June 16, 2024
HUU Minute with Judith Dreyer
I am preparing a talk for LLI as part of a class offered by the Master Gardeners. I have been researching the “flip side of invasives” for several reasons…to flip the narrative from war on specific plants to what they are trying to tell us and, more importantly, what they are doing for us. As you can imagine, I’m going “out on a limb” here. (pun intended)
I am looking at specific troublesome species. Guess what? As Merle calls our little woodland area The UU Arboretum, many so-called invasives live here.
We know language is powerful.
Reframing a problem/situation can lead us out of the woods of negativity and destructive thinking and get us out of the war mentality. We can create a constructive way to work with problems in our landscapes.
Now, none of us want our hillsides covered in Kudzu.
But we forget to ask better questions: Why is this plant here? What does this plant show us? What can we learn from this plant as a teacher from the forest? How can we manage our landscapes with more mindfulness of the interconnectedness of all the species that fill our land, of which we are only one of many?
Our little thicket contains so much nature knowledge: plant and tree medicines, volunteers repairing and building soil, stabilizing soil for erosion prevention, providing food and habitat for local species, the non-human ones, and so much for us.
In his book Invasive Plant Medicine, Timothy Lee Scott suggests that the early immigrants to this continent may have been invasives. Or maybe we can reframe the labels from invasives to pioneers?
UU is about diversity and the unique contributions of all individuals and species. After all, we invaded this continent not long ago. Were the early settlers represented by our Founding Fathers invaders or pioneers?
It’s up to us to decide how we view these plants and their contributions.
Let’s reframe the issue from waging war to one of co-creating with nature, including mutual cooperation.
Life With Father shared by Richard Foust
Childhood experiences remain with us throughout our lifetime. My father, Richard Foust Sr., was born on November 12, 1925, and his childhood memories were choreographed by the Great Depression that began when he was four. He lived in a small village in the soft coal region of southwestern Pennsylvania. The mines closed during the 1930s, and the miners struggled to put food on the table. Families living in the “Company Houses” moved in together to save on rent.
My grandfather, Dwight Foust, was the town Postmaster and the proprietor of Foust’s garage. The income from the post office enabled Dwight to provide for his family. The villagers who could find work had to drive 10 to 20 miles daily and required an operational vehicle and gasoline to reach their jobs. Dwight extended credit with no interest and long repayment times to anyone with a job.
My father was an automobile mechanic, a trade he learned from his father. He worked long hours for very little income and often worked pro bono. I remember many conversations between my father and his dad: “How many hours should I charge Walter Secora for the brake repair on his DeSoto?” Dad would reply, “I spent three hours working on Walter’s car, but he got laid off last week, so just charge him for one hour.”
My earliest photograph of myself was taken by my grandmother when she brought me and my mother home from the hospital after I was born. My dad is standing in the garage in his oil-stained work clothes, holding me as a newborn infant.
I worked side-by-side with my dad in Foust’s Garage, learning automobile repair like he had learned from his father. He often told me, “If you don’t want to do this for the rest of your life, you need to go to college and get an education.” Dad was not a wealthy man. He did not own a car until 1956, when I was 11.
The love of his life was my mother. He loved to repeat the story of walking across the second-grade classroom he shared with my mother and a dozen other students to hand her a ceramic figurine of a cocker spaniel dog. That figurine is now a family heirloom in my son Richard’s possession.
On January 17, 1943, my mother’s Aunt Audrey and Uncle Frank King drove my parents to Winchester, Virginia, where they were married in the parsonage of a United Brethren minister. Their devotion to each other never wavered. They supported each other through tough times and were always there for each other. Although Dad had Alzheimer’s disease, his love for my mother never lessened. I will forever remember the image of my dad standing at my mother’s gravesite on a cold, windy January afternoon four months after she passed away. After standing there silently for 15 minutes, he turned to me and said, “Okay, we can go now.”
Through his examples, my dad taught me responsibility, to work, and most importantly, how to Love.