Common Spiny Flower Mantis, As An Apology For The Hiatus🌷

All who are interested in the cause of plant diversity, pollinators, and the restoration of ecosystems, please pay attention to the simplest articulation of my advice:

You must seek those who know the ways of the plants and who share the plant agenda

Look for organizations, events and places where these people might be found, and wait for them to appear. Some are from the academic world, many others came to know the plants another way

If someone's email address is publicly available, you can use it to contact them. But the most powerful contacts will be those unreachable by online means

When you find someone, they will tell you the names of other people, so you can seek those people as well. When contacting new connections, tell them who sent you

If you learn to explore your surroundings, recognize the plants, gather their seeds and grow plants yourself, you will be a valued connection

Write down your contacts in a little book and make yourself slightly annoying by offering your service in some way

The plants will teach you the rest...start learning from the weeds, which are easy to know and easy to grow

my bacteria #mybacteria

happy Thursday the 20th

scientists in the 1990s, putting a Get More Purple gene attached to a harmless plant virus into an already purple petunia: please get more purple

the petunia, sensing an apparent honest to god Get More Purple Disease, using the previously undiscovered RNAi antiviral ability to shut down all other purple genes along with it just in case: you put VIRUS in petunia? you infect her with the More Purple?? oh! oh! her children shall bloom white! jail for mother, jail for mother for One Thousand Years!!!!

Productivity Day #1

Yesterday I went to a cafe and got a little bit of calculus done 🤭. Definitely behind in the course material but I’m proud of myself for putting in the effort. Also super happy I journaled a bit since it’s been months!

2h of calculus

10 pages of Braiding Sweetgrass

2 cups of tea

forest management

nerdy about nature

i think studying is too hard for me i should maybe go get addicted to drugs or something

Little things that feel like spells:

the sound of wind in trees like they're whispering secrets

old keys with no doors to open

puddles that look like portals if you stare long enough

half-finished poems tucked into coat pockets

dusty attics where forgotten memories nap

candlelight flickering like it’s trying to talk

tea leaves swirling like they’re casting fortunes

cloudy days that turn the world into a watercolor

finding feathers in strange places like a bird witch left them behind

she jack my pine (P. banksiana) till my serotinous cone's sealing resin melts at 50°C (122°F) allowing my seeds to disperse and colonize shortly following a stand-clearing fire (Larsen & MacDonald 1998).

Icy lighthouse, South Haven, Michigan, by Radiant Landscapes Photography