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@orc-hestral

Queer • they/them • 20 •pacifist
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"There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity -- the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, 'Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end.' When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, 'You're a man now.' So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it. Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a male can't be a man unless he'd gone to war. But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.' So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"

— Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005)

periodically i get so angry and sad because there are so many rare species, new farming techniques, and revolutionary edible plants that desperately need someone to study them and tell others about them,

but instead, we have people whose job it is to run twitter accounts for fast food brands and design advertisements

Science is trying to develop new ways to industrialize farming because otherwise it's doubtful that we will be able to feed the world population in the future.

Not because current techniques don't work, but because at the current rates new people are going into agriculture, there won't be enough farmers.

And the smartest, most knowledgeable guy i know is a farmer. All of the new research that scientists are desperately trying to get policymakers to acknowledge? This guy has known about that stuff for ages and is incorporating it into his practices. Promoting mycorrhizal networks, encouraging beneficial insects, no-till farming methods, using plants toxic to pathogens to eliminate them. He basically planted his own little forest and has collected most of our native tree species, and has the most foolproof tree-transplanting methods. Sure, he's exhausted and broke, but who isn't

Living in close relationship with the earth and its plants and creatures can develop a human into a gold mine of ecological wisdom and technological innovation. There's a reason it's traditional, locally practiced farming techniques that are at the cutting edge of agricultural science—they came from people spending their whole lives in a ceaseless cycle of experimentation and observation.

And meanwhile I'm still struggling to even process how dramatically I expanded as a person over a single year of...devoting my brain to plants.

What I wish to put in words is how ridiculously within reach the power to transform the world for the better is. Because the world doesn't need more sophisticated expertise or more money as much as it needs more love.

I keep trying to imagine going back in time and telling myself, two years ago, "Yeah in 2 years you'll be leading a native plant gardening/no-lawns organization, spearheading a restoration project for a keystone species that has almost no existing conservation projects for it, and growing and handing out hundreds of trees like some kind of 21st century Johnny Appleseed."

And past!Spacey is like "Um??? What the fuck happened to?? getting my masters' and becoming a historian??? I can't even take care of a houseplant??? Do I still live in Kentucky? Am I in a STEM field??? WHY DO I HAVE HUNDREDS OF TREES??" And I'm just like "Well, you had a mental breakdown and lowkey experienced ego death, and then there were these bryozoans..."

YES

I’ve just started graduate studies in Ecology and there’s just….so many species of insects here (Aotearoa) that nobody has bothered to name or study. In the mountains, we have species of alpine geckos known from only a few dozen individuals. Some of them survive in avalanche territory, at below zero temperatures! We have wētā (giant grasshoppery things) that can freeze and safely defrost! Our native mantids are slowly being devoured by introduced pests and replaced by exotic mantids and hardly anyone gives a shit! WHY. However the people who do care are some of the coolest people I’ve ever met and they do incredible work.

Two years ago I was so sick (chronic fatigue) that I could hardly walk, and I learned about the existence of Mokopirirakau galaxias, a newly discovered species of alpine gecko, and it saved me. I figured that if that wee gecko could survive up in the scree fields and boulders of the Southern Alps, then I could survive too and find something worth living for. I promised myself that if I got better (and I did, for which I am so grateful) I would return to university and study ecology, and I did! Every single day I spend in nature is filled with unimaginable wonder. A couple nights ago I got to see glow-worms up close. How is everyone not losing their minds about this? Earth is beautiful! It’s incredible here! I am so full of love for life now, and I never imagined that I could feel this way. The power to change is in our hands and the key is love.

oh my god...

hey wait i have a question. how attached to your name are you guys. like on a scale of “this name is perfect 4 me and i like it lots” to “if people didnt use a name for me i would not care/notice. if you called me by a completely different name for long enough id go by it” because im the second one but i remember a conversation w greass that was like oh huh! names r really important 2 me!

Every time I see companies selling """punk""" jewellery or clothing I become apoplectic with rage. Just saw a £65 padlock necklace advertised to me bitch Fuck you go to your nearest weird little shop that sells everything in the world including fake Rolexes and bongs the size of a toddler. Buy a thing of chain and a padlock. Borrow some bolt cutters someone you know will probably own some and if not get some cheap ones or borrow from a local tool library. Slap em together. Maximum cost £30 and that's MAXIMUM that's assuming you bought over a metre of expensive heavy chain AND bought the bolt cutters. You can do it for under a fiver with a wallet chain and pliers. I still wear a necklace I made when I was 15 out of a wallet chain and pliers and a padlock I got in a set of 3 from poundland. If the issue is dexterity or otherwise disability related then find a friend and swap a favour with them it'll still be cheaper than these scamming poser companies and will help you build community and share resources. Something which is actually punk. Fuckin. Capitalist posers

Important to keep in mind there's a distinction here between 'someone who paints and sells patches in their own small business' (cool, craftsmanship, usually very fairly priced for materials and labour while still affordable for punks who don't have that skillset to buy, honestly not a category far removed from 'if you buy me lunch I can paint your jacket' exchanges) and big companies who charge extortionate prices for something that's supposed to be counterculture, paying staff minimum wage and making huge profits the workers will never see a penny of (cunts)

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But seriously, when we got our property, it was all just…grass. A sterile grass moonscape, like a billion other yards. With two big old maple trees. Just grass and maples, that was it. 

But then I got my grubby little paws on it, and I immediately stopped fertilizing, spraying, and bagging up grass clippings and leaves. I ripped up sod and put in flowers and vegetables. I put down nice thick blankets of mulch around the flowers and vegetables. 

When I first was sweating my way through stripping sod, I saw a grand total of 1 worm and 0 ladybugs. The ground was compacted into something that would bend shovel blades. 

Now, six years later, I can’t dig a planting hole without turning up fourteen earthworms, and there are so many ladybugs here. Not the invasive asian lady beetles; native ladybugs. They winter over in the mulch and in the brush pile. I see thousands of them. 

The soil is soft and rich. There are birds that come to eat, and bees of many sorts.

Like this is something that you, yourself, can absolutely change. This is something that you, personally, can make a difference in.

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Like, last year I watched no fewer than twenty-nine monarch caterpillars grow up on my milkweed and fly away as butterflies. I watched swallowtails and moths grow. There are hummingbirds fighting over flowers now.

I did that. Me. You can do the same.

Is this post about making a garden or beating depression

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As someone with clinically diagnosed anxiety and depression;

Yes.