Growing Wild

An earthship is a building that's built out of recycled materials (glass bottles, old tires, cans, etc..) and mostly Cob walls with solarpanels, wind turbines, greenhouses, and large water capture system to ensure all you need within the walls. All these components help regulate the temp for both plants and you creating a proper oasis from all of itnall

Here's a good dissection of one to give you an idea

The most famous one, and one of the first ones ever made back in the 1970s by a small off grid group working together is The Phoenix which was built as the model for how cool these guys could be its now a place you can take tours or rent-

But now there is so many different styles and cool ideas for it! Now some of these are merely concepts

But you can adapt them to any weather for your particular light/weather/energy conditions.

When you encounter a lone wasp its usually out foraging and so they're just curious if there's any goodies for them to gather and at most just want to get a quick drink of your sweat. Setting out a shallow dish of water (or even just a couple drops of your drink) or a sacrificial piece of food can keep everyone happy.

I politely closed the box and apologised, I was not attacked

Several times in the past, I've picked up a 5-gallon bucket in the garden and found an active wasps nest inside- I put them down carefully and apologised

They also have some SERIOUSLY inventive ones:

(High and Low Tide ^)

I like to think of them as a safe alternative for anyone who has ever wanted to lick a battery or drink the yummy juice inside. 😋

Liz Toohey-Wiese, 2024.

"A sign installed in the largest wildfire burn I’ve ever seen, along the BC/YK border. Borrowing the aesthetics of BC Recreation Site signs, once again pointing to the overlaps of outdoor recreation, resource extraction, and the consequences of the climate crisis. Most recreation sites in BC exist along previously built logging and mining roads.

“Forced into a great and difficult transformation” was a line I heard in a lecture on Buddhist philosophy I was listening to on my drive up north. But it became another mantra I thought about while living in a place that’s been utterly transformed by resource extraction over the past century, and as I thought about the burnt landscapes I drove through."

Some circular logs had been stored here for ages, and the majority of the grass was completely unattached to the ground already - this is all that was left after pulling the unrooted trailers!

And a quick few minutes of weeding before going to a friend's for dinner

Those big grass clumps left at the end are actually what grass looks like when its allowed to mature & grow out the crowns at the base that hold most of its energy. I cut them into pieces to plant in bare & muddy parts of the yard that are high-use.

Grass like this will have deeper roots than the half inch underneath the mowed (and constantly depleted of energy) turf, but its still only a couple inches compared to native flowers, grasses, and sedges that will root down 2-12+ feet & in doing so help hold the soil together, outlast severe weather, let water permeate deeper faster, and utilize further down nutrients. One of many reasons to replace areas of lawn with native plants.

Photo source

Changed the shape some to have it sort of curl around and in to my native berry bush circle garden behind it. The juneberry, snowberry, and red elderberry around it will leaf out alongside the oregon grape and provide a nice secluded and slightly shady area, but I only have irises planted in the straw-covered spot between them now. Adding flowers in & in front of that spot will help complete the nice little hideaway feeling, and provide interest and food for insects beyond the very early spring beauty irises bring.

Raked it out to even things up and seeded a couple packets of pacific northwest wildflower mix and a packet of pollinator flower mix. Depending on germination I'll seed more of my hot weather flower seeds that dont need cold stratification in the early Spring.

Added some more seeds recently, and have the first few sprouts coming up. Put some strawberries along the front and sides, and weeded out a bit of grass that was left.

Put up a tiny fence to discourage my dogs from running through it until the flowers are big enough to do it themselves. Can't wait for the Oregon grape to bloom its gorgeous yellow flowers

The first few flowers in the bed in the back right are already coming in too, poppies and lupine among others I dont recognize yet.

Wallflowers grown from seed last year are blooming for the first time in the flower beds behind the greenhouse that used to just be a giant wall of blackberry vines

This once empty patch of yard is now home to Borage, black eyed Susan, sapphire lobelia, snapdragons, strawberry, feverfew, plains coreopsis, and more that haven't bloomed or I haven't identified yet.

Most were direct seeded this spring - a few were grown in pots and planted out, all but a couple snapdragons were grown by me from seed.

I'll probably trim the borage back so it doesnt overtake everything soon, but Im really happy with how well and quickly the space filled out

This will not solve climate change and the root problem of the seasons becoming harsher and wilder. It WILL however help greatly to keep those intense seasonal swings from turning your lawn into the next dust bowl, or a clay-capped rock hard surface that doesn't take in any water and lets it turn to a flash flood on the surface while wells run dry. It will help the struggling local habitats that are shrinking in the stress, and provide food and shelter for the pollinators suffering from the same. And it will start to give you and your neighbors an idea of which native plants resist or even thrive in these intense seasonal cycles the best, so that that knowledge can be expanded on.

The in-between seasons where temperature and weather are less harsh tend to be the best for seeding (especially fall), but itll depend on the temperature and light needs of your chosen plants. Some native seeds, especially in parts of the world with big hot and cold cycles through the seasons, have dormancy that can only be broken through manual cold or hot stratification or - the easiest way - by just allowing for the fact that it may take a couple of years before certain species start to germinate. That also means you want to start as soon as possible, even if that means just seeding a small area right now and seeing how it goes.

Bare soil is very easily carried away on the wind or rain, can become hydrophobic or just very very compacted and unable to take in water, and gets much hotter and dryer during the hot seasons than soil with plantings in it. I don't think I need to go into the fire dangers of a field of dead grass right up to your door, but be especially wary if you have popular evergreen hedges like arborvitae or similar leading right to your dwelling that drop needles underneath year after year and can act as a tinderbox and fire ladder right to you. Other common ways of making a "defensible space" against sudden fires is planting trees and larger plants at least 10-30' out from the house, planting local fire safe plants (check university extensions or similar for good lists) that burn less hot and spread less embers, and reducing plantings of highly flammable plants near others/the dwelling (plants with a lot of sap, aromatics, loose and papery barks, badly trimmed evergreens like juniper yew or cypress with a big dead exterior).

Phalera bucephala, otherwise known as the buff-tip moth, is a remarkable mimic that can easily disguise itself as a twig. This moth has a unique resting position that makes its body seem narrower and more cylindrical, and its wings are covered in silver patterns that resemble tree bark, while the buff-colored patches on its head and forewings mimic the appearance of freshly-snapped wood.

Above: three actual twigs and one buff-tip moth

This type of camouflage is also known as a "protective resemblance" -- a form of mimesis in which an animal can avoid being preyed upon by mimicking an unremarkable or inedible aspect of its environment. Many other moths are able to disguise themselves in similar ways, often mimicking dead leaves, twigs, moss, and/or tree bark.

Above: more photos of Phalera bucephala

The buff-tip moth is particularly adept at disguising itself, however, and the fact that it so strongly resembles such a specific object (not just a dead leaf or a piece of foliage, but a broken twig from a silver birch tree, in particular) makes this disguise seem even more impressive and unique.

Above: the photo at the top shows a buff-tip moth in its resting position, while the photo at the bottom shows the same species with its wings unfurled

It also tends to look like there's a weird little smiley face in the setae surrounding the moth's head, which is arguably even more striking, but for some reason none of my sources seem to mention that weirdness.

Above: the weird little smiley face on the back of the moth's head

This species is distributed throughout the British Isles, mainland Europe, and parts of Asia, with its range extending into Eastern Siberia.

Sources & More Info:

Wildlife Insights: Buff-Tip Moth Identification Guide

Butterfly Conservation: Buff-Tip

Wildlife Insights: Phalera bucephala

The Wildlife Trusts: The Buff-Tip Moth

Moth Identification: Phalera busephala

Encyclopedia of Life: Global Map of Known Occurrences for Phalera busephala

Insecta: Phalera bucephala

Lepidoptera and their Ecology: Phalera busephaloides and Phalera busephala

Journal of Ecology and Evolution: Strong Foraging Preferences for Ribes alpinum in the Polyphagous Caterpillars of the Buff-Tip Moth