Decay

decay
1. The state or process of rotting or decomposition.
1.1 Rotten matter or tissue.
1.2 Structural or physical deterioration.
1.3 The process of declining in quality,
power, or vigour.

After the economic crisis, this land has been neglected. I used it together with my grandfather to grow tomatoes and for a sunflower competition. My chickens lived there. After years of not using the soil anymore, a thick layer of bind hedge weed rose. Underneath seems to be great soil. It’s moist soil with air in it. When we talk about decay here, it’s not necessarily in a negative sense. Beautiful things happen in the decay of this greenhouse. Birds find rest, Bas the cat finds hundreds of trophies in the form of voles there and the soil can repair itself.

In the essay Ruderal Ecologies, there was a beautiful history written on life admits ruins. Berlin was a city of rubble at the end of World War 2. Wild animals roamed the city but at the same time of this urban breakdown, people started cultivating plants along the rubble because there was a shortage of food. New heroic figures arose, the so-called rubble women. There are more histories like this in Berlin. A man named Osman Kalin found a small empty plot alongside the Berlin Wall. He grew vegetables and sunflowers there. The GDR allowed that Osman could stay as long as his sunflowers didn’t grow taller than the wall.

Sometimes rules towards nature doesn’t make sense. In the Netherlands each nature place needs to have a purpose. A tree can cause a fight if it is in the wrong place or grows too big. Slowly we leave land free around the rivers, so it has room to grow when hightides hit. What happens if we let nature roam instead of trying to control it?