Turning Inward

As I write this, New Jersey is one week away from choosing its fifty-seventh governor.   I went ahead and voted for Mikie Sherrill, my congresswoman, over Jack Ciattarelli, but the polls are scaring the crap out of me.  Jack could very well be New Jersey's next governor, which means that MAGA values - now predominant nationally - will take over at the state level as well if that happens.  I'm ready to concede that Mikie Sherrill has been a lackluster candidate, and lackluster Democrats usually don't win elections unless they have a far, far worse opponent - so long as it isn't Donald Trump.  Jack's not quite at that level of awfulness anyway.  He's awful, but not so awful that Mikie Sherrill could get elected governor just because she has a "D" next to her name.

I've gone past the point of caring.  I'm going to turn sixty next week, and I'm turning inward toward taking care of my house, my cats, and my immediate surroundings - such as the community park I've taken more of a responsibility in taking care of, seeing ass no one else seems to have the time or the desire to do so.  Waverly Park, as the park is known (it got its name from an adjacent side street), is pretty much my only interest in the public realm.  I don't belong to the Waverly Park Conservancy.  I am the Waverly Park Conservancy.

My latest project is a bold and ambitious one.  Waverly Park was - the operative word here is "was" - distinguished by the large number of burning bushes growing in its natural, more wild side.  (The park has a landscaped side on the western bank of the brook that runs through it; the wilderness side is on the eastern bank.)  My late mother could see the bushes from a window in our house and enjoyed looking at the red and orange colors of the leaves of the bushes in autumn.   Well, they won't be there for much longer.  I have since found out that burning bushes are an invasive species from China and don't belong in a wilderness setting anywhere in North America.  Inspired by what zoologist Jane Goodall, who just died recently, said about how each of us ought to help make the world a better place and how each of us has the ability to do so, I chose to cut them all down after a lot of thought about it.

It's hardly an easy task.  The burning bushes are expansive and extensive, and they have these fibrous, dense, membrane-like root systems that make it difficult to dig into the ground and plant something different, and the stumps of the bushes are impossible to remove.   I have to put plastic tarps over the stumps (in some cases, there are clusters of stumps in one spot), cover the tarps with leaves, and leave them there for . . . a year.  Given all of the leaves that will inevitably fall from the trees above, I have to mark the stump locations with stakes so that I don't forget where the stumps are when it's time to remove the tarps.  The picture above shows only the beginning of the undertaking of this project.  

I'm moving into the most ambitious phase of taking care of the park as I look toward 2026.  I put wood filler in the picnic table I donated to the park and hope to re-stain the wood in the spring.  I am also looking to plant flowers in a more regimented fashion, as I saw in gardens in Paris and Munich this past summer, and I am planning to install a birdbath in a small lawn area where the park meets the street.  I want this park to be the best and the most gratifying community park in the region.  Also, I hope to get trees planted to replace the burning bushes - in fact, the town, which owns the land, might plant some trees for me.  Which m=sounds like a good idea, considering the impenetrable soil.  I didn't realize how few trees there actually are in this part of the park until I began removing the burning bushes. 

I no longer have any interest in an better, happier America.  In fact, I still hope for a national breakup into separate countries.  I also don't care about how my state could be a better place.  I can't control or even help to control either of those things.  But I can do something about this park.