Increasing relatedness on my city lot

I’ve emphasized below an essential line from Gordon White’s interview with Tyson Yunkaporta: Gordon White: “What are the hallmarks of indigenous thinking?” Tyson Yunkaporta: “It’s an externalized psycho-technology that exists in your unique web of relations. Your thinking and your knowledge sits in the relational space between you and others. Not just with humans but with non-humans, places, landforms, and all the people that you’re in relation to. You have this beautiful set of relations sitting there, waiting for you to engage with it.

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Waiting for An Evening with Neil Gaiman

Bee friends (sweat bees?) pollinating our strawberries.

Pleated inkcap mushroom popped up in the raised beds this morning. The raised beds sit on brick, not soil, so I take this as a good sign that the soil is complexifying, building mycelium. Bonus: cute green strawberries. Pictures taken by my daughter Darcy.

Pretty excited to get confirmation of our tour of Tor House, the home of poet Robinson Jeffers, during our upcoming trip to California.

Welcome to Green Man Grotto, a newly established native plant area in our backyard. The only thing not native is the naked lady lillies, which were already established there.

I believe the amount of anger in the world could be reduced if everyone had the freedom to take short naps as needed. And yeah that’s funny but I’m also serious.

Thanks to Austin Kleon for telling us there was a word for this: tsundoku. I work at my kitchen table, so here is the pile that sits just behind my work laptop.

Rachel and I took a quick walk in Murray Forest at lunch today. We saw a box turtle and both a pileated and red-headed woodpecker.

We also saw jack-in-the-pulpit, fire pink, and trillium. The main reason we went today, though, was American columbo (frasera caroliniensis). At some point this morning I came across a mention of this plant and realized it sounded like something I had seen in one of my favorite spots in Murray Forest. Its normal state is as a rosette of large leaves:

But after a number of years—anywhere from five to thirty, from what I’ve read—it will suddenly develop a long central stalk that will bloom into dozens of flowers. According to Midwest Naturalist, the flowering is not on a fixed schedule and it is not known what triggers it. Thankfully there are several in this spot in Murray Forest that have developed the stalk. I hope to see them blooming in the next few days. I will keep you updated!

Harry Marks:

And let’s not forget what everyone brings up when they talk about why “return to office” is so important. “Oh, it’s about collaboration! We have such a great office culture!” What “office culture?” Fluorescent lighting and no privacy? A pizza party in lieu of a proper raise?

Let’s not mince words when it comes to discussing the return to the office and what it’s really about: capitalism. The banks have threatened to devalue office properties if the companies leasing them don’t use them. Apple spent billions on a brand new campus and it’ll be damned if people aren’t going to walk its sterile, glass hallways each day.

Spot on. You should be suspicious whenever certain buzzwords–like “culture”–start getting repeated. That’s a sure sign of ideology and the first thing to ask when you’ve found an ideology is “who does this benefit?” In this case, it benefits those who stand to lose asset value on their balance sheets due to property value markdowns.