Tossing vs. Giving It Away
As I write my 84-year-old mother, who is visiting, is occupied at my kitchen counter checking all my ballpoint pens for use. She wanted some Crazy Glue, and in my search through my junk drawer, I decided to pull the neat little organizer tray out of there. By time I stacked what had fallen out of that neat little organizer tray and piled it on top, it no longer had any semblance of an organizer tray. She volunteered (I think she’s bored) to test all the pens. None of them, so far, are dried up. Which leads me to accumulation and what many of us do with it.
I told her that maybe I could give the excess pens to a nursing home, hospital, office, etc., anything but the landfill. She replied “How about a school?” Right, how about a school? We read about underprivileged kids everywhere that don’t have the money to buy school basics. Instead of this massive waste we’re creating on earth by being a “toss and buy new society” why aren’t we doing more recycling everywhere? Do those with nothing demand brand new? I’m using used stuff all over my house and I’m not underprivileged. Sorry, no pride here. If it works, I keep it shined up and use it. My car is 8 years old. I just don’t think people who get free stuff are all that picky. I’m not talking about passing down junk, but…
Take for instance one of my biggest pet peeves, flowers, shrubs, and trees for sale everywhere this time of year. It’s appalling what happens to most of this stuff. Frank’s Nursery is out of business now, but my mom and I saw them throwing 2-3 year old trees, beautiful trees, in the garbage bin. We asked if we could have them. Nope, something about posting losses keeps nurseries like this from giving those trees away. So as a loss, they are a tax write-off. Fine, but so is donating to charity.
Wouldn’t it be nice to know that all those beautiful plants that overflow everywhere, every spring end up in the garden at some nursing home, children’s play yard, and how about those subdivisions I wrote about that look like you could fry an egg on the sidewalks for lack of trees?
We need to realize when we see all this glorious growth every spring and everywhere that most of the time what took much labor, water, earth, nutrients, and as much as 5 years of time to become a substantial tree or shrub is tossed like garbage for the almighty dollar. True the losses qualify as a tax write-off but does it ever occur to anyone that maybe we should cut back on growing too much of this stuff in lieu of saving the labor, water, and earth for other things like restoration of all the forests that are burning or for more farmland for food sources instead. After all, do we really need every food market, hardware store, department store, and even gas stations selling flowers, trees, or shrubs?
Since I saw those trees hit the garbage bin years ago, the view of all the flower markets overflowing every spring makes me about as sad as seeing all the road-kill. I’ve raised a tree from a twig. Try it sometime and see if you don’t find yourself caring for that particular tree as if it were your child. To see a twig grow to a tall, strong, glorious tree that shades my yard and me against increasingly hotter summers is not much different than raising any other living thing. We need to take notice, appreciate, and nurture all living things to include the plant kingdom. There may come a time where we will no longer be able to grow anything. We’ll miss the green things.