How do you reconcile killing with gardening?

Gardening
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When I was little and helping my Dad in the veg patch, if he cut a worm in half with his spade he would now tell me there were two worms. Unfortunately these days there is nobody to reassure me when I kill something while gardening and this morning has been painful.

As OH is convalescing I am mower in chief. We are rewilding as much as we can of our two hectares but we still need some lawns round the gite and the house and paths through the long grass and weeds. With much else to do I don’t get round to mowing very often so even the grass on the lawns is longish. And absolutely full of baby crickets and grasshoppers and moths and butterflies and there I am, carving my murderous way through the middle of them on the John Deere tractor. I just hated it!

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I feel the same way and slow down and wait for any low flying bumblebee, for example, to get out of the way, but I’m going at walking pace, pushing a lawn mower.

I step over a beetle on the footpath, but what do you do about walking across a lawn where you can’t see these tiny creatures under your feet, or on a sit-on motor mower across long grass?

I’m sure Buddhism has an answer somewhere.

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I feel terrible killing anything… only if life and limb are threatened will I deliberately strike…

On the other hand, if it is accidental… I manage to forgive myself. I make a lot of noise, stamp feet… etc… and trundle the little mower very slowly…

I feel happier now that we have left more to grow wild, with the resulting explosion of wild flowers, insects, birds et al… marvellous.

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We have hundreds and hundreds of baby frogs. OH has devised an approach that he feels confortable with. He walks a path through the long grass, then mows that strip with blases as high as possible. Leave an un mown strip and walks the next one, and mows it. Etc etc.

Then eventually starts reducing strips,

The idea is that with high blades you will avoid most things - he mowed over the sweetest mouse nest last year, and they were fine. And by reducing long grass in segments things can hop/crawl to safety when they hear you coming.

If nothing else it functions for guilt reduction!

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Me too. I try to look out for the insects and avoid them as much as possible. It leaves a crazy track behind but it feels better. And I rescue spiders and grasshoppers, who find themselves in the pool, before they end up in the skimmers.

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TBH I don’t worry about the insects I find in the lawn, and while I will avoid something if I can, some of these things will eat many of the other things given a chance without a care in the world. So I just mow as needed - none of the bitey, stingy things ask if I mind being bitten or stung.

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+1 :wink::yum:

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I think only the half with the mouth survived :thinking:

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About five or six years ago a mummy ladybird seems to have made her way into our upstairs bathroom. Every year dozens and dozens of them would hatch out and had to be rescued and put safely on the window ledge. The numbers diminished over the years but even now we still sometimes find a late developer that needs a helping hand to freedom.

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Lawn, What lawn? :joy:

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11

This thread rings so many bells for me. Until a year or so ago I dredged the swimming pond on a daily basis bringing up all manner of mud, branches, leaves and things that move. Each time I deposited the net contents onto an old tea tray and painstakingly picked out all the signs of life (dozens of tiny young newts for example) to put back in the pond.

This started mainly because I didn’t want my feet becoming mud covered but now I realise that if I only swim, not wade, my feet touch nothing because when I rest and turn at each end, because of the accidental slope that I originally created with the digger there is no mud there. But it is a bit slippery so I have a special pair of rubber slip on shoes (those with a movable strap) which make a better grip. I always have the strap at the back, unlike my similar house slippers, to stop them coming off as I swim.

So now I no longer dredge, happy in the hopeful knowledge that I am harming nothing. :innocent:

Yesterday as the 2 aides soignante were leaving one of them slipped on the way to the gate and I apologised immediately fearing that I had missed a bit of dog do. She re-assured me with the reply that it was only a slug, but one I had seen earlier and forgotten to remove, so apologies still necessary. But there were peals of laughter when I declared with mock pain and solemnity ‘pauvre limace, il est mort maintenant :slightly_frowning_face:’.

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Hi all,
Interesting dilemma. I came across this post by Hugues Mauret on LinkedIn which you may find interesting: :no_entry: La tondeuse, ennemie de la biodiversité :honeybee:

:-1: La tondeuse ne laisse aucune chance à la biodiversité. Elle hache menu animaux, :snail::lady_beetle::bug::spider:, et végétaux :cherry_blossom::shamrock::blossom::herb:
:-1: L’herbe tondue laissée en gros tas dégage du méthane (CH4), gaz 30 fois plus réchauffant que le CO2. :fire:

:+1: La fauche coupe l’herbe à sa base et ne la broie pas. Elle permet aux animaux de s’enfuir ou de retourner à leurs occupations. :honeybee::lady_beetle:
:+1: Après 1 ou 2 jours de séchage, on peut rassembler le produit de la fauche et s’en servir pour pailler les arbustes, arbres, haies, potager ou bien le composter ! :deciduous_tree::evergreen_tree::tomato:

:point_right: Le conseil en + : si vous voulez garder une PRAIRIE FLEURIE au fil des années, il est nécessaire de ne pas laisser l’herbe fauchée sur place. Cela “nourrit” le sol et en modifie sa nature et donc la germination des plantes.

---- :point_up: En laissant l’herbe verte (riche en azote) coupée sur place, on favorise les plantes nitratophiles (ortie, rumex…) aux dépens des fleurs :cherry_blossom::blossom::tulip:.

---- :point_up: En laissant la prairie évoluer naturellement ou en laissant l’herbe sèche (carbone) coupée sur place, la prairie se transforme en roncier, en fourré, puis en forêt (ce qui est très bon pour la biodiv, mais il y a moins de plantes herbacées et donc moins de fleurs de prairie :cherry_blossom::blossom::tulip:).

:stop_sign: Il n’est pas toujours (ou même pas souvent) nécessaire de tout tondre ou faucher !
:point_right: Augmenter les espaces boisés, qui ne demandent pas de gestion, est un excellent moyen pour atténuer les changements climatiques (ombrage, évapotranspiration) et fournir de nombreuses ressources (gîte et couvert) à la biodiversité.

:mag_right: Et pour avoir encore plus d’astuces et de conseils, faites le diagnostic pollinis’Actions de votre jardin, vous verrez vite s’il est favorable aux pollinisateurs et à la biodiversité ! Go !

#NosPollinisateurs #pollinisateurs #pollinisation #insectes #biodiversite #nature #herbe #tondeuse #fleurssauvages #fauche

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Ah an inhabitant of the concrete jungle. You should be due for parole soon. :smile:

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You have to draw a line somewhere, or you’d go insane. It’s an unavoidable part of life. Every time you drive your car, or walk somewhere, you’re taking something out every moment of the day.
As well, you have thousands of mites on your skin, in your eyelashes, eyebrows etc. You don’t worry about those when you’re having a wash.
Keep some areas of the garden free for the insects. If you’re cutting with your mower, stop for a bee if it’s in your path and let it fly off, but otherwise don’t drive yourself insane with it. Insects have no central nervous system, so you’re not causing them pain.

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Hahaha, I meant its a brown straw covering at the moment :joy:

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We have (at the moment) a lush green.

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I long for brown straw time :yum::laughing:

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Not this year! :roll_eyes:

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Deter, don’t kill

Roaches, thankfully, none here although spiders rule in our house. I always avoid vacuuming up any living spiders but do their webs. They seem to be in a time sensitive competition to reweave, often within hours.

I just try to keep it down in house so that visitors do not feel they have walked into Miss Haversham’s. I try to gently catch them using glass and paper but no sooner they are placed outside, another begins weaving in-house.

Well, it is country sport!

:spider_web:

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I’ve done that, but using my hands because my house spiders are invariably hanging upside down on their webs.

Each spider I caught I put with all the others in a large plastic box with lid, and released them into a barn. Then cleared away the webs. But once gone it wasn’t long before spiders and their webs were back!

This was an attempt to get rid of all spiders – all spiders - everyone I could see, in every room, hanging upside down in their networks of webs, stringing across the ceilings.

All of one species – don’t know what - but they come to life in the evenings and I think they are blind.

The males are tiny compared to the females. This is a photo of one of my male house spiders, in the loo, hanging upside-down. He’s about 10mm across from leg tip to leg tip. Females are at least twice the size.

loo spider
loo spider859×859 52.2 KB