Not so long ago, (November 10th 2020) I went out to the backyard and looked over the fence to find that the mowers had once again been through the berm ( the area between the houses and the greenbelt/protected zone that prevents (one hopes) undesirable materials (such as pesticides) from draining into the cavern which houses an endangered species.

Here’s what I observed:

“Scalping” of the berm in several places. The berm is slightly sloped, so as one drives over the top from either side, it is hard to avoid scalping unless the blades of the mower are set to the seven inches which the Texas Department of Transportation specifies in its 2018 Roadside Vegetation Management Manual for rural areas and five inches in urban areas (Chapter 2, page 17). The reasoning is this: low cutting is undesirable because it:

• stresses the vegetation, especially in dry, hot conditions, resulting in loss of desirable vegetative cover,
• deprives wildlife of cover,
• and the lack of leaves above the ground reduces the ability of the plants to develop roots below the ground, resulting in susceptibility to things like
  • erosion,
  • loss of native plant cover, and
  • vulnerability to invasive plant species which can crowd out native species because they have no natural enemies or symbiotic fauna species ( which might depend on them for survival).

Earlier posts on this blog have documented

• Mowing on wet ground after a rain (Chapter 2, page 16)
• Mowing down stands of wildflowers still in bloom, (Chapter 1, page 8), and
• invasive species that were most likely introduced by failure to follow safe hygiene (Special Provision 730-003, which requires pressure washing before and after equipment enters and leaves an area).

The November mowing was no exception, although it was done on dry soil, before a predicted rainfall the following week. But no plants below the height of three inches was spared. Although this Proboscidea louisianica was no longer in bloom, it had not completely set seed, as evident in these still green fruits. The mower had no sympathy for this Devil’s Claw.

Proboscidea louisianica – Ram’s Horn, Devil’s Claw

One of my favorite Korean drama series, “Romance Is A Bonus Book” has a scene in which the CEO of the book publishing company says “You don’t need a botanist to mow the lawn.”

I’m beginning to think that you DO need a botanist, if not to mow the lawn, to tell the mowers When to mow, Where to mow, What to mow, How to mow, and Why to mow or not mow, so that the person Who does the mowing understands what he or she is doing, and can take pride in a job well done. The supervisors of the people who have mowed the berm between my house and the greenbelt, as well as other locations, based on the evidence I see, do not know, or have not trained their employees well.

Every time I see a roadside scalped, or steep sloped ditch mowed when it should have been planted with appropriate native plants, I wonder how long humans have before they realize that they are not the only species on this planet, and start to act as intelligently as they seem to think they are, “the most intelligent creatures on Earth.”