A solution to a problem

I've spoken several times on here (and as comments elsewhere) how I sometimes get irritated by the "protestor mentality" - the people who sit around and demand that something be done.

I think that's because of my own mindset - I prefer to see a problem, figure out what I can do to make it better, and then do that.

Well, one of the campus student groups took that tack as well, and it worked out really beautifully.

Our horticulturalist - who was wonderful - wound up getting hired away. We still have a grounds crew, but either the new horticulturalist isn't interested in going over and above the bare minimum, or we don't have a new horticulturalist yet.

There was a small garden area in the back of my building. It had been neglected for quite some time and had grown up with weeds. One of the student clubs saw this, decided they didn't like it, that it promoted a bad image (especially for the biology building) and that there could be something better there.

So they came up with a plan. They enlisted the help of those of us who know plants, also enlisted the help of someone who had worked as a landscape architect, and they planned out a butterfly garden. They figured out a tentative budget, and a list of what they needed (as a bare minimum) and what they wanted.

They also figured out the amount of labor that would be required, both in the construction and the upkeep of the garden, and got commitments from students and a few faculty who wanted to see it work.

Then they went to the administration with their plan and asked for permission to replant the site.

After getting permission, they had some fund-raisers and also solicited a few local businesses for donations (and I think the former landscape architect made some donations of plants as well).

They had several workdays to put the whole thing together, and they have an ongoing schedule of people who go out periodically and do what weeding is needed (on the landscape architect's insistence, they got and put down mulch, which makes a big difference in how much weeding you have to do). They don't have to worry about watering because there's an automatic sprinkler system.

They have a birdbath, and stepping stones set into the ground to make a path, and a little pile of rocks near one of the sprinkler outlets that collects water - so the butterflies can drink.

I've been out there quite a few times. There are far more butterflies than I've ever seen around the building before, and there seems to be more bird activity. It also seems to be cooler in the area, that might be because the sprinklers are actually running periodically (they were not when it was just a weed patch). It took something that was frankly a bit of an eyesore - just a place where students who smoked stood around to grab their cigarettes - and turned it into something pretty and nice (There is still a picnic bench out there, with a metal bucket full of sand sitting on it, for the smokers.)

The thing is, they saw a problem - or at least, something that was less than it could be - and they realized they could do something about it. And they came up with a plan, and they did it. If, instead, they had, I don't know, staged a sit-in in the president's office to demand that the garden be replanted, it would almost certainly still be a weed patch, and probably the administration would have a bad feeling about the biology department ("Bunch of troublemakers!")

And yeah, yeah. It's not curing cancer or fixing the economy or even fixing the roads in my town. But it's something, and it made things a little bit better. And I think the students also have a real ownership of the garden - they're always going out and checking on it, looking to see if the plants are healthy, seeing if anything more needs to be done.

I guess I've always taken an attitude similar to the old Serenity Prayer, wanting to try to change the things that CAN be changed, and try not to worry too much about the entirety of things that cannot be changed.

At any rate, I applaud these students for their energy and their planning; it seems to have worked out really nicely.