Evan X. Merz

The name Dwight D. Eisenhower doesn't conjure up a lot of emotions to modern citizens of the United States. Like most presidents, Eisenhower did some good things, and he did some bad things. The balance on his account seems like it's close enough to even that his career isn't remarkable as far as presidents go. He doesn't stand out so far on the good side of the ledger as a president like Lincoln. And he doesn't stand out so far on the bad side of the ledger as presidents like Reagan (Iran Contra), or Nixon (Watergate), or even Trump (Epstein, Iran, Russia).

So it might surprise you to learn that Eisenhower was one of the generals who was most responsible for defeating the Nazis. He was the general in charge of the D-Day invasion. He wrangled all of the big personalities involved with that invasion and he managed the greatest military action in human history to defeat a foe that personified evil.

But Eisenhower wasn't a thinking man. He just wasn't. He grew up in a relatively insular Mennonite community, then he was trained to execute orders without question by the US military. He wasn't trained to think, or question authority. He was trained to act, and he did so brilliantly.

Still, part of his brilliance, and why he is well remembered, is that his wisdom came from the blue collar values of his hardscrabble upbringing. In some ways, his words feel like a twentieth century reformulation of Lincoln's aphorisms, through a person who is less skilled with words.

Recently, I was doing some reading about him when I stumbled upon a speech he gave in 1953, not long after he assumed the presidency. This speech is called the Chance for Peace speech, and as I was reading the text of it, I realized that it is exactly the wisdom we need to guide our country and our planet in 2026.

In 1953, Eisenhower was just at the beginning of the Cold War, but he had no way of knowing that at the time. He saw that moment in time as a final ramping down of the Second World War. Stalin had just died. Eisenhower would quickly bring the Korean War to an end. He saw this as a chance for the world to stop fighting and move away from confrontational militarism.

So he called for peace.

In this spring of 1953 the free world weighs one question above all others: the chance for a just peace for all peoples.

To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hope of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.

The 8 years that have passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly lengthened across the world.

Eisenhower recognized the lost opportunity of the second world war. He recognized the lost opportunity of the wide ranging agreements made between countries in 1945. He wanted to summon that spirit of cooperation again in 1953.

He took an optimistic view of the role of the United States in mid century politics, and an antagonistic view of The Soviet Union.

The way chosen by the United States was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs...

The Soviet government held a vastly different vision of the future.

In the world of its design, security was to be found, not in mutual trust and mutual aid but in force: huge armies, subversion, rule of neighbor nations. The goal was power superiority at all cost. Security was to be sought by denying it to all others.

In 2026, this must sound both ironic and appropriate, as The United States maintains the largest military in the world by a huge margin, and both the US and Russia have recently started wars of aggression led by aging leaders with dimming vision.

But Eisenhower, with his life of service in the military, knew that militarism was no end in itself. He knew that conflict led to more conflict. He knew that a country spending money on war could not spend money on peace, and that was the idea behind the most inspired section of the speech.

What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?

The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.

The worst is atomic war.

The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

When he tallies up the true cost of war, his vision for our country is almost palpable. This passage alone tells such a vivid story. "This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

This is the passage that resonates the most to me in 2026. When I think about the unilateral invasion of Ukraine or the unilateral bombing of Iran. Trump and Putin are busy spending our work and our lives on their violence.

What really amazes me about this passage is that Eisenhower was essentially calling for less military spending. He was calling for a lower defense budget. This was idealistic at the time, and it seems almost hopelessly optimistic in 2026.

But that doesn't make it wrong.

Perhaps Ike's call for less spending on the military may not have worked out in his favor, but it wasn't misinformed or naive. Nobody in the world knew more about military spending and foreign policy at that moment that Dwight D. Eisenhower. He stood in the unique position to know exactly how war spending was draining America's strength then. He knew that if we kept fighting each other, then we would have no strength to work together on the real problems facing the people of the world.

We seek, throughout Asia as throughout the world, a peace that is true and total.

Out of this can grow a still wider task—the achieving of just political settlements for the other serious and specific issues between the free world and the Soviet Union.

None of these issues, great or small, is insoluble—given only the will to respect the rights of all nations.

Eisenhower then made a specific call for disarmament and a slow draw down of military spending by all countries. Eisenhower loved bullet point lists, and he made a list of goals for limiting army sizes, limiting atomic arsenals, and enforcing these limitations.

And in the final lines of the speech, he reiterated the purpose of all of this in a way that doesn't even need to be altered to resonate with the people of 2026.

The purpose of the United States, in stating these proposals, is simple and clear.

These proposals spring, without ulterior purpose or political passion, from our calm conviction that the hunger for peace is in the hearts of all peoples—those of Russia and of China no less than of our own country.

They conform to our firm faith that God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil.

They aspire to this: the lifting, from the backs and from the hearts of men, of their burden of arms and of fears, so that they may find before them a golden age of freedom and of peace.

Sadly, Eisenhower's call for peace fell on deaf ears.

The cynics in The Soviet Union took this speech as nothing more than propaganda. Then, as now, they didn't believe that anyone would truly act "without ulterior purpose."

The people of the US loved the speech, but they didn't appreciate the implications of Ike's words. Then, as now, the people of the United States were too mesmerized by the power of capitalism to pay attention to foreign policy.

The Cold War continued to be hot in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan, even though Ike was able to bring a swift end to the war in Korea.

You can and should read the full text of Ike's speech on Wikimedia.

The movement toward native plants has been hugely successful over the last twenty years. In the 2000s, it was rare to see a yard that wasn't a vast wasteland of lawn and hardscaping that was utterly unusable to any local wildlife. Today, I can walk down the streets of my neighborhood and identify at least one native plant in most yards. The turnaround I've witnessed in my adult life is truly amazing.

Yet, this success hasn't translated into success in the lofty goals of the native plant community. The wider availability of milkweed in gardens hasn't led to a rebound in monarch butterfly populations. They continue on a downward spiral toward eventual extinction. The same story can be told about native pollinators all over the world.

Now, we could veer off into talking about pesticides here. I think pesticide usage may be a bigger issue than the lack of native plants for some species.

However, I think there is also an issue of penetration into the public consciousness. I think there is an issue of awareness. I don't think that most people are even aware that the native plant movement exists. I don't think they have any understanding of why picking native plants is good for wildlife. I think that we see more and more native plants in gardens mostly because of conservation aware landscapers.

I think that for us to solve the problem of habitat loss in a bottom up way (outside of legislation and NGOs), we need to integrate native plants into the daily lives of regular people. We need to make native plants desirable as aesthetic objects. In order to do that we need to take native plants out of the garden and bring them into the home. This will require citizen scientists to find easy ways to use natives as both house plants and cut flowers.

Native plants as house plants

When was the last time you saw a native plant in the house plant section of a nursery? Maybe in some places on the east coast of the US you can find a few things here and there, but I've never seen California native plants in California nurseries.

It's true that California has a reputation for being sunny, and the sun is impossible to replicate when growing indoors. But California has plenty of shade loving plants.

The ferns are the natural choice for California natives that might work as house plants. I've tried using Blechnum Spicant (Deer Fern) as a house plant several times, but I've failed each time. I'm not a very experienced house plant gardener, and the care for Deer Fern is just different enough from the care for my spider plants, that I have messed it up.

We need enthusiastic native plant people to figure out how to grow native plants indoors. We need them to breed versions of the plants that can thrive in low light situations. We need to get the native plants onto the nursery store shelves so that those are the plants that average consumers are choosing.

Native plants in the cut flower industry

Native plant activists also need to build a presence in the cut flower industry. California is overrun with beautiful flowers. Why aren't any of the flowers available at the local florist? Why can't we order native bouquets online?

The reason native flowers aren't available in flower arrangements is that propagating native plants is more difficult than propagating domesticated plants such as cut flowers. The plants available in stores are partly the plants that people like, but they're also the plants that are easy to propagate.

So the challenge for native plant enthusiasts is to find the native plants that are easy to propagate and grow well for use in bouquets and cut flowers.

My instincts say that Matilijia Poppy would be great for cut flowers. The long stems and beautiful open flowers seem like a natural pick for bouquets. I also know that California has a number of native Ranunculus flowers, and Ranunculus are widely used in the cut flower industry, but I don't know how easy the California native Ranunculus are to propagate or use for cut flowers. Finally, I feel like native wildflowers like Clarkia would be terrific as cut flowers, but outside of making bouquets for my family, I have never tried.

Now is the time for bold experimentation

We have seen that native plants are great for landscaping. Now it's time for the native plant community to solve the other challenges facing native plant adoption. We need bold growers and citizen scientists to figure out how to use native plants in new ways. We need to bring native plants into the home, both as house plants and as cut flowers.

If we can make native plants more desirable as aesthetic objects, then the problem of native plants in the landscape will solve itself.

Before we get into this, I need to tell you that I am not a cook in any fashion. My wife does 99% of the cooking in our house. I generally only cook for myself.

I am a gardener, and I don't like to let the food I grow go to waste. This becomes a conundrum in summer when we are harvesting more vegetables than we can immediately use, but it's also an issue in winter when harvesting vegetables that not everyone in the family enjoys. In winter in California there are two vegetables that I am typically harvesting: lettuce and radishes.

Lettuce is extremely easy to use. Throw it in a salad, put it on a sandwich, etcetera.

Radishes, on the other hand, are something of an enigma. They taste pretty awful raw. The leaves have sharp spines, and the body of the radish has a peppery flavor that can be overwhelming.

This recipe was born out of my desire to find a pleasant way to eat a lot of radishes. I like to make it for lunch on chilly days when there are radishes to harvest in the back yard.

Ingredients

You can use any type of radish for this recipe. I usually use Daikon radishes because I grow a lot of them and the leaves are bigger than on red radishes, but the red radishes will work fine. If you are using red radishes then you might want to use two of them.

1. 1 radish
2. 1 container of chicken ramen
3. 1 tablespoon of honey
4. 1 teaspoon of garlic powder (or 1 clove of fresh garlic, chopped)

Recipe

As I said at the beginning of this post, I am not a cook. So this recipe is pretty simple.

1. Chop up the leafy parts of 4 or 5 radish leaves. Do not use the leafless stems.
2. Chop up the soft, white middle section of a small daikon radish. Only use as much as you want.
3. Make ramen as usual, using boiling water and adding the spice packet.
4. Add radish, radish greens, honey, and garlic to the bowl.
5. Wait 1 minute to allow the leaves to cook down a bit (this softens the spines).
6. Enjoy!

If you're thinking of trying your hand at gardening for the first time in 2026, you might be wondering what plants are easy to grow in California. Which plants do well in our climate and which need more care? In this post I'm going to list three plants that are easy to grow in all of California. All three of these plants require minimal care to be successful, so they're great picks for beginner gardeners.

1. Sunflowers

My first suggestion is sunflowers. Sunflowers are beautiful and iconic all over the world. The bright yellow flower heads look so joyful as they tilt their heads to follow the sun through the sky. They are great accents in any yard, and the seeds are also edible. You can chop the flower head down when the seeds are ready to claim them for yourself, or just leave them there for the squirrels and the birds.

Growing sunflowers in California can be remarkably easy if you start them at the right time. If you start them in winter or early spring, then all you have to do is put the seed about an inch in the ground. When the rain falls it will trigger seed germination and by late spring you will have a beautiful tall sunflower.

If you wait until the rainy season has passed, then you may have to do a little more work. You can put a sunflower seed in some soil in a paper cup. Keep it moist for two weeks or so. When it is about six inches tall, you can transplant it into your yard.

Sunflowers develop thick taproots that gather moisture from deep in the soil, so they don't need much water. You probably want to water them every other day for the first few weeks while they are getting established. Then you can taper off the watering.

If you want to go the extra mile to support local wildlife, then you could even grow our native sunflowers. California Bush Sunflower doesn't grow the giant yellow heads on long green stalks that you see in more common sunflowers. Instead the flowers are about the diameter of an egg, and they grow in a bushy form. California Bush Sunflower makes a great thick hedge, and it blooms nearly all year long.

2. Cherry tomatoes

My second suggestion for a plant that's easy to grow for beginner gardeners in California is cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are the small, sweet tomatoes that are most often eaten in salads or on skewers. They are so delicious that even my kids pick them straight off the vines and eat them for snacks.

Cherry tomatoes are nice plants for beginners because they are easier to grow than standard full sized tomatoes. They are more disease resistant, they require less water, and they will re-seed themselves year after year.

You can start cherry tomatoes in containers or in the soil. In either case, just make sure to keep the soil moist for two weeks or so to allow the seed to germinate. When you put the plant in the ground, water it every other day until it starts bearing fruit, then you can taper off the water.

All tomatoes are vining plants. For cherry tomatoes, these vines usually form into a tangle that is more or less bush-like in form. These bushes can get quite large if you let them. You should trim them back freely once the bush reaches a size that you like that is over 3-5 feet tall and wide.

3. Blackberries

My third suggestion for a great plant for beginner gardeners in California is blackberries. Blackberries are another fruit that my kids will pick straight off the plant. What is better than seeing your kids eating healthy food out of the garden? And if you've seen the price of blackberries from the grocery store recently, then you know how much money you'll save by reserving a small section of your garden for blackberries.

Blackberries grow in two different forms: vining and caning. The caning varieties of blackberries grow on long canes sticking out of the ground. The vining varieties of blackberries grow on vines that run along the ground and form hedges over time. Both varieties typically have thorns, but humans have bred varieties of the caning blackberries that have very few or no thorns. Both the caning and vining blackberries produce nearly identical fruit.

The nice thing about the vining blackberry is that it's native to California. California blackberry grows natively in nearly all forests in California. It likes to grow as an understory plant beneath tree canopies. It's particularly common in forests of tall redwoods and towering douglas firs.

Growing the native blackberry is a good choice because it won't invade natural areas if it escapes your garden. Also, because it is native to California it is adapted to having water in the winter and little to no water in the summer. This makes caring for it even easier than caning blackberries, which will require more water and can become invasive if they escape your garden.

Sunflowers and tomatoes are annual plants. This means that their entire lifecycles occur in one year. Blackberries are perennial plants. This means that you put them in the ground once and they last for years. You should plant your blackberries in the winter or early spring. Then water them twice a week through the summer.

One of the most common weeds in California gardens is Oxalis Pes-Caprae, aka Bermuda Buttercup. I usually refer to it by the name "Oxalis", but this is a really poor way to describe it because Oxalis is a genus of plants. There are many species of Oxalis, aka wood sorrels, that are native to California, such as Oxalis Oregana, aka Redwood Sorrel. Still, for the rest of this article I'm going to use the name Oxalis to refer only to the one I see most commonly in the garden: Oxalis pes-caprae.

Oxalis pes-caprae is an easy plant to love, despite it's weedy nature. It's edible, and has a pleasant sour flavor. Some foragers like to use it like lettuce in salads. It also puts on a beautiful display of small, vibrant yellow flowers. For this reason, the Oxalis bloom in the late winter can sometimes attract hikers and sightseers.

But looks can be deceiving. The California Invasive Plants Council (Cal-IPC) calls it a moderately invasive plant. If not controlled, then it has the potential to invade natural areas and displace native plants. I know that I've seen it taking over some of my favorite nature areas, such as the Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve. I'm grateful to the staff and volunteers who have kept it in control there.

Controlling Oxalis

When I first moved into my house, Oxalis was everywhere. It was in the front yard, it was in the back yard, and there was a carpet of Oxalis covering one of the side yards. Controlling it can be somewhat difficult. Even though it "does not produce seeds, it is difficult to control because of its ability to form many persistent bulbs". So I got to work weeding, and when I was lucky I pulled out an entire frond, with a bulb attached at the end.

If you don't manage to pull out the bulb, then Oxalis will come back year after year until it is exhausted. Still, it's a relatively easy weed to pull. I just pulled it whenever I saw it coming up each year for around three years, and now I rarely see it in my yard at all.

University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources notes that if wedding isn't effective, herbicides can be used to control Oxalis.