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brightgnosis · 1 year

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The hills, cuestas, and ridges of the Northern Cross Timbers are naturally covered by a mosaic of Oak Savanna, Scrubby Oak Forest, Eastern Redcedar, and Tall Grass Prairie. Native on porous, course-textures soils derived from sandstone are Post Oak, Blackjack Oak, and understory grasses. Tall Grass Prairie naturally occurs on fine-textures soils derived from limestone or shale. Overall, far more Oak Savanna occurs than in the Central Great Plans (27), Flint Hills (28), or Central Irregular Plains (40). Floristic variety is less, vegetation is sparser, and growing season is shorter than in the Eastern Cross Timbers (29b). Today, Livestock farming is the main land use; cropland is less extensive than in Ecoregions 27 and 40, but rangeland is less widespread than in Ecoregion 28. Soils are highly erodible when disturbed. Large oil fields were developed in the early 20th century; associated brine, drilling mud, and petroleum waste products have increased salinity in many streams. Streams are typically shallow and have sandy substrates; they are habitat-poor and have lower fish and macroinvertebrate species richness than Ecoregion 37e. However, some stream reaches have deep pools, riffles, and bedrock, boulder, cobble, or gravel substrates; these reaches have greater species richness and more pollution- and habitat-intolerant species than shallower streams in Ecoregion 29a.

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[The physiography of the Northern Cross Timbers Ecoregion consists of] Rolling hills, cuestas, ridges, and ledges. Stream flow varies from year to year, and season to season. Shallow streams with sandy substrates are typical, but some stream reaches have deep pools, riffles, and bedrock, boulder, cobble, or gravel substrates. In headwater streams, sandstone blocks create isolated, enduring pools.

[The Surficial Bedrock in the] Uplands are mantled by Quaternary clayey silt to silty clay decomposition residuum,. clay loam decomposition residuum, clay loam decomposition residuum, and sandy decomposition residuum. Valleys are veneered with Quaternary Alluvium. Underlain by Pennsylvanian-age and Permian-age sandstone, shale, and limestone. Rock outcrops occur; sandstone blocks and boulders often litter hilltops and hill slopes.

[Common soil series] on Uplands: Alfisols (Haplustalfs [and] Paleustalfs), Mollisols (Hapludolls, Haplustolls, Argiudolls, [and] Argiustolls), Inceptisols (Haplustepts), [and] Vertisols (Haplusterts). On floodplains: Mollisols (Hapludolls [and] Haplustolls) [and] Entisols (Ustifluvents) […]

Potential natural vegetation: Cross Timbers (dominants: Post Oak, Blackjack Oak, and Little Bluestem), Tall Grass Prairie (dominants: Big Bluestem, Little Bluestem, Switchgrass, and Indiangrass), and a mosaic of Tall Grass Prairie and Oak-Hickory Forest. Native on clayey soils from limestone or shale: Mostly tall grasses (eg, Little Bluestem, Big Bluestem, Indiangrass and Switchgrass); drier, shallower soils support Short Grass Prairies. Native on shaley lowlands: Savanna. Native on porous, coarse-textured, sloping upland soils derived from sandstone: Mostly Post Oak, Blackjack Oak, and understory grasses; also Black Hickory, Black Oak, Persimmon, Redbud, Sumac, and increasingly, Eastern Redcedar. Native in riparian areas: Hackberry, American Elm, Post Oak, Black Walnut, Green Ash, Willow, Sycamore, and Cottonwood. Today, Scrubby Oak forests, Oak Savannas, riparian forests, and prairie openings occur.

[Land cover and land use is] Woodland, grassland, rangeland, pastureland, and limited cropland. The main crops are small grains Grain Sorghum, Hay, and Soybeans. Abandoned farmland is common. Fire suppression and passive land use have allowed the woodland distribution to greatly expand. Extensive, but declining, oil fields occur; associated brine, drilling mud, and petroleum waste products have increased salinity in many streams. Small impoundments are common.

From the ‘29a. Northern Cross Timbers Ecoregion’ Level IV Ecoregions of Oklahoma Poster (Front | Back); United States Environmental Protection Agency (My Ko-Fi Here)

#29a. Northern Cross Timbers Ecoregion #Ecoregions of Oklahoma #Ecoregions of Oklahoma Posters #United States Environmental Protection Agency #USEPA #Quote #Gardening #Natural Connections #Casual Reminder That Oklahoma Is NOT A Midwestern OR Southwestern State #The Trees Speak #Prairie Magic & Medicine

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addison1992 · 2 years

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I got my chill station all set up for my night time 🌃 routine 😶‍🌫️😶‍🌫️😶‍🌫️💚💚💚 Boro Farms Grape Pie Live Resin Cart (indica) RedBud Extracts Blueberry Lights half gram cart (indica) Twisted Extracts: G.O.A.T. Cherry Cartridge (indica) Ruby Mae's Sativa Preroll with @sundayextracts wax inside of it! From @hamiltonsbudandbloom @ruby_maes_okla @mountaindew @herbguard @redbudextracts @twistedextracts @borofarms @redbull @sharpie @biclighter #flower #herb #cannabis #marijuana #thc #vaping #smoking #cartridges #medicalmarijuana #420 #sativa #indica #hybrid #diamondgrind #redbull #sharpie #mtndew #rso #cigarettes #herbguard #budtender #dispensary #dispensarylife #brokenarrow #oklahoma #rubymae #preroll #infused #dabs #sundayextracts (at Hamiltons) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd0HR9-OR2v/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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instaviewpoint · 3 years

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The Warmth of Flowers

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#art #awesome #beauty #Flowers #indiana #nature photography #photo #photography #photography farm and country #photography outdoor #redbud #spring #warm

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my-mt-heart · 3 years

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Title of my Caryl Daydream: 'Cwtch'

This. This was the seventh time Carol did this to him.

And he didn't know what to do.

The first time, it had been subtle. Slight. Quaint. He remembered the bed smelling of sunshine and cotton and freckled with dust; they shared the bed at Carol's suggestion, light and unassuming. He remembered it being a modest little cottage right off State Route 66 in Ohio. He especially remembered her buttery snores, baptizing his face in a light sheen of her breath, (she had cucumbers with salt for dinner). But most of all, he remembered waking, wedged between twilight and dawn, to find his hand folded between her own in her sleeping form -burrowed away in her bosom like a long lost security blanket, now restored to her.

And it didn't stop there.

Probably a few days later, when the sky was rinsed in the afterglow of a summer-lit day, he remembered their cruising down I-66 and the eastern redbud trees lining the highway like a processional; their bright lavender flowers welcoming them to Kentucky. He remembered that checkmark of their freedom; a whole four hundred miles (and counting) between them and their pasts. He remembered the old chevy truck they acquired some miles back, off some old man's farm who seemed to have passed away due to natural causes. He remembered the jutting chin, suspended in perpetual defiance and a slinky pride -the type that reminded him of Hershel Greene: tough and standing tall to the end.

Anyway, he remembered the blue paint of it, splotchy and faded, a relic of olden America. It still worked, the engine revving to life after only a few good cranks. And this delighted Carol, he remembered. That, and the salvageable edibles she identified as rhubarb -enough for them to snack on for a couple days. She had wanted a much-needed break for him along with the bike and took this as a sign of a goodwill offering. Now that he thought of it, his back had that familiar ache and his eyes could use a rest from the miles of road that oscillated between uniform and diverse depending upon his level of alertness. He hadn't yet taught Carol how to ride and he calmly declined all her offers to take over for him. He knew she was capable. And competent. And a fast learner. But they were on their way to New Mexico. There would be plenty of time (and road) to properly teach her.

She asked of him and he consented willingly. They buried the old man, decently; partly in gratitude for the food and truck and partly because it was the merciful and Christian thing to do. He didn't think Carol was affiliated with a particular religious denomination anymore, but she believed the old man had been by the weathered leatherbound Bible at his side and that was enough for them both.

He remembered falling into a light stupor at the refrain of the motor, head lolling against the window of the truck as Carol drove at an even speed -to preserve gas, he presumed naturally; to preserve the congruous sights of midwest America, painted against a rich backdrop of purple and deep orange hues of the sky, he suspected amicably.

He remembered it being a short slumber, too, for when he awoke, the sky looked only slightly variant from before.

Above all, he remembered looking over from his place in the passenger seat and finding his hand palm down on Carol's leg. Her actual leg. Almost near to her lap, even. She was petting it -his hand- as though it were a tiny kitten. She stroked it with her index finger several times over before nuzzling his hand with the back of her own. And that was curious to him. She had never done that before. Any of it. He dared not move his hand for fear that he'd interrupt some ministration she was in the middle of. Instead, he slowly shifted his eyes up to her face. He remembered the contours of her countenance held a distant look to them that he dreaded. There was that rueful pout to her lips that made him nervous. Otherwise, she looked peaceful. Earnest.

A flush inched up the slope of his neck like a thermometer, heating up his throat until the need to clear it with an ergonomic "ahem" won over him.

He remembered she seemed to come to, then. Still driving, eyes still on the road save for the friendly glance she threw his way. Gently, she picked his hand up and set it down in his own lap. She lingered a bit before removing her hand altogether, but he still looked down at his hand, as though the ghost of hers remained, arresting his attention.

"Sorry," she breathed out over the hum of the engine. "I borrowed your hand while you napped." Her eyes crinkled warmly at the corners in the light of the dying sun.

In a mirroring of her timidness, he shrugged, not knowing what else to do with his shoulders. "S'alright." Then, awkwardly: "Don't need m' hand while I'm asleep no how. Can take it anytime you get to needin' it."

That got Carol to snort, her head, shoulders and mouth bunching together over the steering wheel to stifle a much bigger laugh. He flinched, dumb with embarrassment, aware suddenly how

risqué and utterly unrefined that preamble sounded.

"Good to know, Pookie." Her tell-all smirk rode smoothly down the road like the truck was; her eyes sparkled playfully. But she spared him in not saying anything further.

Turning straight in his seat, he tucked his eyes behind his bangs, brought his thumb up to his teeth in revival of an old habit, and could practically hear the stupid flush limping back up his neck, ten degrees hotter.

Some time after that, the episodic pattern of Carol's behavior toward him continued. Picking back up this time at a freshwater lake in south east Tennessee -Lake Norris- they took the day to set up camp and refresh themselves. To both their surprise, bluegill fish remained quite abundantly and Carol went about catching some and excitedly slamming around pots and pans in their stash to make dinner. He remembered foraging nearby for some wild edibles since fish were still alive in the lake. When he rather trotted back with arrowhead tuber roots and onion grass and hickory nuts, Carol was elated and the pink of her happiness dusted the apples her cheeks ripely. After cleaning and filleting the fish, she proceeded to expertly wrap it in the onion grass like a sushi roll. Placing the tubers around it, she roasted it over an open fire. For the hickory nuts, she snatched some water from the lake -a pint's worth- and boiled a cup and a half of nuts in it, eagerly telling him that they'd "have it with some of their honey from Alexandria's pantry preserves for dessert." He remembered it being delicious, but how every night seemed like a feast with her near to him.

They freshened up before bed, but opted to throughly clean themselves in the morning when the sun waxed hot. Serenaded by the crickets and winked at by the stars, he remembered their splashing water on their hands and faces before bed. The fire ebbed low and he could still make out the soft planes of her face. He could remember the heat of the flame adding to her eyes a brilliant radiance. She looked at him, tilting her head in doe-eyed wonder. He held her stare -or rather, the embrace of her eyes for a moment- before casting his stare into the water, then the fire, attracted to all three lights. His heart sizzled.

He remembered feeling her fingers reaching forward to push the hair back from his face softly. Without taking her eyes off him, she dipped her other hand into the lake and brought it up to his face to remove the dirt from his nose, his prominent eye troughs, and the scruff of his beard, pulling delicately at the short hairs to get the hardened bits out. He sat, hands in his lap in dumb anguish, not understanding the reason for her actions but knowing the rhythm of her motions overwhelmingly well.

"You said the Appalachian trail is not far from here?" It was a question at the tail end of an earlier conversation they had over dinner. He stared blankly for a moment, before answering with a nod and a low "Yeah, about ninety-four miles of it runnin' down the east of the state. This lake ain't too far off from the trail."

Carol hummed affectionately at his answer, and he not understanding if that meant anything. He just remembered her continuing to work on his face. The hushed tones of her voice in melody with the orchestra of the nighttime forest. "I read a wonderful book about it, once. A long time ago. I had a library card." He remembered the nostalgic lilt of her voice perking his ears. Her hand ministrations continued, lightly working at the ends of his hair, now. He had owned a library card, too. Once. It was one of the only things he had ever owned. Merle threw it in a lake. He called his brother out of his name and got a churned nose and split lip for his troubles. He listened intently to her recount of the old days, the old world and its activities.

"There were three narratives in that book. But the one I liked the best was about this ranger woman who lived in the Appalachian mountains all alone and secluded. She was a kind of zoologist, I think. And one day she was out tracking something not native to those forests when a rancher came into her life." Carol stopped at that. Smiled but she was looking past him, and into her past. He remembered sitting almost perfectly still to keep her in this state. He wanted her to dream more. Perhaps this was a start. He figured a late night chat over a fire and full bellies was as respectable as any bottle of wine was at unraveling the heart and loosening the tongue.

"She didn't like him on her territory at first. She had an ecosystem to protect and all those creatures were her responsibility. Maybe like her family, even. But she warmed up to him soon enough and they became something of a pair just like the wildlife she tracked daily."

He remembered his eyes widened and he peeked up at her from under his hooded lids, trying to decipher her smile, not quite girlish, not quite womanly. But that exquisite middleman of a mature rebirth. Probably the same look she wore at the age she first read this book from her memories. Or maybe she was thinking of something else? Did she ever take a trip to the mountains and walk their trails back in the old world? He wanted to ask her, but didn't.

She looked at him, then, like the friend he had always known. "They hooked up in her cabin." His stare on Carol was practically smoldering. And he felt coltish all of a sudden, too, wanting to wipe nervously at his face but remembering Carol's hands were still occupying that space; wanting to fiddle with the arrows for his crossbow but remembering it was reclining near his pack by the fire some ten feet away.

She gave him a tentative smile, and retired from her ministrations on his face before moving to his hands and lathering them gently -copiously- with water. He watched her work, looking at his hands cradled by hers. There was a brief pause and a stunning light of realization and opportunity that skidded across the expanse of her eyes.

As if understanding a message delivered for her ears only, she nodded and reached for her survival water filter beside her. Although lake Norris was the cleanest lake in all of Tennessee, the side of caution was always best to be on.

She carefully poured the filtered water into his hand, cupped by hers and they both watched it drip into his palm. He remembered Carol bringing his hand up to her face first to lap at the water and it completely stunned him. She had never done that before. And he gaped at her, not knowing what to do. Here she was, drinking out of his hand and he couldn't help but bring his face forward a bit, drawn in by the reflection of her face in the water. Funny. He wondered if this is what it felt like to hold Carol in the palm of his hand.

She smacked her lips experimentally, seeming to be satisfied with her fill before delicately bringing his palm up to his own mouth. He remembered jerking his face back a bit in reaction, as though he were a dog who got his nose caught rather unceremoniously in a mousetrap. But Carol's smile still burned true.

"Drink." Her voice straddled a whisper. "It's good." So she tested the water for them both? It was odd. And yet, so characteristically Carol.

He remembered blinking at her, biting down on his lip and wondered if he was supposed to be picking up on something? The smile on her lips was not a taunt. It was dear. Intimate. The kind she wore whenever his general well-being was her sole focus. It made him fidget. Her eyes shifted between her hands supporting his palm and his face, as he scoped her out with sharp eyes. When he didn't make a move to drink, she pressed his hand up further to his mouth.

"Come on." She gently urged. "Before all the water drips out."

He remembered being spellbound to fulfill that command perched so delicately on her lips like an apple pie set to cool in the kitchen window of Autumn. He remembered wondering why it needed to be this puddle of water in his hands when they were favored with a great lake. But then he remembered, with gripping pertinence...

That the water, the food, the fire, their tents, the truck, his bike...they shared them all. It was an adjunct of their friendship. Even his hand at this moment didn't feel like his own -or just his own. It felt like their hand. And suddenly, her actions didn't seem so foreign to him.

He gave her a timid look before dipping his head low to drink of the water; their water. He closed his eyes briefly to remove the sting of emotion out of them and continued to drink, remembering how Carol's thumb stroked the underside of his palm, pleased and assured.

As he drinks, rocked by the silence of the night, she pet his hair tenderly and it feels like an embrace. She whispers, "Don't worry, Pookie. I'm not a lone ranger lady, sniffing stumps." Her smile grew larger as he stopped drinking, his long and slow gulps finished.

He looked back up at her again, their faces closer than usual when they weren't locked in an embrace. He licked his lips and flicked a bang of his hair from off his face. To see her better. To distract himself from looking at her too fully.

Her eyes shone and blinded him. "I'm westward bound." She said, resolutely.

He remembered that meant he wasn't the rancher from Carol's book, either. Something like melancholy wrapped around his heart, squeezing out a short sigh, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, where Carol's thumb had stroked him, never taking his eyes off her. He managed the slightest of smiles from his signature collection.

"Yeah," was all he said. And it weighed the world.

(Continued...)

<3 <3 <3

#caryl #caryl fanfiction #twd #carol x daryl

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envirosaurus · 3 years

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Why beekeeping won’t “save the bees”

There’s been a buzz (hehe) about saving the bees lately and it seems like a lot of people picked up beekeeping because of that. Does beekeeping actually saves the bees tho?

There are over 20 000 known bee species in the world out of which only 8 species are honey bees and for the beekeeping usually only one species, European honey bee, is being managed. This alone may ring a bell why beekeeping is not that great for the bees since we are helping just one single species and ignoring the other 19 999. Also, the number of European honey bees is increasing and they are in no way endangered, but many wild bee species are endangered or already gone. Different bee species have different preferences in flowers they pollinate and some flowers depend on only few species (excluding the honey bees), especially in America where the European honey bee is not native, so it makes sense that it doesn’t pollinate the native plants of America.

Farmed Honeybees can compete with wild bees, making it harder for the wild species to survive. Honeybees are also not as good pollinators as the wild bees, because they collect pollen and return with it to their hives and as a consequence don’t transfer much pollen between the flowers. It’s also easy for pathogens to spread in the beehive community and then to be spread to the wild bees (most of the wild bees are solitary bees).

Beekeeping is a wonderful hobby and can be somewhat beneficial if you manage your bees properly (and you get your own honey yay), but how can you help the actually endangered wild species of bees that need our help?

Plant bee friendly plants such as lavender, rosemary, sage, redbud,...

Get a cute insect hotel (which helps not only bees but other pollinators as well), you can also make one yourself

Build a bee bath

Don’t use synthetic pesticides and fertilizers (which are horrible for the environment for other reasons too)

Don’t maintain a perfectly cut lawn (omg just stop) or at least give up a portion of your garden where you let the nature go wild

#save the bees #Environment #beekeeping #pollinators

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revlyncox · 3 years

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Trees (2021)

A talk abut growth, hope, and paying attention to history

Revised and expanded for the Washington Ethical Society by Lyn Cox

February 7, 2021

In this place halfway between the beginning of winter and the beginning of spring, we draw on imagination and memory, caution and optimism, hope for the future and learning from the past. Many of these things are contained in stories.

I don’t know if the story happened exactly this way, but I believe it’s true. A sage, a wise person, was walking along the road and saw someone planting a carob tree. The sage asks, "How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?" "Seventy years," replies the gardener. The sage then asks: "Are you so healthy a person that you expect to live that length of time and eat its fruit?" The gardener answers: "I found a fruitful world, because my ancestors planted it for me. Likewise I am planting for my children." I will tell you where this story is from because I want to give credit, but I also want to notice that this story has a universality to it, a truth that the beginnings of things we set in motion can have an impact long past the horizons of our own lives. This story is from the Talmud, a collection of rabbinic conversations on ethics and customs. (Talmud Ta'anit 23a)

We drink from wells we did not dig and eat from trees we did not plant (Deut. 6:11). Our physical, intellectual, and religious lives depend on those who have gone before. Following their example will lead us to plant literal and figurative trees for the world of the future.

I believe caring for ourselves AND others will help us sustain a shared life of meaning and compassion for a long time.

My first semester studying for my M.Div. degree in California, I worked at one college in the south bay area, and went to school in the east bay area. I enjoyed the fragrance of eucalyptus trees around both campuses. The dry leaves rustled in the breeze, leaves rubbing together like the wings of singing crickets. Some people were distracted by the sound and allergic to the smell, but I liked them. The eucalyptus trees were tall and graceful. One might imagine that they had always been there. There’s a story about those trees. I don’t know if it happened exactly this way.

The American West in the late 1800’s was heavily influenced by dreams of getting rich quick. Non-native eucalyptus trees were brought from Australia because they grew quickly. It was imagined that the lumber and oil would become quickly replaceable commodities for those who farmed them. They were promoted as ornamental trees for rich landowners new to the area and not used to treeless landscapes. Eucalyptus trees were all over California by the 1900’s, and were tested for use as railroad ties. They didn’t work out. Eucalyptus from Australian virgin forests, seasoned and treated properly, behaves differently than eucalyptus grown from seeds in California, hastily treated, and set down in the Nevada sand. Some of the railroad ties were so cracked they couldn’t hold spikes. Some decayed within four years.

The trees themselves grew like weeds. They did what non-native species are famous for doing: thriving in the new environment, edging out diverse native plants that provide food and habitat, with consequences for the entire food chain. An attempt at a quick profit turned out to have unintended consequences. Recently, there has been more discussion in that region about restoring native trees, but it’s complicated. To say that it will take time to mitigate the damage of an invasive species is an understatement. Then again, compare that to the 2,000-year growth of some living redwood trees. May we learn patience and commitment from slow-growing trees.

We strive to be among those people who have the hope and imagination it takes to envision a world of justice and compassion, a world of liberation and self-determination, a world of peace where people sit calmly in the shade of slow-growing trees. In our neck of the woods, we might imagine a world where every person lives in safety and abundance, with access to the shade of a Witch Hazel, Hackberry, or Redbud tree; the three logically native trees our Earth Ethics Action Team recently arranged to have planted on the WES property. In folk music and wisdom tales, slow-growing trees symbolize enough time for a generation to grow without being uprooted by hunger or violence.

The California eucalyptus story reminds us that some of the environmental mistakes we humans have made were decisions made by a few but using the resources and the risk pool of many. Another time, we can unpack the harm that white American westward expansion had on indigenous land rights and communities, and on the horrors of labor exploitation involved in the transcontinental railroad, and on the energy and resources that were available for white colonization but not reparations for formerly enslaved people after the Civil War. Understanding the wrong choices that have been made in the past may help us turn toward making better choices as a society going forward. We can play an active role in the governments, corporations, and organizations to which we belong and who act on our behalf. Let us embody these relationships for repair and renewal.

Contrast the rushed, climate-disrupting story of the eucalyptus trees with the story of George Washington Carver. I had to catch up on some of his story this week, when my kids noticed discrepancies between what was said about Dr. Carver in the elementary school reader on our bookshelf and what they had read elsewhere. Some of us learned in school that the most important contribution Dr. Carver made as a scientist was discovering and promoting new uses for peanuts, but this version of his story is grossly oversimplified and obscures the way his research and activism supported Black self-determination as well as environmental repair.

After he graduated from the Iowa State Agricultural College in 1896, Dr. Carver accepted a position at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Riding on the train to his new home, he noticed immediately that growing nothing but cotton was causing soil erosion and depletion. He had scientific solutions to that. What took longer was figuring out how to empower Black farmers -- especially those who were being exploited as sharecroppers -- to feed their families, improve their chances for subsequent years, and still make enough money to try to get out of debt. Smithsonian Magazine quotes biographer Mark Hersey about the way Dr. Carver understood the problem:

“What Carver comes to see,” Hersey says, was that “altering [black sharecroppers’] interactions with the natural world could undermine the very pillars of Jim Crow.” Hersey argues that black Southerners viewed their lives under Jim Crow through an environmental lens. “If we want to understand their day to day lives, it’s not separate drinking fountains, it’s ‘How do I make a living on this soil, under these circumstances, where I’m not protected’“ by the institutions that are supposed to protect its citizens? Carver encouraged farmers to look to the land for what they needed, rather than going into debt buying fertilizer (and paint, and soap, and other necessities—and food). Instead of buying the fertilizer that “scientific agriculture” told them to buy, farmers should compost. In lieu of buying paint, they should make it themselves from clay and soybeans.

So ends the excerpt. Dr. Carver understood way before what we think of as the modern environmental justice movement that liberation and conservation are entwined projects. The decisions we make for our families, for our communities, and for the planet all go together, and they all benefit from remembering interdependence and the long years of generations to come. Honoring the very beginnings of things, continuing to work on hopes that are barely tangible, believing in the distant future, allows us to live into Beloved Community. White Supremacy depends on the hurry-up-and-profit mindset that brought cracked eucalyptus logs to the Nevada desert. Beloved Community invites us to consider what may come from a seed.

Strong trees grow slowly. Strong communities learn and grow and make connections to other communities little by little over decades. Healing takes time. Repair takes time. And for all of these, we can’t always tell that it is happening. In most cases, we don’t see the seed unfolding under the soil. Our senses are not adjusted to notice the growth of trees right in front of us. Sometimes resilience is about knowing in your heart that change is possible, even when the evidence is not yet obvious.

The nearly imperceptible beginnings of change are also a theme in the earth-honoring holiday of Imbolc. The Celtic calendar where this holiday comes from is rooted in the seasons of light and dark of the northern hemisphere and the agricultural cycles of western Europe. At approximately the same time of year in the British Isles and here in the mid-Atlantic, the middle of winter means that we can start to perceive the time of sunrise and sunset edging toward spring, just a little more daylight each day.

February into March is the time of year when lambs start to be born, vulnerable and full of promise for the coming spring. It’s still cold outside! One theory for where the word Imbolc comes from is that it’s related to the word for sheep milk. The lambs need a lot of help to stay warm and to survive. Yet their arrival shows the persistence of life. Sometimes resilience is about remembering that life is possible.

This is also the time of year when people who grow vegetables in climates like ours make a plan for the next six months, gathering seeds, starting a few indoors, and figuring out how to make the most of the soil and sun that will be available later. Making plans at this in-between time of year takes courage.

For earth-honoring folks in Celtic traditions, the goddess Bridget (and, in her later form, St. Bridget of Kildare) is associated with this early February holiday. In the legends, Bridget protects access to clean, healing water. She is also a figure of light and flame. When you put fire and water together, you can make entirely new things out of what you had before. You can forge iron, cook food, sculpt clay and fire it into ceramics. Maybe this transformative potential is why Bridget is also associated with childbirth, poetry, healing, song, and art.

There is one thing that newborn lambs, vegetable seeds, soup ingredients, raw iron, and future poetry all have in common: They don’t look at the beginning the way they are going to look at the end. You have to have some hope and imagination to believe in the transformation that is coming. You have to keep doing what you are doing, when the evidence for success has not yet appeared. We need to hold on through the long term, through step-by-step processes, through the discomfort of growth and change. And so another thing we learn at Bridget’s holiday is the need for commitment.

If we’re paying attention to a legendary figure of generosity, art, and transformation, it’s a good idea to listen to the voices of poets who figured out how to sustain themselves and their families and communities through difficult times. During Black History Month, we are reminded of many examples of poets and artists who showed and inspired perseverance as they provided hope and imagination about a better world that was not yet fully manifest.

Back in October, on Vote Love Day, we heard about the story of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. She was born in Maryland in 1825 to free parents, was educated at her uncle’s school, and had published a book of poetry by the age of twenty. She became a full-time lecturer and writer, and she was an activist for abolition and for economic self-determination in the Black community. One verse of her 1895 poem, “Songs for the People,” [more on that poem here] reads:

Our world, so worn and weary,

Needs music, pure and strong,

To hush the jangle and discords

Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Harper was well aware of the injustice, economic inequality, and violence that still plagued the cities and towns where she toured. She didn’t fail to address any part of that system in her other writing. Yet she still saw a place for music and art. For Harper, poetry was not a distraction from building the Beloved Community, but one of the technologies that can help bring it into being. Out of intangible words and ideas are woven a network of visions that lift up possibilities for liberation.

Good things grow from beginnings that are not yet obvious. The forces that will become spring are already at work under the snow in the middle of winter.

On the Jewish calendar, we’ve recently passed the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, the new year of trees. This is a minor holiday. It’s been around for hundreds of years, yet more people seem to be noticing it as we learn to connect spirituality with care for the earth. Sometimes people in Jewish homes and communities gather to eat different kinds of fruit and nuts, to give thanks for ways of growing, and recommit to stewardship of the planet. In regions where it makes sense, Tu B’Shevat is a time to plant trees.

Clearly, looking out the window today, it is not the right time to plant a tree where we live. Nevertheless, in our gratitude for trees, we are reminded of the growth and the fruition of work that exist because of what has come before. The forces that create and uphold life and our ancestors who cooperated with them knew that growth and resilience don’t always look that way from the outside. They knew that growth can start with something tough or plain. They knew the importance of allowing time and of giving thanks.

We drink from wells we did not dig and eat from trees we did not plant. As a community, part of our task is to muster the hope and imagination it takes to consider growth and resilience over time. We think long-term. We honor beginnings of change, even when they are hidden or barely perceptible. Let us be mindful of the impact of our choices, now and in the generations to come.

May it be so.

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pnwdoodlesreads · 3 years

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TO PLANT their flower and vegetable gardens, African American women used their hands—darkly creviced or smoothly freckled; their arms—some wiry, others muscled; and their shoulders and backs—one broad and another thin. They dropped small seeds into the soil with their veined hands. They wrapped their arms around freshly cut flowers to decorate tables in their homes. They bent their shoulders and backs to compost hay, manure, and field stubble, and transplanted plants from the woods into their own yards. These women developed a unique set of perspectives on the environment by way of the gardens they grew as slaves and then as freedwomen.

They continued these practices and exercised these perspectives into the early twentieth century. Rural African American women then joined these traditional ways of gardening with horticultural practices they learned from Home Demonstration Service agents and from the special programs developed in African American schools in the South.

An examination of these traditions and practices of gardening changes the reading scholars have had of African American participation in Progressive-era agricultural reform and also reveals the outlines of a rural African American environmental perspective at the time. Progressives envisioned national agricultural reforms that subjugated the discrete and nuanced expertise of local actors to models of bureaucratic efficiency and skill. Yet African American women developed an expertise from community knowledge, from their own interpretations of agricultural reforms, and from the training they received in horticulture in the Cooperative Extension Service, African American schools and other places. Progressive era scholars have missed the critical role of African American women gardeners in Progressive reform efforts, or at least have not viewed the participation of African Americans in these efforts through the critical lens of gender.2

These women cultivated with simple tools, a hoe, trowel, or shovel in one hand and seeds or fertilizer in the other hand. But they gardened within a gendered and racial milieu that gave the application of these simple instruments of skill a complex social potency. Rural African American women and men often supported one another in complementary roles and with strategies that were designed to support the family unit. Some women met their own and sometimes their family’s needs by harvesting vegetables for meals, and by planting shrubs and cultivating flowers to create more appealing homes.

The value of the women’s contributions to household productivity was often invisible to Progressive reformers, who practiced enormous condescension in their efforts to uplift the poor. African American reformers shared this condescension, making women special objects of disdain. Thomas Monroe Campbell, an agent for the Negro Cooperative Service, was haughtily dismissive of rural women, characterizing them as “too careless as to the loud manner in which they act in the streets and in public places ... and unduly familiar with men.”

But ultimately, African American women in the rural South controlled how and where they gardened, and by implication, why they gardened. They drew upon rich traditions of gardening knowledge and took what they would from Home Demonstration Work and the education programs of African American schools.This article explores this relationship between African American gardening and Progressive reform, but also asks how African American women cultivated their own gardens. Were African American women’s gardens expressions of self-interest or community experience and values, or both? Did the women blend community and Progressive influences in the gardens they made and used? How did the gardening practices of African American women in the early twentieth century rural South add up to an environmental ethic?3

[...]

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN GARDEN

AFRICAN AMERICAN and Euro-American gardens also possessed distinctive characteristics much like the roles of African American men and women. Though Vera Norwood argues that women of both groups were “responsible for designing and maintaining the yard and its ornamental garden” according to gender, ethnicity was as important as gender in shaping the unique gardens of African Americans. These featured flowers, shrubs, trees, and plants that were purchased individually, accepted as gifts, or cultivated from cuttings. African Americans created colorful motifs from gifts and cast-offs. Euro-Americans could more readily buy several plants and group and organize them.

African Americans relied on an oral tradition, unlike Euro-Americans whose expertise came from magazines and books. African American traditions were so ingrained that plants presented as gifts were associated with the giver.7African American women manipulated and controlled their yards for multiple functions in slavery and then in freedom. Free range in which livestock could roam, or a pen, an extended kitchen from the house, cleaning and leisure spaces, swept areas, and pathways to the fields, woods, the slaveholder’s house, and fenced flower and vegetable gardens comprised overlapping spaces in the yard. Each function, each space was often fluid with little or no boundaries.

Unlike most slaves, renters and owner-operators had some income and could purchase livestock, including chickens and hogs that were given free range of the yard.The women sought the shade and protection of trees from the sun and heat to prepare meals, feed and entertain family and friends, scrape pots, scrub dishes, wipe tables, beat rugs, and launder clothing. Children played and adults sought recreation throughout the yard, particularly in the shade. Outside the green spaces, women carefully swept clean any foliage, including weeds, creating a bare and austere yard.

The pathways took the women beyond their homes and yards to the environs of the woods, fields, the big house, neighbors, and town.8 In these gardens, African American women planted vegetables, fruit, flowers, shrubs, trees, and plants in red clay, sandy, and dark loamy soils. They generally cultivated vegetable gardens on a side or to the back of the cabin for easy access. To keep out livestock, their partners probably built enclosures of tied stakes for gardens—less expensive than free range. Most women grew vegetable gardens primarily to sustain their families.

[...]

They planted okra, milo, eggplant, collards, watermelon, white yam, peas, tomatoes, beans, squash, red peppers, onions, cabbage, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Others planted truck gardens and sold corn, cotton, peanuts, sweet potatoes, tobacco, indigo, watermelons, and gourds at the market for profit. African Americans also displayed flowers for everyone’s viewing and pleasure, beckoning neighbors to take a closer look or visitors to chat in the yard’s fragrance and color.

The women looked out upon exquisite flowers including petunias, buttercups, verbenas, day lilies, cannas, chrysanthemums, iris, and phlox planted in the ground, old tires, bottles, planters, and tubs. They placed shrubs—roses, azaleas, altheas, forsythia, crepe myrtle, spirea, camellias, nandina, and wild honeysuckle—throughout the yard. Azaleas and roses were most commonly planted. The dogwood, oak, chestnut, pine, red maple, black locust, sassafras, hickory, willow, cottonwood, and redbud dotted the landscape. They chose ornamental plants that were self-propagating, along with annuals that were generally self-seeding.

Colorful combinations of blues, reds, pinks, oranges, whites, and yellow often clashed with little or no sequencing. Placement was generally informal, where the gardeners could find space. A mix of color and placement resulted in a lack of symmetry and formal design. African Americans, including the women, simply could not afford to buy several shrubs, plants or flowers at the same time to create such symmetry.9 Women’s roles were transformed from slavery to sharecropping. Jacqueline Jones observes that African American men reinforced gender roles by hunting and fishing during slavery. Men were primarily responsible for cultivating the tiny household garden plots allotted to families by the slaveholder.

They practiced conservation, tilling their own vegetable plots when time off from the slaveholder’s tasks allowed. Dating back to the antebellum period, slaves used organic farm methods such as composting, when they took or were given the opportunity to grow their own gardens. A Louisiana slave gardener also built birdhouses from hollowed gourds to attract nesting birds that protected vegetables from insects and other pests.The birdhouses, a modern fixture in suburban backyards, provided shelter for the birds that served as a natural pest control.

[...]

GARDENING IN AFRICAN AMERICAN SCHOOLS:

African American schools offered several options to their students including model yards and classes with practical and aesthetic applications. The school trained students on school grounds by cultivating model yards for teaching and profit. The model yards featured traditional elements found in a rural African American culture, including gardens, livestock, and laundering. Schools like Tuskegee and Hampton Institute also offered home economics classes, which included gardening training for women, and an agricultural curriculum for men. Most significantly, African American women teachers taught other women to cultivate aesthetically pleasing gardens.

Some applied their training to teach at secondary schools. In 1937, the African American Elizabeth City State Normal Summer School in North Carolina offered a class in housing titled, “The Rural Community Background and Rural School Organization and Management,” which emphasized home and yard aesthetics in the curriculum, and suggested “ways and means of making rural life more attractive and joyous to those who live in the open country.” Students sketched “attractive lawns and backyards and [gave]suggestions of what native shrubbery to use and when to transplant it” in this class.

They created images of nature in their art and searched the woods for plants to dig up, carry home, and replant.27 Progressive influences continued at Hampton which offered to African American women courses with aesthetics in mind, ranging from “Flower Arrangement” to “Landscape Design” in the “Curriculum for the Division of Agriculture.” These courses nurtured creativity through symmetry and beauty. Hampton also offered “Flower Arrangement” and “Flower Growing for Amateurs”— classes focusing on aesthetics and scientific housekeeping already practiced in the community and Home Demonstration.

In the flower arranging class, teachers taught “the fascinating art of flower arrangement [that] provides a medium of expression universal in appeal. Students in all divisions of the Institute will find value in learning to utilize plant materials in home, store, school, or office decoration.” Instructors demonstrated “the necessary methods involved in knowing and growing ornamental plants commonly used about the home can well be learned with study and practice” in “Flower Growing.” As teachers, Home Demonstration agents, or homemakers, women applied scientific housekeeping to gardening.28Hampton also offered classes in advanced gardening.

Teachers there taught “Ornamental Horticulture,” a course general enough in scope for the layperson and the horticulturist. Students, both men and women, learned to arrange and enhance “the homes and grounds and larger properties in order to make them more useful as well as attractive” while “growing and caring for trees, shrubs, and flowers as a commercial enterprise or as a hobby.” One of the courses, "Landscape Design of Small Properties,” was more advanced than basic flower planting and arranging, and taught vegetable gardening with an emphasis on aesthetics: “Landscaping one’s own home or school grounds is an economy and a pleasure as well as an art.

Teachers, community workers, and home owners alike will find it much to their advantage to be able to improve their surroundings in their respective communities.” In the “Landscape Gardening” class, students learned “the practical methods of beautifying grounds around the buildings, the construction of wind breaks, placing ornamental flower beds, laying out walks, planting trees and shrubs, arranging and planting window boxes.” Once again,African Americans had the opportunity to layer Progressive horticultural education upon community experiences.29

#Register to JSTOR to read #It's free #I'll have to transcribe this later

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revive-turtle-island-now · 3 years

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I’m extremely worried about food security in Navajo and neighbor nations.

To help save lives and end hunger, we MUST BUILD APARTMENT FARMS for smaller crops, create drought friendly crops (like eastern redbud, allspice tree, baobab, carob and apricot) and create brand new healthy supermarkets and restaurants there.

Especially for places like Shiprock and Crownpoint (New Mexico) and Window Rock (Arizona).

Especially beans, purple tomatillos, herbs, various berries, chayote, prickly pear, quinoa, colorful corn, lentils, sesame, olive oil crops and more.

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olusioner-blog · 1 year

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Calendula Prints and Merchandise Available on Redbud: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/139129877?ref=studio-promote Digital Orchid Collection NFT's Available on OpenSea https://opensea.io/olusioner Today I was looking for inspiration on the internet and came across a photo of this orange marigold. Calendula officinalis is a flowering plant in the daisy family Asteraceae. It is probably native to southern Europe, though its long history of cultivation makes its precise origin unknown, and it may possibly be of garden origin. It's beautiful and deserves to be drawn. #nft #digitalart #redbubble #PicOfTheDay #photography #beautiful #picoftheday #photooftheday #instadaily #aesthetic #artoftheday #mosaic #lily #flowers #nature #art #flower #naturephotography #flowerphotography #farm #instagood #flowerstagram #beautiful #artist #Calendula #marigold https://www.instagram.com/p/CoTBUh6OVes/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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seasonalwonderment · 4 years

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(via Redbuds In Bloom: Spring Is Near - Hobby Farms)

#redbud #redbud tree #redbud in bloom #spring #signs of spring #spring flowers #pink #pink flowers

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aintnoyouaintnome · 4 years

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okayy so these are some of the fics that were saved in my bookmarks that i never got around to reading, so i'm saving them here to clear up the log haha. if you find any of these good, then let me know!

tabs:

https://belyste.livejournal.com/22094.html (man's best friend)

https://swear-jar.livejournal.com/879411.html (my boy builds a coffin)

https://vileseagulls.livejournal.com/351749.html (pwp)

https://zuben-fic.livejournal.com/91532.html (redbud farm j2 au)

https://bimosexual.livejournal.com/5704.html (melting under blue skies)

https://i-speak-tongue.livejournal.com/

https://tcs1121.livejournal.com/25122.html (j2 au)

https://writingbyebonio.livejournal.com/23361.html (pre series sam/dean)

https://tir-synni.livejournal.com/226500.html (through sickness wedding j2 au)

https://etoile-etiolee.livejournal.com/71030.html (driven j2 au)

https://lazy-daze.livejournal.com/701656.html (j2)

https://raina-at.livejournal.com/315214.html (j2 au)

https://saltandburnboys.livejournal.com/31726.html (the heart j2 au)

https://writingbyebonio.livejournal.com/4847.html (content sam/dean)

https://philalethia.livejournal.com/238046.html (a matter of trust sam/dean)

https://philalethia.livejournal.com/254289.html (not the blood sam/dean)

https://lazy-daze.livejournal.com/493388.html (pwp sam/dean)

https://lazy-daze.livejournal.com/475964.html (")

https://spnkink-meme.livejournal.com/590.html?thread=60494 (")

https://tipsy-kitty.livejournal.com/48084.html (ice is slowly melting j2 pwp)

https://rivkat.livejournal.com/392551.html (sam/dean)

https://j2-recs.livejournal.com/133706.html (age diff recs j2)

https://swear-jar.livejournal.com/873331.html#cutid1 (sam/dean d/s)

https://swear-jar.livejournal.com/867456.html (hooker!dean)

https://swear-jar.livejournal.com/506397.html (sam/dean)

https://saltandburnboys.livejournal.com/65151.html (expect the unexpected j2)

https://lazy-daze.livejournal.com/468887.html (cuddly!dean)

https://scribblinlenore.livejournal.com/375601.html (sam/dean pwp)

https://runedgirl.livejournal.com/90572.html (homecoming sam/dean)

https://fleshflutter.livejournal.com/46666.html (dean/multiple sam)

https://fleshflutter.livejournal.com/136100.html (bloody & wild sam/dean)

https://lazy-daze.livejournal.com/559532.html (j2 pwp)

https://lazy-daze.livejournal.com/510336.html (sam/dean pwp)

https://lazy-daze.livejournal.com/711839.html (j2 pwp)

https://lazy-daze.livejournal.com/586807.html (sam/dean watersports)

https://lazy-daze.livejournal.com/580574.html (girl!dean)

https://fleshflutter.livejournal.com/100147.html (j2 hair kink)

https://fleshflutter.livejournal.com/133649.html (soul fic sam/dean)

https://fleshflutter.livejournal.com/46666.html (sam/dean pwp)

https://mediaville.livejournal.com/51750.html (j2)

https://etoile-etiolee.livejournal.com/51501.html (letting go verse j2 au)

https://fleshflutter.livejournal.com/11169.html#cutid1 (dark side of the moon sam/dean)

#fic rec #well more like #fic archive #j2 #wincest #sam/dean #i'm pretty sure almost all of them are #bottom!dean #alright have fun!#long post

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