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Josh Young crept into the lecture hall with its white walls and rows of chairs that had seen better days. He slipped into a seat toward the front, where few people sat, knowing his passage would go unnoticed. Short, slight men, he considered, tended to be overlooked. That could be a good thing, because his purpose was to study the speaker, Dr. Jeanne Beaumont, associate professor of plant sciences and permaculture expert at the University.
Josh had first encountered Jeanne on the podcast, Green Things and Felicitations, sponsored by the University's Media Relations, where she talked about home gardening techniques and developed enough of a following to attract the attention of a Chicago tv station that invited her on their morning show a few times.
Jeanne stood near the podium, a Rubenesque woman with greying chestnut hair pulled back in a ponytail. In real life, Josh realized, she wore the same smile, warm and amused. He would love that smile turned in his direction. But he was twenty-odd years younger, not much older than her students, many of them sitting in this lecture for extra credit. She would probably think him cute, and he bristled at being dismissed as cute.
Jeanne stepped up to the podium. Her contralto voice carried to the back of the room: “I know this is not a classroom lecture, but I’m used to people talking back to me, and half the people here are my students anyhow, so I’m going to ask questions. I hope you ask them as well.” Josh chuckled, amused.
“This lecture, as you know,” Jeanne began, “involves permaculture, or the use of perennial food plants rather than annual food crops. It’s a different mindset, because the idea is to plant these perennial food plants together. Permaculture depends on mutual relationships among plants —“ Jeanne gestured with interlocking hands; her voice reached to the back without amplification. Josh wondered how she could do that.
“What kinds of relationships do plants have? One-night stands?” a wag inquired. White-blond hair topped his smug expression.
“I can get back to you later about plant reproduction if you give me your name and email,” Jeanne smiled, then continued. “And CC your prof because I think he’d be interested in hearing about this.” Bravo! Josh thought, stifling a laugh.
“Permaculture scientists and developers create guilds of plants based on mutualistic relationships in the wild. First off, not all plants get along together. Does anyone know what garlic mustard is?” Jeanne gestured to a woman at the front of the class who sported a head full of red and black braids.
“You’re thinking about the plant with the white cross-shaped flowers, right?” the woman inquired.
Jeanne stepped to the podium for a moment; a large picture of a white-flowered plant with triangular, jagged leaves popped up on the screen. “This picture does no justice to the smell.” A few people laughed.“Yes. That’s how you can tell a mustard, by the way, which is why the mustard family is called Cruciferae, Latin for ‘cross’.”
“What do you see growing near it?” Jeanne asked, smiling.
A pause, then: “You don’t see things growing near it. It just takes over.”
“Exactly,” Jeanne continued. “Garlic mustard is negatively allelopathic. It doesn’t attack other plants directly. It evolved to reduce the amount of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil.” Jeanne clicked again, and the picture showed roots entwined with a fuzzy mold. “Those mycorrhizal fungi share a symbiotic relationship with plants to help them utilize soil nutrients. What does symbiotic mean?”
“Mutually beneficial relationship.” Josh looked back at a young man with wispy blond hair and glasses.
“Yes and no. Not all symbiosis is mutually beneficial — for example, dodder, a parasitical plant, is symbiotic with its host, which it eventually kills. It’s a parasite. The relationship between mycorrhizae and plant roots benefit both the fungus and the plant so it is a type of symbiosis we call mutualism. Some edible plants like to crawl up trees – for example, climbing spinach, vine asparagus, hardy kiwi, thicket bean, and even kudzu. Some of those climbers, like thicket bean or kudzu, fix nitrogen to the soil with the help of beneficial bacteria.”
Jeanne spoke about her permaculture gardens in terms of their relationships, almost as if they were a community, and Josh guessed that to Jeanne, they were. Had he ever looked at a group of plants as a community? He didn’t think so.
“Some edible groundcover plants live in the shade from the tree. They provide natural weed control. Understory bushes grow in dappled shade and give us berries. Herbs attract insects that pollinate and that eat destructive bugs. Finish that off with root crops that keep the soil from compacting and perennial leaf crops that provide lots of greens. That is a permaculture guild, from the rhizobium bacteria to the top of the fruit tree.”
“So all these plants have to be edible?” a tiny, dark-haired woman in all black garb near him asked.
“That’s the point. We eat stuff at the grocery store that’s mass farmed – farmers pump artificial fertilizer and pesticides into the field, biologists breed plants for their shipping capacity, and we end up with a tomato that tastes like a third-grader’s art project.
“This process does not sustain the ecological balance – the soil burns out from lack of soil-building decayed plant material called humus, and artificial chemicals replace the natural minerals from humus. The pesticides kill the natural predators for harmful insects and the pollinators. The fruits and vegetables become less nutritious and contaminated. And now we’re finding some of these chemicals cause cancer.
“If you talk about permaculture without the science, people think you’re a crackpot. Think about it this way – the current system works to get a lot of people fed as efficiently as possible. Its advantages are visible, and its disadvantages are invisible. You can’t preach a system that isn’t proven to the average person. You can’t change people’s habits unless you make the change easy. Knowing that, my mission isn’t to talk, but to breed plants and design permaculture guilds that are high yielding, perennial, and tasty to consumers. Like a grocery store in every backyard.”
“That’s why you needed to improve the size of the Jeannie Beans.” The grey-haired man who spoke sat toward the middle of the room.
“Honestly. Jeannie Beans?” Jeanne asked with comical dismay, as people laughed. “For those of you who don’t get the joke, I have a plant patent for an improved thicket bean that bears larger beans that are easier to harvest. The patent name is ‘JB94’ but someone in Media Relations nicknamed it for me.” She shrugged dramatically, and Josh chuckled. “But yes, that’s why. Even though permaculture reduces the tillage of soil and improves its health dramatically, it needs to be marketable as well as beneficial. People don’t drastically change their habits just because it’s good for them.”
When the lecture ended, a small group of people, mostly older, clustered at the front of the room to talk to Jeanne. Josh considered joining them for a second, hoping to greet Jeanne, but didn’t want to look like what he actually was: a puppydog. He felt the pull as he looked over his shoulder one more time, then walked away, dissatisfied.
At the front of the lecture hall, Jeanne looked over from her throng of well-wishers for a moment, thinking she had missed something. She found herself looking at a young man who looked over his shoulder, shrugged expressively, then walked away. He wore his frustration in his graceful posture, moving like a dancer. She wished he had stayed to talk for even a moment.
Later, Jeanne sat in her living room, an inviting place in pale gold and burgundy. In her favorite chair, she reviewed the presentation she had just given. It had worked out well, and people had asked questions, which surprised her. Pleased, she tucked the memories in the back of her mind – or tried to. Because there was that one man, graceful, with black hair falling into his eyes. The one who had looked back at her.
He looked familiar – she had seen him around town, at the café she frequented. She recalled him – one of the slam poets, with dark eyes and ivory skin, and the straight black hair he had to push back now and again. A slender build, a weakness of hers, especially with that grace of his.
Jeanne wished she had gotten to talk with him. She pushed that thought away, because she was old enough to be his mother.
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