Growing Wild

Northern Cardinal, 4/10

I'm sometimes worried the male is sexually harassing the female but I'm pretty sure they're just doing some elaborate public pickup roleplay. The rest of us didn't agree to participate in your kink, guys.

American Robin, 1/10

Literally just some dude hanging out. Never bothered anyone but worms. Big fan of the way you just stand there in the middle of the grass like you forgot what you were supposed to be doing.

House Sparrow, 10/10

You're a gang. You're participating in gang violence. There's ten billion of you living in a single wood pile and it's been civil war for three years now. When will the bloodshed end?

Tufted Titmouse, 1/10

A shy baby. A pretty little guy. I saw you on the neighbor's garage roof and time stopped. There were anime sparkles around you. Come back.

European Starling, 9/10

Why is it always you? Listen, I know, I KNOW the sparrows are the problem, and YET. When the fighting starts, it's always you in the middle of it, provoking them and then screaming like you're an innocent bystander defending yourself. I'm onto you.

Carolina Wren, 3/10

This rating is not for physical violence, which you don't engage in, but for your role as an incurable narc. A tattle tale. I know they're fighting again, okay? I see it. Our yard has been a warzone for years, you don't have to make a big announcement every time someone misbehaves.

Eastern Wood-Peewee, 0/10

If this were "birds who think they're better than everyone else," you'd get 10/10.

Red-bellied Woodpecker, 6/10

It's a utility pole. It's not a tree. You're surrounded by trees that are full of bugs. But there you are, on the utility pole. Committing vandalism.

American Crow, unrated

For who am I to cast judgment on the actions of La Famiglia? I assume you are doing what is best for the neighborhood. If I could, though, without criticism, make a single observation. That when large numbers of you gather in the ominous dead cottonwood - no? No, you're right. None of my business.

Great Crested Flycatcher, 5/10

Frankly, I think you could be doing more. I think your name implies a great potential. I think you should massacre the insects. I think your beak should drip with viscera.

Common Grackle, 7/10

La Famiglia does not suffer you to stop in our neighborhood long, and I trust their judgement in this manner. You have the look of a guilty bird.

Tennessee Warbler, 2/10

You keep to yourselves, and I respect that. I get the sense that you could defend yourselves if it came to it, though.

Brown-Headed Cowbird, 3/10

You're not a crow, and eventually they ARE going to figure it out, kiddo.

Gray Catbird, 5/10

Would you. Respectfully. Would you shut the FUCK UP.

Eurasian Collared-Dove, 0/10

You're doing great, sweetie, everyone loves you.

Red-Breasted Nuthatch, 4/10

A comedian. A little jester of a bird. You're so silly. Sure sometimes you incite violence in others but, really, is that your fault? If it is, we forgive you.

Blue Jay, 12/10

If you could learn any human behavior you wanted, it would be how to build a bomb.

Honorable mention:

Turkey Vulture, 5/10

First tomato harvest! Yellow Pear, chocolate pear, and a mix of Spoon and miscellaneous currant-type tomatoes. The last yellow pear plant is succumbing to early blight so this will likely be the only ones of those I get this year—I could start more seed but eh.

Harvested some jalapeños too from one of the plants I have to use making seasoned refried beans for burritos for the freezer. I generally like to let the jalapeños ripen to red, but needs must.

The Shishitos are pumping out the peppers too fast to confine the harvest to Friday night snacks. This is what I got yesterday morning when making sure all the pepper plants were tied to stakes ahead of the afternoon wind advisory (which ended up taking off a maple branch bigger than my bicep). This is at least three snacks worth and it was only Wednesday.

Bush beans harvest yesterday too—French filet on the left, regular Blue Lake hybrid on the right. Blanched and put in the freezer. I almost have enough filet beans for a decent side dish serving. The goal is to have two servings before I make anything with them though.

Also did a second harvest of petunia seed pods. I can see why I had so many volunteer plants in my recycled potting soil! I'll have no trouble growing up my own flats of bedding plants next spring...deliberately this time.

Second harvests of peppermint and Thai lemon basil for the dehydrator. I did separate batches because my dehydrator tends to blow around (and mix them up) when they dry. I've got a full gallon ziplock bag of peppermint leaves for tea already this year—the plants have appreciated both the fairly consistent rain as well as the sprinkling of mealworm frass.

Finally got to remove the squirrel-prevention grate from this planter as I think all the ginger has sprouted. Was a bit of a trick to remove it without killing the nasturtium as it's grown pretty big, but I managed.

The nasturtium I planted in the pepper bucket planters is blooming already. This is my favorite shade of it, but there's also a coral pink and peach shade in the mix.

The pot I transplanted decorative sweet potato slips and French marigolds into is doing excellent on top of one of the rain barrels. I want the sweet potato vine to cascade over the sides, but I'm going to have to make sure the catch-hole is kept clear for the rainwater.

The Rosso Sicilian tomato plants have set a decent amount of fruit. I love how pleated they are. Thank goodness I have a food mill to remove the skins when I eventually make sauce with them though—peeling that would be a nightmare.

In other news, the okra seed has germinated along with a few of the sunflowers. There are two zucchini fruits on one of the plants so I might actually get some this year. I might have one honeynut squash fruit set, but it will take a day or two to tell for sure. I saw some female flowers on the cucumber plants this morning, but while I haven't seen a single cucumber beetle this year, something is still causing many of my cucumber seedlings to wilt and die so we shall have to see on that front. Maybe I should start some more plants just in case...

these are images from a 1930s pamphlet that endorsed kudzu, entitled "stop gullies: save your farm"

Canebrakes built up incredibly rich, fertile soil and are amazing at preventing erosion. They form incredibly strong mats of rhizomes. And their roots are known to go 10 feet deep into the soil.

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow

How To Get Active And Get Organized!

Five tips for forming an affinity group

Crimethinc: How To Start An Affinity Group

Sprout Distro: How To Start An Affinity Group

Rebel Steps: Community support and mutual aid

Want to start a tenants’ association? Here’s what you need to know first (WaPo)

How to organize a tenants’ union (TenantNet)

Form a tenants’ association (HomeLine)

Food Not Bombs handbook

Food Not Bombs materials and books

Principles of harm reduction

What is harm reduction?  (Harm Reduction International)

Getting started in union organizing

Is it time to start a union at your workplace?  (spoiler alert the answer is yes)

Building working-class defense organizations: An interview with the Twin Cities GDC (It’s Going Down)

Practical organizing for antifa and beyond

btw it still exists ˆˆ

here's the written out link:

All California sheephead start life as female and move through an array of colors and body shapes as they mature. Some female adults may transition to male as social and environmental factors shift, balancing the delicate ratio of individuals in their population.

While male California sheephead are largest and easiest to identify at a glance, a closer look at the lively waters of our Kelp Forest exhibit reveals a variety of female sheephead swimming through these fascinating life stages. 

But ye lions do this once cubs each a certain age. A decent amount of birds do it (for example: flamingos and a lot of penguin, duck, and goose species). Gharials (a type of South Asian crocodilian) form creches with hundreds of babies from multiple nests (they lay under 100 eggs each and sometimes as few as 20). Feral hogs tend to form groups of mothers and young like this, and I saw 3 sows and like 15+ tiny babies the other day and they were so cute

But ye that's how you get pictures like these

Its the second high 90s heatwave of the season already, and some of our reservoirs are so low they've opened all fishing - they'll die if they remain.

I add more layers of compost and straw, put my potted plants into bin lids to catch water, wonder where I can get shade cloths for free or cheap when everyone needs them now.

Even after the hottest days pass, its staying in the 80s. No rain in the forecast. Barely any this past spring. Not enough snow, not enough snowmelt. I wonder what the reservoir I've only seen as a vast lake looks like... emptied. Drying out in the sun.

Lots of trees have died this year, already. Too many years of stress in a row, it weakens you in ways you can't see. Until, all at once, brown crowns sweeping the landscape where evergreen once stood. They say we'll lose all the ash trees within a decade or two, to another pest. Another pressure point pushed to fault.

I gather rain barrels on the sides of the road and stack woodchips around the young trees and I teach people about native landscaping and how the plants built to grow here thrive. Or, they did, before the days on weeks of killing heat became the norm.

And then there's the fires. The smoke blocking out the sky, the ash raining down and covering everything. I wonder if it'll help, in the places where the land still holds memories of frequent fires, ones that restored as much as they took. I wonder how many summers I'll spend taping clingwrap over my windows and choosing the heavier option for the trailer because, well, metal siding is less likely to catch from an ember. I wonder how much will be lost to the flames.

I water deep into the clay ground, grateful that it will hold the water instead of let it sink away. Asking once, twice a week to be enough. I plant more than I ever have, desperate to outrun the hikes in food costs I know are coming. I try not to flinch when people complain to me about gas prices, who've been silent on the war and the administration of terror who drove them up.

I plan for a future where things will continue to grow, because I have to believe it will happen and because I could not bear the alternative - to give up and be part of assuring they will not.

I share flowers and bushes and I hope they will survive what's coming.

When, every time we speak, my nails and the creases of my knuckles are stained with soil and char?

When I'm as likely to smell of lavender and sage, as compost and manure and freshly turned earth? Wearing flowery blouses that accentuate my hips, as wearing basketball shorts and a tank top?

Will you love me if all I have to give is fresh herbs, flowers; soup made over days with affection and well wishes?

Will you love me if I can't work a 40 hour week or show up to every commitment? If even I can't tell when my body will give out, fail from under me?

With boots and jeans stained with mud, with sea water, with weeds or clay or shit? With hair gone grey, tangled with leaves and twigs? With weak wrists and ankles that crumple at the first opportunity?

I am not the storybound mistress who is graceful and perfect, always kempt and kept and ordained by only the most beautiful smells and visages.

I am not the musclebound hero who has a sharp chin and suave words, wit to match a king, handsome suits torn asunder with drama.

I have holey clothes that are hand me downs of hand me downs, I have nails uneven and blunted by the clay of the earth. I am calluses and old denim and waves of hair that curl or tangle with just a touch. I am country music and forested roads and the choice to veer away from generational curses.

I am the daughter of cigarette smoke and the son of ashes and closed fists. I am a product of the smoky mountains and the flat glades and the relentless ocean. Late nights and the whistle of trains and quiet conversations, and the howling wind demanding reciprocation in a language it can weave through.

An agate washed downstream, obsidian desperate to blunt its edges. Pulse in the waves and tides and the receding of the shoreline. Composed of estuaries and places where the waters mix and the strange meet. Curious flowers by your bedside and tucked into hair.

Bleached in the holy water then stained again and again and again in clay, and mud and char, and blood and blood and blood. A temper that is glacial but intense enough to burn down forests. A quiet beat that can echo through the mountains when added upon others.

Will you love me if I'm not neat and shiny and perfect? If I'm flawed and loud and muddy and rough? Will you love me if I'm not what you pictured, who you thought you'd bring home to your parents?

If I'm the rush of the river pulling against your limbs, and the howl of the wind through the valley, and reflections in the stream? Will you love me if I'm imperfect and broken, as much as if I'm a rushing torrent pulling you towards beauty and grace?

Do you want to be a union member?

If you're interested in unionizing, check out the Industrial Workers of the World! We accept members of other unions (except officers), students, retirees, the unemployed, the self-employed and freelance, and those in informal professions. Those unable to work may also join. To us, you are all working class.

The IWW is closed to bosses, and anyone who has the power to hire or fire employees. The IWW also does not permit any law enforcement officers, prison guards, or landlords. These positions undermine the power of the working class and are not considered workers by the IWW.

Excellent update on year 2 of this program:

Sure, people complain. Rich people are always going to complain about taxes. But they never flee the way they threaten to, largely because whether or not they like to admit it, they prefer to live in the kinds of areas where things are made nicer by the taxes they don’t want to pay.

eventually I got older (and medicated), but in the meantime spending time in woodland really helped. it comforted me to be around plantlife, which feeds not on life but on sunlight, and therefore causes no harm.

then you get shit like epiphytes that decided to just grow on top of other plants. strangler fig vines, for instance, which decided well fuck, im just gonna cling to this tree trunk and let it do the support work. maybe entangle our roots and envelope my host completely over time. oopsie my host died? that's ok I'll just cling to its corpse for eternity

equally horrifying is the honeysuckle, which preys on young trees boa-constrictor style, squeezing the life out of saplings, which grow with permanent deformities before dying prematurely (makes for a neat walking stick though)

then you get out and proud parasites like mistletoe who are happy to attach themselves to tree canopies and suck their blood extract water and nutrients. so yeah some plants do eat each other actually. gives ya some perspective on the old christmas tradition of hunting mistletoe with guns (yes that's a thing, shooting them down out of trees like squirrels. yes, unlike squirrels they deserve it). as for the romance angle, who doesn't want to kiss a lover beneath the dying corpse of a parasitic trophy kill? sexy as heck.

in conclusion, PLANTS ARE VIOLENT AS FUCK, and that's not even getting into the eternal chemical warfare they are forced to wage against insects, fungi, microbes and other enemies.

one day soon the forests will turn on us, and when that day comes I'm cheerfully betraying humanity and skipping away to cross enemy lines 🫡