The Garden And Its Enemies: Abating Conceit

 The lowly weed is the object of a kind of racial discrimination in the domestic garden, yanked from rows of cultivated plants with haste and segregated to the borders of the cabbage patch. Weeds with plebeian names are viewed as interlopers, competing with more valuable plants for the soil's nutrients. But in many cases, the plants our culture views as enemies to the garden have tremendous value in other cultures.

Keeping this in mind, I was intrigued by the words of Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900)  who wrote about the effect of one week of rain on his dried garden plot in the Northeast United States in an essay entitled, The Garden and Its Enemies.*

Warner's produce bearing plants thrived from the soaking, as did the "propagatious" weeds. One weed in particular, called the "pusley", outgrew his ability to keep it at bay; but he noted that in a neighbor's garden, a Chinese worker harvested and prepared a savory meal by boiling the weed with eggs:

Who can say that other weeds which we despise may not be the favorite food of some remote people or tribe. We ought to abate our conceit. It is possible that we destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in some other place. Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices are virtues in some remote planet. I cannot see, however, that this thought is of the slightest value to us here, any more than the weeds are.

In fact many of the most common weeds throughout the U.S. have an enormous value in other countries and cultures, like quinoa,  filaree, and lamb's quarters or goosefoot. Common weeds, like milk thistle and St John's Wort, contribute to the quality of the soil, while providing homeopathic remedies for depression and lack of energy.

So, is it possible to cultivate weeds alongside more productive plants? Not always. Weeds contain the same mechanisms to thrive as vegetables, but in most cases, the weeds are more efficient at germinating and reproducing than their cultivated cousins, therefore they grow faster, resist common pests and other obstacles to growth, and sometimes they even produce substances that inhibit the growth of surrounding plants.

Any successful gardener will tell you that plants thrive in gardens that resemble diverse communities. "Companion planting" is a practice learned from indigenous tribes in which plants like squash, corn, and pole beans are planted side by side to promote the growth of each other. As one faithful farmer described it:

Plants thrive because of the community they live in.

For the gardener, whether in an urban plot or a rural setting, weeds arrive by their design, not ours. It would serve our gardens and our harvests well if we took a good look at the potential value of a weed before letting it fall prey to our own conceit.

* From Mark Twain's Library of Humor, Steve Martin, editor, Modern Library of Humor and Wit, Random House, NY, 2000 p.386

Culture in a Suitcase

A successful restaurant owner in Istanbul talks about the life-changing journey from one culture to the next in a recent article from the Daily News and Economic Review. (12 Feb 2010 Hürriyet Daily News)

The article describes the experience of Alp Eyüboglu, who arrived in the U.S. to attend university in Boston, Mass., and faced a struggle to defend himself in a foreign culture. Cultural transitions were not foreign to Eyüboglu, however, having spent his earliest years in Germany before moving back with his parents to a town in Turkey. There his German dialect drew attention from his Turkish classmates and he suffered through the adjustment of carrying an accent as excess baggage.

Once in Boston, he said, "I learned to differentiate the different types of dialects between black, white and Hispanic people. I then learned the differences in their cultures...I received a lot of support."

But once again, his accent seemed to oblige people to treat him differently.

"It was when I started to learn about the differences among the branches of American culture that I realized I could be friends with everyone."

Sadly, his accent and appearance continued to attract the wrong kind of attention. Stopped by police for a speeding violation, he claimed he was harassed by a trooper with insults aimed at his ethnicity and religion. He responded by striking the officer.

"I could not help  myself," he said. "It was direct cultural discrimination."

He was promptly deported back to Turkey with remnants of American culture packed in his suitcase. Today he attributes his success to what he feels are the best aspects of American culture that he's implemented in his work in Istanbul. Hard work, a thirst for learning, fair play, honesty and a sense of social obligation are cultural elements that make "the American dream" come true. And from Eyüboglu's perspective, these are elements Turkish culture still lacks. The key, according to Eyüboglu, is a willingness to learn about the culture from the inside out.

Whether migration is of free will or imposed by force, transplanted individuals carry a cultural understanding from one cultural context to the next. Strangers, exiles, diasporas, emigrants and immigrants are resources for anyone who wants to understand how cultures collide and enmesh themselves. There's something to be said for carrying culture in a suitcase - and opening it wide no matter where the journey may lead.