I spent much of my childhood on a farm in rural Iroquois County. One of my most pointless chores was mowing the ditches.
It was dangerous work. The mower–or the tractor, depending on the ditch–could tip over while you were negotiating the steep inclines. I heard lots of harrowing stories about farmers (my granddad included) who ran over hornet’s nests while mowing ditches. Mowing also took away natural cover for wildlife, which was fast losing its habitat under “fencerow to fencerow” planting programs inspired by President Richard Nixon.
Farmers are “keep up with the Joneses” types. If one paints his barn, everyone else on his stretch of road will follow suit. If one puts up a certain kind of fence, his neighbors will soon have new fences too. And if one keeps his ditches immaculately trimmed, no one will dare allow his to go all weedy.
Back then, anyone who allowed his ditches to grow unchecked would become the subject of gossip. He must be shiftless, they’d say, to let his property deteriorate like that. Or maybe he was too ill or too old to take care of his responsibilities.
Long after I moved off the farm I realized that many of the ditch weeds we relentlessly battled were actually wildflowers, if allowed to grow to maturity. That revelation reinforced my youthful disdain for ditch mowing.
I could never quite figure out why the state highway department would set aside only tiny “no mow” stretches along our interstates. Mowing probably makes it easier to pick up the garbage strewn by thoughtless drivers, but the wild growth is always far more interesting to look at than the dull, lawnlike stretches so common along Illinois’ highways.
For a few years I owned a house in the country, and I refused to mow my ditches. After several weeks, my thoughtful neighbor could no longer abide my apparent sloth and took it upon himself to “help me out” by clipping my grass. I tried to explain what I was hoping to accomplish, and he looked at me like I was a freak. Why would I want a bunch of ugly old weeds destroying the view of my beautiful house? Eventually wildflowers began to blossom, and I couldn’t have been happier.
So I thought it was a great idea when Illinois’ First Lady Patti Blagojevich suggested planting wildflowers along the interstates. The vast reduction in upkeep costs would most likely pay for the entire program, and we’d have something besides cornfields to look at while driving through central Illinois. Don’t get me wrong: I love cornfields–and beanfields. I enjoy watching the seasonal progression from plowing to planting to growing to harvesting–and back again. But if you perused the press coverage, you’d have thought the First Lady’s idea was some sort of goofy, expensive, liberal boondoggle. “State to spend cash on flowers in fiscal crisis,” blared the Chicago Sun-Times.
Mrs. Blago was obviously forced to endure these barbs because her husband has been picking fights with popular politicians over the budget. It’s payback time in Illinois politics right now, and her wildflower project has become a handy bludgeoning device. But this isn’t the first time Mrs. B has been unfairly maligned. Her husband was slammed for putting her on a child welfare advisory panel, and she’s been hammered by editorialists for refusing to move to Springfield. Whatever the reason, she’s taken a lot of needless hits.
My only problem with her wildflower concept is that it doesn’t go far enough.
We should stop mowing the roadsides altogether, or at least leave a wide, continuous
strip completely untouched. On a drive last month through Iroquois County, I
discovered that lots of farmers have finally stopped mowing their ditches. What
appeared to be Hairy Wild Petunias were in bloom, and the blue flowers lining
the roadsides were spectacular.
This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2003.
