Growing Wild

location: moss oasis, endless barren waste

Fly-By Feeding

Tree Swallow - Skagit Wildlife Area, WA

gif below the cut

@ball-lightning The answer is going to look different for every single tribe, depending on their culture, geography, and history. It may even look different for different reservations within the same tribe based on their specific local history. I have not done much scholarly work on the broader land back movement; it's important to preface my answer with the fact that my understanding is going to be largely influenced by the tribes I work with.

Where I'm located, "land back within the reservation" would look like:

Local, county, state, and federal governments giving back any land they own outright (and ideally giving it back instead of selling it back, especially since those governments usually got the land for free through tax forfeiture anyway), and

All land within reservation boundaries - regardless of who owns it - being subject to tribal jurisdiction regarding land management.

Private landowners already have to abide by whatever local laws apply regarding land use - zoning, permits, mitigation, all that type of stuff. Land back would mean that non-tribal landowners within a reservation would have to abide by tribal laws regarding land use, and those laws could be enforced with penalties and fines the same way other governments enforce their own land use laws.

"Land back within the reservation" means creating legal* and financial pathways that will facilitate land returning to tribal ownership, and in the meantime letting tribal governments have the final say about what happens to the land within their own borders.

“Native people used to live in this National Park” No. They still do.

“Native people used to tell these stories-” No. They still do.

“Native people used to use this plant as a natural remedy-” No. They still do.

Great blue heron update: it is injured and hiding on my neighbor’s property with nothing to eat. I have made some calls and am working on having it taken to a wildlife rehab. It came out from hiding for a moment and I got this picture.

“Native people used to live in this National Park” No. They still do.

“Native people used to tell these stories-” No. They still do.

“Native people used to use this plant as a natural remedy-” No. They still do.

i was on the porch when this little fella crash landed down from the sky right a foot away from me. looked like it just caught something mealy! maybe it needed a breather (thorax was quite active). quite a gentle presence tbh. after about a minute of gathering itself it flew away much more gracefully. just wanted to share ^_^

I remember watching a wasp hunt some cabbage worms in my garden last year. The caterpillar was a pretty feisty one and gooed her so she spent a while cleaning up before packing up the meal-- but she couldn't carry all of it so after rolling up her first ball and flying off she came back a couple minutes later for the second, and this time her sister came too to help find more grubbies (though it did take her a while and I eventually had to offer her one on a stick right in front of her...).

The leftovers from making Cherry Bounce last night.

4c Brandy (can use Whiskey/Bourbon or Vodka if preferred)

16 oz pitted cherries (fresh or frozen)

2 cups honey (or sugar)

2 whole cloves (optional)

1/2 stick cinnamon (optional)

2 whole allspice (optional)

Put cherries and spices into a cleaned and sanitized 2qt mason jar (or split them between quarts or pints). I've seen vanilla pods used, or cardamom pods. I sanitized with OneStep.

In a large pot or saucepan, combine brandy and honey and heat on low until the honey is dissolved. Pour into jars over cherries and close. Shake lightly to mix.

Shake well to distribute the ingredients. Place in a sunny location for 1 week, and then store in a cool, dark place for 2-6 months before straining. The cherries can be used within a week of straining for baking or cooking. The liquid is a delicious cherry liqueur that can be sipped or added to mixed drinks for a sweet cherry flavor.

I’ve got a full length video about Jimothy if you search on my blog.

That being said, I wanna take a little more of a philosophical approach here.

Apparently Jimothy was born in 2025, so he’s about a year old. And I got a lot of questions in the comment section of my video on TikTok asking why his mama/siblings didn’t eat him or shun him and leave him to die.

And it’s because that isn’t how raccoons work. Jimothy has survived thus far because raccoon families are built on love and support and knowledge exchange.

People always say “raccoons are solitary creatures.” But they aren’t. Not really. Males use each other to stay warm in the winter (and keep each other entertained.) Females form close bonds with their children. Siblings teach each other new skills and games. In captivity, raccoons make their own family. For example, my own raccoons, Lammy and Moonshine, perfectly mimick the relationship between a daughter that should have left the nest by now, and a fed up mother that still loves her. Raccoons are so successful as a species because their families (blood related or otherwise) lift each other up. They share their knowledge with the ones they love and offer help when needed.

and ACCEPT help when needed.

A video of how ive been getting the joro spider webs, i take the support lines from their anchors first. This causes the females to run off (the males are usually more stubborn and sometimes drop down to the ground). They're not looking for a confrontation, but i still mind their locations in case they try to crawl on me. Their venom isn't fun but its also not strong enough to worry a human (save for an allergic reaction)

But yeah, i pretty much just steal their webs. They rebuild them if necessary. I can then twist the string, moving and overlapping fibers as necessary.

I pick debris out with my free hand (when I'm not holding a phone that is). Sometimes I'll be able to get a whole web; sometimes I'll have to just take the part that's within reach. their webs can be huge, communal behemoths with 1-3 females and like, 1-7 males each. Some support strings can be seemingly 10 feet long with strength to match.

The yellowness of the silk seems to be the source of the stickiness, especially in the central web. It washes off, but i imagine remnants of it remaining in the string is good for keeping it stuck together (similar to plant gums in cellulose cordage) The amount of stickiness seems to vary per web, maybe because of age? dunno on that count.

One cool thing i noticed was that one web i got to first, i collected it and thought nothing of it. I returned to that same bush and spider a couple days later, and it had drawn a squiggle on its web! It looked like a scuffed version of the zigzags you'll see on garden spider webs. Notably, they're both orb weavers (i think), so I wonder if it's an innate behavior? I've even seen a fee of the spiders shake their webs slightly, not as much as garden spiders though.

The finished string still has some debris. It's just gonna happen if you're not directly "silking" the spiders. According to a project in madagascar, over a million spider milkings would need to happen to make a spider silk shawl!

I havent been able to find as many as i did the first times i went looking, as my mom's decided to wage a war on them with an electric tennis racket. But the ones deep in the woods i can theoretically keep coming back to! I've also gotten a lot more efficient at collecting the silk and maximizing its use.

As much as theyre a harmful species here,it also is pretty futile to kill them. The neighboring yards all have them as well, as do the neighboring fields and woods. Might as well let them live, but still actively decrease the surface area of webs to help out the local bugs.

And that way, you get to practice a very niche sorta stringmaking! I take the tiny thread i wound around a stick, soak it in hot tap water briefly to loosen debris and decrease stickiness, and then i turn it two-ply. I just tie different "batches" together using a square knot

Above is two angles of the same spool, the double ply thread wrapped around it as neatly and parallel as possible. A nice variable golden yellow color, even if theres a bit of debris left. The spool is about an inch across in this photo with some overlapping threads, for reference.

So that's just a ramble about my spider silk ventures so far!

Reusing Potentially Contaminated Landscapes: Growing Gardens in Urban Soils (https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/urban_gardening_fina_fact_sheet.pdf)

Steps to Creating a Community Garden or Expand Urban Agriculture at a Brownfields Site at (https://www.epa.gov/brownfields/steps-creating-community-garden-or-expand-urban-agriculture-brownfields-site)