Blog Post #7: Spring Cleaning

Sunday, March 24, 2013

10:32 a.m.

33 degrees Fahrenheit

Feels like 27 degrees Fahrenheit

Today, sitting in my chair in my backyard, I’m having trouble concentrating on nature, or, at least, nature as I have been taught to think of it. This week, we have been reading essays by urban nature writers. One essay in particular, “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in L.A.” by Jenny Price, has me focused on all of the many products I take for granted. (You should read it. You’ll never think about your “un”natural surroundings the same way again.) Of course, her project is not unlike other nature writer’s we’ve read this semester. One piece in particular (prose poem? lyric essay?) by Pattiann Rogers entitled, “This is Nature” from Dream of the Marsh Wren, is a list of many, many things from Bach to “an ice pick through the chest or a soothing hand on the forehead” to support her point that, “[n]othing that exists…is outside nature.” And I believe that. I thought I knew that. But reading Price’s essay about a nature in a thickly urban environment showed me that I still harbor the thought that nature is around us in the city, yes, but only in the green spaces. So, today, I’m looking at the objects we’ve put here, rather than the plants and animals that I’ve been focusing on in past posts. For the most part, these objects are not hard to find because they are, for the most part, much brighter than the rest of the yard. There are the metal for sale signs Andre re-purposed for hanging plant and bird feeder holders, the plastic kitty litter bins we sunk into the ground for compost bins, the brightly colored ceramic tea cups we used for growing sweat oat grass that we just left in a larger ceramic pot over the winter, a few ceramic gnomes, and a St. Francis statue that, despite our best efforts, occasionally loses his head. 

Bird feeder

Compost Container

Gnomes and St. Francis

Pot full of pots

Whose basketball is this?

 

So, even though these objects would not be here if Andre and I had not put them here, they are part of the landscape. They are part of the backyard. They are part of the natural world and have a natural history. I believe this. But…

Despite the slightly warmer, sunny weather yesterday, I spent the morning and most of the afternoon inside my house. With a few windows thrown open to the not-so-frigid March air, Andre and I engaged in the annual activity of spring cleaning. While moving from one room to the next, I tried to consider the natural history of some of the objects I take for granted. Where did the oak or maple (I’m not sure which) come from that now make the floors and banister of my house? Where does the white vinegar and baking soda come from that we use to clean almost all of the surfaces? What about the lye my husband used to make the soap we use every day. Where does the pigment come from for the many colors of paint we’ve painted the walls throughout our house? Where does the paper come from to make the pages of the hundreds of books that line our walls? What about the bookshelves they live on? About some of these objects I could make an educated guess (wood, paper) but the origins of paint pigment? I don’t really have a clue. (As a side note: the blog, Pigments: A Brief History of Color is fascinating.)