start a revolution

You may well remember World Weaver Press’s Kickstarter last year to fund the first English translation of the groundbreaking Brazilian anthology of science fiction stories set in sustainable future worlds The Solarpunk Anthology. 

The Kickstarter also raised enough to also fund the Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers anthology. Today World Weavers has announced the table of contents. 

Congrats to all the successful authors!

“Caught Root” by Julia K. Patt

“The Spider and the Stars” by D.K. Mok

“Riot of the Wind and Sun” by Jennifer Lee Rossman

“Fyrewall” by Stefani Cox

“Watch Out, Red Crusher!” by Shel Graves

“The Call of the Wold” by Holly Schofield

“Camping With City Boy” by Jerri Jerreat

“A Field of Sapphires and Sunshine” by Jaymee Goh

“Midsummer Night’s Heist” by Commando Jugendstil and Tales from the EV Studio

“Heavenly Dreams of Mechanical Trees” by Wendy Nikel

“New Siberia” by Blake Jessop

“Grover: Case #C09 920, ‘The Most Dangerous Blend’” by Edward Edmonds

“Amber Waves” by Sam S. Kepfield

“Grow, Give, Repeat” by Gregory Scheckler

“Cable Town Delivery” by M. Lopes da Silva

“Women of White Water” by Helen Kenwright

“Under the Northern Lights” by Charlotte M. Ray

Full details and author bios can be seen by visiting the announcement page. 

Hello, Tumblr! I’ve gotten really into solarpunk lately (a hopeful, beautiful vision of a sustainble and just future is kinda exactly what I need right now), so I decided to start this blog. 

I wore my first solarpunk cosplay today, to an awesome steampunk flower show at the Tower Hill Botanical Garden. I had fun putting it together, and I’m excited for experimenting more with solarpunk outfits.

I just got the vest at a plus size clothing swap yesterday. The top and skirt are from Amazon, and the teggings (leggings/tights hybrid) are from Re/Dress. For the “headdress,” I just clipped a bunch of hair flowers and a necklace into my hair. I may be slightly obsessed with flower hair clips/fascinators/flower crowns…

At the turn of the twentieth century, Dr. Charles A. Campbell, a physician and former city bacteriologist in San Antonio, Texas, began the first experiments with attracting bats to artificial roosts. Although he had the highest regard for bats, the motive behind his experiments was not that he thought bats needed homes. The real reason was to find a way to control a disease that caused millions of deaths throughout the world each year: malaria. In his native Texas, mosquitoes and disease rendered countless acres of fertile land uninhabitable, and Campbell, who treated victims of malaria, knew the suffering it caused.

In the beginning Campbell thought the answer was simple: recruit great numbers of bats who, he believed, were the natural predators of mosquitoes… But after years of unsuccessful experimentation with boxes of assorted sizes and shapes, he learned that bats did not choose any old ramshackle roost at random. Undaunted, his solution was to build a bigger bat house. With a personal investment of $500.00, Campbell built the first Malaria-Eradicating, Guano-Producing Bat Roost in 1907 at the U.S. Experimental Farm near San Antonio.

He called the 30 foot tall tower “my monument.” Inside, a series of inclined shelves had been carefully crafted for the bats to roost upon, and 20 yards of guano saturated cheesecloth were festooned on the inside walls for their further comfort. The hopper, from which he intended to collect their droppings, was seeded with about 100 pounds of fresh guano. And to further attract visitors, he provided a meal: “three perfectly good hams with a nice slice cut out of each, exhibiting their splendid quality for the delection of the intended guests.”

Elves are a predominately woodland species, with three subspecies, two of which that live in deserts and tundra. I will be focusing mostly on Woodland Elven fashion.

Modesty

Elves are pretty modest. Many clothing styles cover most of the body, from wrist to ankle to neck. More raunchy fashions do not employ cleavage of the breasts for sex appeal, as that does nothing for elves (especially when the elf wearing it is not nursing, which will be explained in the species guide), and instead feature cutouts showing off the back of the neck and the dip of the spine, which has that effect on elves. Cuts into skirts to show off form fitting boots and pants are also common.

Colors

Elven fashion usually employs greens and browns for practical wear, but the species’ love of colored glass has less to a wide variety of bright colors for pretty much everything else. They typically prefer pink or peach colors when not wearing green, as something about the way the view light makes it generally pleasing to look at for the species. In the desert variant of the species, they wear bright colors almost all the time so they can find each other better, and the tundra variety prefers pastels and blues.

Decorations to clothes

Elves prefer a clean, refined silhouette, so decorations to their clothes are typically flat embroidery. This embroidery takes inspiration from the general environment around them, and is often a color next to the color of their general clothing on the color wheel. Sometimes pieces of glass and mirrors are also seen in, but anything too sparkly is considered gaudy.

Jewelry

Elves mostly wear elaborate body chains over their clothes as jewelry. Large pieces of colored glass as bracelets are also popular, as are something that resembles an earring that curves around the connection of the ear to the rest of the head.

BOMBS AWAY!!!! a mini guide to seed bombs

black and white 8-page zine

We need domestic bees. But what happens to wild bees when they share a space?

There are two kinds of bees in this world. First, there are the domestic, managed bees that commercial beekeepers transport by the truckload to pollinate fruit trees, almonds, and other crops around the country. Most of the honey we eat comes from those domestic honeybees.

But wild pollinators, including wild bees, are also out busily collecting pollen and fertilizing flowers. Some are tiny. Some are solitary. And they seem to benefit from efforts to save domestic bees from pesticides and other health hazards linked to colony collapse disorder.

But are more domestic honeybees and bumblebees always good for wild ones?

According to Rachel Mallinger, a pollinator ecologist at the University of Florida, too many domestic bees seem to cause problems for their wild kin. She joins Ira to discuss. Listen to the conversation here.  

Insect Hotels

Over 30% of solitary bee species are wood nesters, some spending up to nine months of their lives as larvae incubating in forest deadfall. Ladybugs hibernate over winter in stacks of twigs, and other beneficial creatures – like wasps, lizards, moths, hedgehogs, beetles, and dragonflies – love to find little nooks and crannies to hide from predators and the elements, at any time of year.

An insect hotel is ideally placed in a sheltered location, but still in the sunlight. Ants sometimes eat bee larvae, so a solitary bee hotel is best placed off of the ground. Often, a wire mesh is placed on the outside to prevent bird predation. Ideally, the surrounding area should host flowering and insectary plants, to provide food for the guests!

These natural habitats are often missing from a domestic or overly-landscaped garden, and are absolutely vital to the health of your plants, local life web, and for the pollination of your garden. Designing for your native wildlife is crucial for a long-term healthy, productive, and sustainable space. Good, ecologically-minded design also minimises the amount of work you have to do: for example, I find that when I practice companion planting with insectary Apiaceae-family plants, I never have an aphid problem, because predatory beetles abound, and they eat problematic insects before they get established. Creating balanced ecosystems is a form of biological pest control.

An insect hotel is easily made from twigs, wood, tiles, pinecones, bricks, bark, grass, and other natural or salvaged materials. The form can differ, depending on what sort of creatures you would like to attract, and your aesthetics, but it should basically be designed from a “bug’s eye” view of the world: research what your local species are and what they require in terms of a habitat, and then create it for them in a manner that appeals to your eye.

These are also excellent projects for kids: they are fun and easy to make, interesting to observe, and help foster an early understanding of biology and ecology.

#DIY #bees #insects #entomology #biomimicry #permaculture #kids #art

Pre-made insect hotels: North America / Europe

Images:

B. Alter - Royal Bank of Canada New Wild Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show

sav-überlingen.de

Sissi de Kroon, flickr.com

Insect hotel in Hoofddorf, Holland. Bob Daamen, flickr.com

Cheshire Wildlife Trust, cheshirewildlifetrust.org.uk

Kevin Smith and Lisa Lee Benjamin. floragrubb.com

It’s very difficult to feed people on homesteading alone (especially since most solarpunk focuses heavily on cities) so I would imagine that there would still be some kind of large-scale agriculture. Any improvements we could make to get farming on that bigger level to be better for the environment? What about the actual distribution of grain and fruit and what-have-you? As much as you might want to stick to local produce, some ecosystems are just naturally better for growing foodstuffs.

I would say the gardens most definitely have extremely large windows for sunlight, and different conditions on each floor for different produce (given the fact that not everything works best in the same conditions).

Long strips of bright wildflowers are being planted through crop fields to boost the natural predators of pests and potentially cut pesticide spraying.

The strips were planted on 15 large arable farms in central and eastern England last autumn and will be monitored for five years, as part of a trial run by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).

Solarpunk Teapot House