Do You Think Any Of Them Learned The Obvious ?

A couple of not seen so many times at all. Indigo Bunting and Redheaded woodpecker pairs.

Birds and sunshine can make happy and appreciate life more. 🤩

How this got back to me, I don’t know, BUT thank you tumblr.

Complex hydrocarbon breakdown sure, decomposition, but heavy metals are already in their simplest forms. So that phase is just dilution is the solution to pollution. Ha!

How mushrooms clean up toxic messes

ABSOLUTELY FUCKING ABSOLUTELY

In the most 1776 manner, Do Not Tread On My/Any Library 🐍

SANCTUARIES AND REPOSITORIES OF KNOWLEDGE MUST EXIST !

Because Library is a safe place.

Been doing this for years. Now I have neighborhood people collecting them for me to distribute. So😊

And otherwise, millions of pounds of pumpkins end up in landfills. And no, you can’t use them to make pies out of!!!

That certainly would appear to be the situation.

So why are so many still enamored of this party, the vast majority will not be able to enjoy the tax cutting the party is espousing. They are actually the ones that are paying the bills.

Capitalism and Consumerism are destroying this planet 🌍 [IS ACTUALLY THE ONLY ONE WE HAVE ]. It is also the end of us as a dominant species.

Oh my god I'm sooooo mad right now

So. I have no business telling people not to collect wild plants/materials.

I do it all the time.

However.

The words "wildcrafted," and "foraged," even "sustainably harvested," are terrifying to see in an ad on Etsy or Instagram

There is a such thing as the honorable harvest where you ASK the plant if it is okay to take, with the intention of listening if the answer is NO. Robin Wall Kimmerer talked about this, She did not make it up, it is an ancient and basic guideline of treating the plants with respect.

Basically it is not wrong to use plants and other living things, even if this means taking their life. But you are not the main character. You have to reflect on your knowledge of the organism's life cycle and its role in the ecosystem, so you can know you are not damaging the ecosystem. You have to only take what you need and avoid depleting the population.

Mary Siisip Geniusz also talked about it in an enlightening way in her book Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have To Do is Ask. She gave an example of a woman who was on an island and needed to use a medicinal herb to heal her injured leg or she would not survive the winter. In that situation she had to use up all of the plant that was on the island. This was permissible, even though it eliminated the local population, because she had to do it to save her life. But in return the woman had the responsibility to later return to the island and plant seeds of that plant.

And what makes me absolutely furious, is that there are a bunch of people online who have vaguely copied this philosophy of sustainability in a false and insulting way, saying "wildcrafted" or "foraged" materials to be all trendy and cool and in touch with nature, when it is actually just poaching.

If you are from a capitalistic culture the honorable harvest is very hard and unintuitive to learn to practice. I am not very good at it still. This is why it is suspicious if someone is confident that they can ethically and respectfully harvest wild materials with money involved.

So there's this lichen that is often called "reindeer moss." It looks like this:

It grows only a few millimeters a year.

This is "preserved" reindeer moss.

It is from Etsy, similar is also sold in many other online shops, many of which have the audacity to describe it as a "plant" for decorations and terrariums that needs no maintenance.

It is not maintenance-free, it is dead. It has been spray-painted a horrible shade of green. The people buying it clearly don't even know what it is. It is a popular crafting material for "fairy houses," whatever the hell those are. So is moss, also dead, spray-painted, and wild-harvested. Supposedly reindeer moss is harvested sustainably in Finland, where it is abundant, for the craft industry. However poaching of lichens and mosses is absolutely rampant.

It's even more upsetting because there's hardly any articles drawing attention to the problem. This one is from 1999. And the poaching is still going on.

There is a "moss" section on Etsy, and it is so upsetting

These mosses and lichens were collected from the wild. Most of the shops are in the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia, which are the major locations of moss and lichen poaching. There are some shops based in Appalachia selling "foraged" reindeer moss.

Reindeer moss may be abundant in Finland, but in Appalachia it should NOT be harvested to be sold on Etsy as craft supplies! Moss doesn't grow quickly. Big, healthy colonies like this took years to grow. Some of these shops have thousands of sales, all of bags and bags of moss and lichen, and thinking of how much moss and lichen that must be, I am filled with horror.

Clubmosses do not transplant well, and these ones have no roots. The buyers do not realize they have bought a dead plant because clubmoss stays green and pliable after it is dead.

This is especially awful because in Mary Siisip Geniusz's book she talked about clubmosses being poached so much for Christmas wreaths that they had almost disappeared from a lot of forests.

I don't even know if this is illegal if it's not a formally endangered species so I don't know if I can report them I'm just. really sad and angry

IN THE REAL WORLD, WHEN WOULD THIS EVEN BE REALLY CONSIDERED ……

Just do not understand. 😳. ☹️

This action - granted to DOGE - is absolutely illegal ! It is NOT a government entity. It is wholly made up by an EO. Which are not law. !

Your data is now in the hands people which will be used against you in nefarious situations and ways.

Hear us now. Believe later to your peril.

I FEEL YOU MAN. !

From my time on the farm and living this.

Slimy and so totally hard to move when you as the person has to move them. AAAUUUGGGGHHHHH. !

In the end , they are cute.

Newborn calves are:

- very cute

Newborn calves are also:

- very slimy

- not aware that they have legs

- not aware that their legs all work at the same time

- unsure what shapes are or how eyes work really or what a cow looks like

- totally useless at yielding to body pressure

- completely willing to follow anything warm, and taller than them, provided that it moves and smells kind of like a cow. Even if the only reason it smells like a cow is because it was touching them.

- still pretty cute

We only cohabitate with nature, it’s the greatest thought fallacy that we have dominion over Nature. Man has been here only a very short period of time, man will be replaced quite easily because we do not recognize how to sustainably live in relationship with nature. Nature will continue on over men’s bones and vast achievements. Nature does not have a ego.

I was in their environment, so I don’t blame them.

You often see this kind of comment made after someone is attacked by a shark or bear. And it took me a long time to understand, but that is a thoroughly wrong headed thought process.

We don’t enter sharks, bears, raccoons, or anything else’s environment. And they do not enter ours. We are a much a part of nature and the environment as any other living thing, and vice versa. You, me, everyone has a much call and cause to swim in the ocean or walk in the mountains any other living thing.

We keep separating ourselves from nature and the environment to the point we’re we get a God complex thinking we need to “save” it. Or, on the other end of the spectrum “it ain’t mine, so fuck it”. And because of it, we do really dumb shit to our own home.

They say all politics is local. Well, so is nature. And when you separate yourself from it, it becomes someone or something else problem, or responsibility. But the problem is, that ain’t the case. You cannot remove yourself from it, it is the natural world, and we are all part of it.

We have a much right and responsibility to hug trees and not pollute, as we do to fill a deep freeze with venison. We have as much right and responsibility to be good stewards of our home (nature) as we do to utilize the resources contained in it. And until we stop viewing tree huggers as hippy commies and hunters as evil murderers our house (nature) won’t be getting any cleaner or any better.

Until we stop thinking about nature in absolutes, we will continue to find it harder and harder to maintain, and live in, our home.