The Treehouse System

I remember as a kid, I used to excitedly find ladybug larvae, and I’d relocate them to plants covered in aphids. But I’ve seen one ladybug in the past 5 years, and 0 larvae. I’ve not even seen any aphids. It’s so tangible, it’s so noticeable to me as someone who considered this my absolute favourite season to do my favourite activity in. And I know if the bugs are dying off, other things that eat those bugs are to.

And the absolute worst part? When I tell people about this, the average reaction is ‘good!’. A lot of people will express joy over there being less bugs in the world. Most will express how they’re glad they’ve been experiencing less mosquitos and I want to just grab by the shoulders and shake them and yell TONS OF BUGS JUST DISAPPEARING SHARPLY OVER THE YEARS IS NOT A GOOD THING !!

The need to tidy up and sterilize our outdoor environments is going to kill us all.

No more nonessential use of pesticides. No more nonessential mowing and weed-whacking. No more raking up leaves And putting them in garbage bags. No more non-native plants thinly decorating English-style lawns and gardens.

It is hard: tall and thickety weeds are repulsive to the suburban aesthetic standard. They are associated with uncleanness, poverty, lack of maintenance, ugliness, poverty, and decay. The uncontrolled and chaotic growth of a meadow is so reviled as to be unthinkable.

The Human World is supposed to be covered in uniform green Surface like carpet, so turfgrass, kept carefully short, must be enforced everywhere... This is so ingrained in us that "grass" might as well be another word for the ground outside, and even in video games and children's books, this is shown: flat, featureless green Surface.

This, before your eyes, is Death. No ecosystem = No life.

For a year and a half, I have been planting trees and native plants, letting large areas grow wild and unkempt and introducing more plants to them, weeding and clipping selectively instead of indiscriminately hacking everything down (how thoughtless!)

And I've started to see bugs I've never seen before just about every day. I have watched the amount of life in my little corner of Earth increase dramatically. There are multiple species of lightning bugs, dozens of dragonflies, butterflies everywhere, stag beetles and cicadas, loads of bees, innumerable moths.

I remember the sad decline in bugs as well, the summers with hardly any lightning bugs, but I see now that we can change it.

Outside isn't supposed to be NEAT and TIDY and WELL-KEPT, outside is supposed to be alive. Outside is supposed to have fallen leaves, wildflowers, logs, sticks, tall plants, thickets, and trees (any of those things appropriate for your biome). Possibly hundreds of plant species have been wiped out from your corner of Earth, but by planting native plant species, you can restore them to their rightful place.

And remember that "Weeds" are simply plants that have evolved to thrive in disturbed environments, and they in fact help heal a destroyed or disrupted habitat! They are Emergency Medical Technicians for the Earth.

Their aggressive growth and deep, stubborn roots stop erosion and topsoil loss, and they create conditions where a greater variety of plants can begin to grow and thrive.

So when weeds overtake a lawn that has not been mowed, that's because the lawn is an empty, devastated environment where most everyone has been wiped out, and they are doing what they evolved to do.

It's actually more complicated than that—many weeds, on top of being disturbance-adapted species, have specifically coevolved with humans, to live in human-created environments!

We make Weeds...and Weeds make Us.

Recognize, name, respect, and learn from every creature, and you will see the Weeds for what they are. You will learn of these plants' heritage as food and medicine, their deep kinship with the impoverished, the displaced, and the marginalized, and you will see the awesome dignity, beauty, and power of the most detested Pokeweed, maligned Dandelion and hated Crabgrass.

Knowing the weeds is the beginning of everything.

When everything feels hopeless, just remember the most vital secret: The human species is not alone in this fight.

We cannot, as individuals, destroy the scourge of chemical-intensive industrial agriculture—but Amaranthus palmeri just might.

(edible, highly nutritious plant used as crop by Native Americans) (USA's most costly agricultural weed) (it and its weed buddies fucking kneecapped Roundup Ready corn by evolving glyphosate resistance so goddamn fast) (simultaneous resistance to SIX. FAMILIES. of herbicide. was recently documented in a population in Kansas) (chemical companies have been trying to ~innovate~ new ways of using chemicals to stop herbicide resistance and it's literally only made resistance evolve faster) (like seriously its absolute carnage in the agrochemical industry) (these motherfucking plants are on levels of evolution heretofore unseen on planet Earth and billions of corporate dollars are getting sent straight to eeby deeby trying and failing miserably to get ahead of these weeds) (fun fact Amaranth traditionally symbolizes Immortality) (I WONDER WHY) (research underway to grow amaranth species as climate change resistant crop) (mutualistic symbiosis apparently includes destroying corporate hegemony)

[Original Tweet source here.]

[RANT AHEAD]

Okay, yeah. This is a very, very, very bad idea. I understand that there is a certain flavor of techbro who has ABSOLUTELY zero problem with this because "AI is the future, bro", and we're supposed to be reading their articles on how to use AI for side hustles and all that.

I get that ID apps have played into people's tendency to want quick and easy answers to everything (I'm not totally opposed to apps, but please read about how an app does not a Master Naturalist make.) But nature identification is serious stuff, ESPECIALLY when you are trying to identify whether something is safe to eat, handle, etc. You have to be absolutely, completely, 100000% sure of your ID, and then you ALSO have to absolutely verify that it is safely handled and consumed by humans.

As a foraging instructor, I cannot emphasize this enough. My classes, which are intended for a general audience, are very heavy on identification skills for this very reason. I have had (a small subsection of) students complain that I wasn't just spending 2-3 hours listing off bunches of edible plants and fungi, and honestly? They can complain all they want. I am doing MY due diligence to make very sure that the people who take my classes are prepared to go out and start identifying species and then figure out their edibility or lack thereof.

Because it isn't enough to be able to say "Oh, that's a dandelion, and I think this might be an oyster mushroom." It's also not enough to say "Well, such-and-such app says this is Queen Anne's lace and not poison hemlock." You HAVE to have incredibly keen observational skills. You HAVE to be patient enough to take thorough observations and run them through multiple forms of verification (field guides, websites, apps, other foragers/naturalists) to make sure you have a rock-solid identification. And then you ALSO have to be willing to read through multiple sources (NOT just Wikipedia) to determine whether that species is safely consumed by humans, and if so if it needs to be prepared in a particular way or if there are inedible/toxic parts that need to be removed.

AND--this phenomenon of AI-generated crapola emphasizes the fact that in addition to all of the above, you HAVE to have critical thinking skills when it comes to assessing your sources. Just because something is printed on a page doesn't mean it's true. You need to look at the quality of the information being presented. You need to look at the author's sources. You need to compare what this person is saying to other books and resources out there, and make sure there's a consensus.

You also need to look at the author themselves and make absolutely sure they are a real person. Find their website. Find their bio. Find their social media. Find any other manners in which they interact with the world, ESPECIALLY outside of the internet. Contact them. Ask questions. Don't be a jerk about it, because we're just people, but do at least make sure that a book you're interested in buying is by a real person. I guarantee you those of us who are serious about teaching this stuff and who are internet-savvy are going to make it very easy to find who we are (within reason), what we're doing, and why.

Because the OP in that Tweet is absolutely right--people are going to get seriously ill or dead if they try using AI-generated field guides. We have such a wealth of information, both on paper/pixels and in the brains of active, experienced foragers, that we can easily learn from the mistakes of people in the past who got poisoned, and avoid their fate. But it does mean that you MUST have the will and ability to be impeccably thorough in your research--and when in doubt, throw it out.

demeter fragrance is my go-to for unhuman scents. smells that are hard to capture. they have a lot of florals, which is common for perfumes, but uncommon scents like asian pear, basil, and monk fruit. they have enjoyable but strange scents, like the ozone smell of thunderstorms, and the smell of freshly upturned soil (one of my favorites, the scent is called earthworm). they have some smells that are outright weird, like turpentine, funeral home bouquets, fresh tennis balls, and glue

lizards are wonderful and I encourage everyone to go out and learn a little somethin about them today 💛🦎