The Holy Name of Mary Care for Creation Ministry’s monthly environmental meeting was not without hiccups—it took some minutes to figure out how to display the presentation deck, there were difficulties locating a website page, the featured presenter ran past her appointed hour.
But the audience—at least two laptop screens’ worth—hung in there and, in the end, much was imparted on the featured topic, invasive plants.
After a blessing by Father Rathschmidt—and some good steerage by ministry member and acting moderator Bernie Yozwiak—Diane Alden, activist and board member of Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct discoursed on the removal of inimical understory plants. Alden’s property adjoins the aqueduct trailway and she has decades of experience battling Eurasian invaders that have taken root past the bounds of her yard.
A dozen different species were described and removal techniques for oriental bittersweet (choker of trees), stiltgrass (decimator of understories), garlic mustard (destroyer of soils), and Japanese barberry (incubator of ticks) were covered in depth.
Invasive trees (Norway maple, tree of heaven, callery pear) were given a bye but foreign vines received special invective. The consultant class of the plant kingdom—virulent structural parasites that rely on the uprightness of others to achieve elevation, often eventually smothering their hosts—Chinese wisteria and winter creeper are two tree-killing sprawlers with whom the Aqueduct Friends have direct combat experience.
Weedfighting technology has advanced in recent years. Past glyphosate and other chemical agents—eschewed much as they are in human warfare (publicly decried but, when the land-owner is not receiving much scrutiny from his neighbors . . . )—yesteryear’s saws, scythes and loppers have been supplemented by portable uprooters, rotary weed whackers, smother bags, and flame throwers.
But as is often the case in military matters, arms are not much use without hands. And the Aqueduct Friends’ are clearly eager to find new soldiers.
Alden’s career as an invasive weedfighter began when her appeals to state authorities were ignored and it became clear that only by organizing the local citizenry would the park have any chance of progressing back towards its native botanic state. In recent years, the Friends of the Old Croton Aqueduct have regularly organized park remediation gatherings and—now that we are emerging from the COVID-19 Years—are optimistic for a record turn-out May 7 for I Love My Park Day.
If the sponsor and partner lists are anything to go by, their hope is not rootless.
In addition to named local sponsoring businesses (a bakery, Croton’s best automotive repair shop, the birdseed shop, the pricey natural food store in the B.M.[1]), a diner door’s worth of green-looking logos adorn the event’s page.
We were so impressed—local businesses and residents banding together against pernicious photosynthetic foes—that we contacted a veteran 914 stringer, a retired environmental consultant, for their thoughts. We had them witness the church-hosted presentation, review the referenced literature, and asked if they might unpack the situation for us.
For their standard fee, they agreed to do so and, after less than a day’s research, they made their report. Their headline took us by surprise.
It’s a foul confluence of NIMBY-ism, virtue-signaling, and greenwashing.
This seemed rather dark for what appeared to us a light-filled cause—battling a rising alien ecological monoculture that is in fact casting our native flora into darkness—so we asked them to please define their terms and explain how they came to this encapsulation.
Okay. NIMBY-ism. What propels it?
We suggested quality of life. Nobody, of course, wants any development that impinges on the enjoyment of their residential environs.
Sure. And is it easier to enjoy one’s neighborhood with an extra hundred thousand dollars in the bank? Is one’s quality of life not even better when that’s the case?
We conceded this is doubtless often true.
Economically speaking—and what other way is there to speak in a suicidally capitalistic state like ours?—property valuation is at the core of NIMBY-ism. It is also the not-so-secret lifeblood of our region. Corporations want 10% annual revenue growth. And we financially sanguine northern Westchesterians want our home valuations—often our biggest single financial investment—to meet or exceed the same. Not in terms of assessed value for the tax collector, of course, but in terms of the real value you hope to tap when you trade up for your next house—the one with the pool, the pond, the tennis court, or, if you’re already there—the second property.
We pointed out that the entire program is focused on public land—does the quality of this very skinny park, a trailway that connects Croton to Ossining, and Ossining to Tarrytown, and Tarrytown to the lower river towns, and they eventually to the Bronx—directly impact anybody’s home value? We find it hard to believe even five percent of area homebuyers could recognize the difference between an Asian and a native honeysuckle. And how does removing foreign plants on a jogging trail demonstrably improve the home values of the dozens if not hundreds of volunteers we will be seeing next Saturday (or rain date the following)?
Did you notice where the presenter lives? She said it herself. Her property adjoins the aqueduct pathway.
We asked if it was wrong that she wanted to improve a path that she no doubt walks upon regularly.
Nothing wrong with that. But don’t ignore the but also aspects. She is a great improver of nearby paths but also her property is a degree more valuable (and easy to weed) if there are not vine-smothered trees and prickerbushes pushing up against her backyard fence? She is a wonderful organizer of volunteer stiltgrass pullers but also a proximate park no longer filled with exotic deer food means her (we trust native) flower garden may be less munched upon in future seasons. And does a cleared-out understory allow her property a better, potentially even more valuable, view? Etcetera.
We pointed out the many volunteers and attendees of the Creation Ministry’s Zoom session—surely not all of them own multi-acre properties adjoining the park—and asked if they, too, are heavily motivated by economic ulteriors.
Would any of us even be in northern Westchester without them? It’s the restaurant and art scene that draws us here do you think? ‘Ad astra per ulterior!’ as the seal should properly say.
And let’s glance at those logos on the event page.
You’re wondering if it might be other than a Not-In-My-Back-Yard exercise and there are, let’s see, two realtor concerns and three landscaping companies? Though I believe that Timm real estate person got a degree in conservation biology before she saved herself from economic perdition and became a real estate agent. And I’m not sure about Suburban Native LLC. It does not have much of a storefront online, at least that I’ve been able to find.
We did not see much else to poke at in their NIMBY thesis and asked them to address the virtue-signaling claim.
Okay, tell me if you can with a straight face answer no to any of the following questions and sub-questions:
· Is there any social insecurity in these parts related to living in communities that are ninety-plus-percent white?
· Considering our region contains communities nationally ranked well up in the top 1% in terms of wealth, is there much guilt in these parts related to affluence—of having more than we fairly ought?
· Is there any guilt that comes with living upon a plot of land that was once heavily forested and not only carbon-neutral but -negative?
· Is there (therefore, or incidentally) any social pressure to be aware of and involved in cutting edge liberal causes?
· Does fighting foreign invaders have any resonance generally speaking—and perhaps particularly in this Russian-Ukrainian moment?
· Might there be any social and emotional utility to pulling out tree-killing Eurasian weeds and believing we are returning some of the land to a more native state?
· Given all this, do you see why a person might wish to convince themselves and others that they are brimming with high-minded, weed-pulling virtue?
We quickly failed this challenge and encouraged them to move on to their final claim—greenwashing. Who here, we asked, was scrubbing themselves green—and to what purpose?
Well, again, let’s peruse those logos. Some of it is crass billboarding of course. A landscaping company has access to a group of marks with an interest in plants and enough financial security to give up a Saturday—they would be chumps not to take advantage of the advertising opportunity and supply a hundred bucks of branded yard-waste bags to the effort. But let me tell you at least some of these landscapers aren’t as green as their banners and are clearly indulging in a little P.R. facial rub. We needn’t get into chem-shaming with the landscapers—though a couple indicate they use herbicides—nor point out the ones with websites showing their crews proudly running around with two-cycle gasoline leaf-blowers in front of all kinds of rainwater-impermeable surfaces and foreign ornamentals.
But that’s at least just local-scale. The truly sinister one here is that Hudson Terraces logo. Are you familiar with the sprawling high-end rental unit complex in north Ossining?
The aqueduct trail cuts straight across its driveway. They even interrupted the asphalt to install a faux-brick crossing path and have doggy-waste bins on either side. But go take a look at the plantings down there sometime. Want to wager what percent of the plants poking out of that beauty-bark mulch are native?
We asked why this is so troubling. Westchester is hardly a stranger to townhouse developments, nor to business-park terraforming.
You know who owns and operates Hudson Terraces?
We did not.
Greystar!
The name sounded ominous but we confessed we did not know who that was.
It’s one of those new landlord consolidation firms like they had on 60 Minutes the other week—scooping up rental properties around the country and running them at scale with all the profit-nurturing efficiencies that come along.
Which explains how they were valued at $32 billion over three years ago—probably double that now. They’re also the second-largest student residence landlord in the country. And the CEO’s a former advisor to One-Term Donnie.
We asked if they mean Trump.
None other.
We are a local news concern and eschew national politics, but find it can be illuminating to see how locals are paying attention to the federal stage. So, we asked if their nickname for the ex-President meant they did not think he will win another term.
Look. I’ll eat my shoe if he wins again. But it doesn’t matter. Our leafy suburbs are overgrown with plutocrat-abetting disinformation already. We’re all so lost in the weeds it’s going to take more than flamethrowers and smother-bags to set things right.
We asked what they meant.
Concerns like Greystar are all too happy to have us stress out about Asian vines and knotweeds while they quietly make billions gobbling up local real estate and renting it back to us serfs.
I mean I never thought I’d feel protective towards local landlords—what is it, the world’s second or the third oldest profession?—but you can see where this is all heading, can’t you?
We confessed we could not.
You know what the sick thing is?
We confessed we did not.
What is the single most pernicious invasive species here in the western hemisphere? The one that has pulled down the most trees, and most disrupted our forests and prairies’ mycorrhizal networks with its alien, parasitic monoculture?
We suggested Japanese knotweed.
Homo sapiens. Never mind kudzu, we’re unworldly goddamn triffids! You know what we would do if we were halfway sincere about improving the woodlands around here?”
We suggested maybe investing in native shrubs and abandoning our lawns.
Yes, kill your lawn as the great Santore is wont to say.
But, no, the only thing that would make an actual difference would be for us to move back to whichever continent it was our great-great-great grandparents hailed from.
We tried to remember if they had once told us they were of Mayflower stock but decided the better part of valor was not to ask we passed them their thirty-dollar gift certificate to The Tapsmith, and thanked them for their time.
[1] Briarcliff Manor