them.  I will happily donate my services this year to take groups of police for walks around neighborhoods, pointing out various weeds and discussing their control.

And I respectfully request that this Council pass an ordinance requiring residents to clean organic and mineral debris from their pavements and frontages as well, the better to keep our city and our storm water clean.

                     

Published at Yahoo Voices.

Controlling Bad Weeds with Good Weeds

Dry places with no tree cover or with trees with soft leaves are a challenge to control weeds in; most weeds don’t care whether or not they are irrigated, and dry ground is difficult to pull weeds out of.  Wind-blown weeds blow in and grow on naked soil wherever it occurs.  Mulch has to be renewed yearly to be really effective, but the natural leaf mulch doesn’t last.  Perennial ground covers generally need water through the summer; if they don’t and they are fast growing, they are a weed danger themselves.  English Ivy is a case in point.

One way to control such ground is to grow annual plants over the winter and spring that cover the soil and keep it covered through the summer, blocking the germination of wind-blown weeds.  The chosen plants have to be succulent enough to fall to the ground when they are done seeding, so as not to create a fire danger.  Their seeds have to drop, not pop, not spread on the wind or catch on fur or clothing, and be numerous enough that they crowd out other plants as they grow.

At least three plants fit the bill in this area:  Chickweed, miners’ lettuce, and red henbit.  The first two are also good greens for spring tonic and for chicken feed; henbit is a somewhat toxic mint, but is pretty when it turns purple as it flowers and then yellow as it seeds out.  All three top out at about 8” high and fall to the ground as they die.  They also use the same nutrients that are used by other flowering  weeds, crowding them out nutritionally as well.

This happens naturally under the locust trees down by the river at the Greenwood Overlook in Grants Pass.   The open areas have thin, poor soil that has been a mess of bad weeds that have been periodically whacked to keep the nuisance weeds and their fire danger down, but cutting doesn’t kill them.  But under the locust trees, the chickweed, miners lettuce, and henbit dominate, along with some annual grain grasses loved by dogs in the spring when they are tender. 

These broadleaf plants keep the grass thin enough to not be a fire hazard; their mulch keeps the ground covered through the summer; they come up in autumn as the leaves fall and they grow through the winter, blooming and seeding in spring.  Miners lettuce, a truly decorative plant that was taken to Europe from America, is more dominating than chickweed or henbit. 

As these succulent plants dry out, they ripen and drop their seed, which makes it easy to spread seed from one place to another.  Just pull a bunch of the plants you want after they have made some seed, and spread them where you want them to grow.  Chickweed and miners lettuce break off their roots at ground level when they are flowering, leaving the soil undisturbed.

They won’t dominate new ground quickly without a bit of help by weeding.  But spreading the seed you want while weeding out the plants you dislike will allow the good weeds to take over and control the ground for you within two years if they grow well.

Published at Yahoo Voices under The Natural Gardener.