Alder Burns

This very strange thing is the bloom of Asarum splendens, right down at ground level at the base of the plant. I had to move mulch aside to see them!! (images show small, speckled brownish-purple flowers)

I 'm trying a protocol we read about where I eat nothing but cooked steel-cut oats for two days straight. They can have some fruit on them but no sugar or butter etc. Tea and coffee are okay but no other drinks besides water. Supposedly this causes an immediate 10% drop that lasts 6 weeks.

Several at least of related plants in the aroid family do. I've grown both Alocasia and Sauromatum, and in both of them the spadix is warm to the touch when the spathe opens!

Oh wow! this is the first time I've seen someone mention this plant in a long time! It is one of my all-time favorites, fondly recalled growing up in MI. But alas, now I live just a bit south of it's wild distribution...
I love the photo of it melting it's way through the snow!

Interesting! I'm trying to get some started...might give me ideas where to plant them.

this might be particularly helpful for those many of us whose known ancestors include some pretty problematic people....addicts, abusers, colonists, slaveowners, etc. But somewhere back there are amazing people to know and work with.

Midwestern early spring: planting peas to the sound and sight of migrating geese!

lycopsids. Strange looking things that once dominated large areas. It kind of takes ancestor work and spirits of place to the next level. I added a piece of that coal to my altar space.

Finding out that former coal mines underlie the place we live on. A lot of the research about paleontology ultimately has to do with the goal of finding fossil fuels. There are fossil spores in that coal. I can pull up images of the prehistoric plants that produced them. Tree ferns and ....

And like his contemporary Luther Burbank, he communicated with the spirits of the plants.

I believe Somalia is one of the places where coffee is native and wild. So quite possibly they have been using it for longer than anywhere else on earth.

manzanita and magnolia already? You must be in California!

Somehow this reminds me of my cousin in Denmark telling me about their tradition of simmering salmon in vodka!! To me that seems like a perfect way to ruin both!

I wonder how many recognize the plants in this drawing?

Anything by Althaea Sebastiani. I like "Alive with Spirits".

Ahh yum!! Roadkill venison backstrap on the grill!!

you deserve early flowers for having to endure fire danger for months out of the year! I'm content to wait another couple of months to be spared that fear...

learned something new! So this may be why I still feel connected to many places I've lived....having left plants in the ground there! Usually I try to move some of them with me, but always leave some as well.

I believe it is an important food plant for certain butterflies!

Perhaps some nature therapy is in order...

This! I've spent much of my adult life in "intentional community" settings. It's actually not that hard, and often quite fun, to do "all the things" (grow food, build stuff, etc.) But that piece around getting along with each other is what crashes it almost every time!

There is no better kind of tired than after a full day digging new garden beds! Yay for warm weather in the middle of winter!

I got some white sage seed from our plant when we lived in CA, but I've never gotten it to germinate. I've read of people setting the mulch on fire over the seed to trigger it.

A similar dynamic applies to many popular incense plants, like sandalwood, white sage, and some types of palo santo. But indigenous people almost always used local plants, and most climates offer several. The cedars and cypresses, sweetgrass, and Artemisia come to mind for most temperate climes.

The great horned owl might be to blame. This is North America's hidden predator of all small animals; including cats, small dogs, rabbits, any kind of poultry, and all wildlife of similar size. It may strike between dusk and dawn, usually in complete silence. The victim simply vanishes.

Yay pee!! (although I don't recall where it's mentioned in the book!) I've been using pee and the other stuff safely in my gardens since 1985 with excellent results. It's a big part of ramping up productivity on a small site.

Vegan to carnivore: "I don't eat anything that tries to get away!"
Carnivore to vegan: " You must not eat zucchini then!"

Borage.

I remember this stuff. It was a common weed in Bangladesh and village people knew it was medicinal.

Paperwhites! You must live in California!