Planned Obsolence

My husband once told me that he wished he had married a woman who had grown up on a farm and as a result had either decided she never wanted a garden again, or she knew how to take care of one. He told me that after I asked (once more) for help with my tiny little garden in Great Falls, Montana. I'm still trying, but since I have trouble telling a weed from the start of something I planted, my gardens seldom look very good. In fact, I fully acknowledge that I’m an expert at unintentionally killing plants. That has never stopped me from trying though. At times, I’ve had unexpected help. Like when I lived in Germany and fell in love with the balconies filled with cascading ivy leaf geraniums. I went to the local garden shop and bought the requisite planters of geraniums and put them out on my balcony. At the end of the year, I proceeded to throw the planters out, which elicited quite a gasp of dismay from my German neighbors. They proceeded to explain to me that all I had to do was cut the geraniums off about an inch to 2 inches above the soil line, then put them in a cool dark location where they wouldn’t freeze (like the unfinished basement of the house we lived in or a garage), water them Very slightly about once a month, and wait for spring. Come spring, when the light started to change, they would start growing, sending up spindly pale lime green stalks. Once it got warm enough to stay warm, they could be put back outside, where within weeks they would be back to their normal color and as robust as before I had cut them back. The following summer, my balcony would again be filled with cascading blooms. In the process, I also learned that having someone else plant the planters in the first place, using the right soil and fertilizer was an important part of the equation. The flowers in the hanging baskets I’ve purchased in the States have never done as well as the ones I bought in Germany did. While I fully admit, my care or lack of care, may be part of the equation, it doesn’t seem to matter if I water on a regular basis or if I ignore them, I may get a second season out of a basket, but seldom a third one. It seems to be that way for many things these days. Planned obsolescence is a real thing. If my baskets last longer, then they can’t sell me new ones the following year. So many other things seem to have obsolescence planned into them. While they tell me, it’s to make it “cheaper to manufacture” an item, or to make an item “lighter weight” when they use plastic parts instead of metal parts, when the plastic bushing or whatever the piece is wears out and can’t be replaced without replacing 4 other parts along with it for a price that’s equivalent to buying the item new on sale, it’s really planned obsolescence. While I understand “new technology” that can make my life easier or better, I really don’t need to buy a new computer or tablet or phone just because it has new technology in it. But when my older device is “no longer supported” by the manufacturer or it “can’t be upgraded” any further, so it won’t work with a program I need for my job, or the battery is “built in” so it can’t be switched out when it no longer holds a charge – that’s planned obsolescence. Planned obsolescence by itself is bad enough, but when it’s coupled with “wanting to keep up with the Joneses of the world”, the problem intensifies. Keeping up with the Joneses is expensive. An item may be totally functional, but not the latest “style” or “trend” so it’s gotten rid of, and a cheaper but more trendy item takes its place. Then when that item is no longer in style, it’s gotten rid of and replaced with the “newest version”. What happens to the old item though? Unfortunately, they often end up being “dumped” in landfills (isn’t that a horrible term? As if the land needed to be filled with trash that we no longer want), where unlike a material that will eventually rust away or decompose, or be taken apart and recycled, they will sit for eon’s “filling our earth” with “planned obsolescence” and “keeping up with the Joneses” instead of flowers and trees that will help to make our world a better place to live. Hopefully, people will eventually learn to buy items that can decompose and be recycled, so we can stop filling our land with trash and start filling it with flowers and trees and birds and pollinating butterflies and bees and animals again.