Rants about the Texas Caper, Abuelitas Hating Nature, Asphalt Heat Islands, etc

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to another episode of the Crime Pace. But Bodany
<v Speaker 1>doesn't podcast nice. Have you ever noticed how messy plants are?
<v Speaker 1>They're so messy. I don't like it when it's messy.
<v Speaker 1>I don't like it when it's messy. Like it when
<v Speaker 1>it's clean. I like, I mean to make it clean,
<v Speaker 1>you got to go. You gotta make it clean. To
<v Speaker 1>make it clean, what you gotta do is you got
<v Speaker 1>to put concrete everywhere. We're gonna put concrete and asphalt
<v Speaker 1>everywhere because it's so messy. Otherwise, the plants are so messy,
<v Speaker 1>they're so many. Oh god, day, can you tell South
<v Speaker 1>Texas has been wearing on me? Can you tell? Oh god, ah,
<v Speaker 1>I got to see I finally got to see Caparis
<v Speaker 1>in Cana, now Quadrilla in Cana. Because Caparis is an
<v Speaker 1>old world genus. Imagine that the Atlantic, the Atlantic Ocean
<v Speaker 1>is a pretty formidable barrier to uh. It's a pretty
<v Speaker 1>formidable uh you know, uh component to genetic isolation, and
<v Speaker 1>in two different genera. The related Quadrilla and Caparis are
<v Speaker 1>of course renated related, but uh, you know it's they're
<v Speaker 1>they're a little bit more distantly apart than uh formerly thought.
<v Speaker 1>But This is a member of the Kaper family, the caparece,
<v Speaker 1>which looking at the flowers, I kind of had the
<v Speaker 1>immediate feeling because I wasn't familiar with this kind of
<v Speaker 1>look at look at the flowers, I had the immediate feeling.
<v Speaker 1>This looks like it's related to mustards, like it's in
<v Speaker 1>the order of brass Akaylee's of the of the family
<v Speaker 1>Brassic casey Oh, I just cut down at tep owai Hey,
<v Speaker 1>my favorite tree in stuff texts. I got the fucking
<v Speaker 1>sawdust of my nose. Still my favorite tree in South Texas.
<v Speaker 1>You can get them eight inch diameter breast height in
<v Speaker 1>two years easy. They are a great fucking tree, great
<v Speaker 1>shade tree. No no thorns. I like the thorns, but
<v Speaker 1>you know a lot of members of the square community
<v Speaker 1>don't want the thorns on them on, you know, so
<v Speaker 1>I miskeats get so much hatred. But I just cut
<v Speaker 1>a tape wayey down because it was growing too close
<v Speaker 1>to these power lines. So I fucking you know, I'll
<v Speaker 1>just probably just prune it, keep it prune, and just
<v Speaker 1>use these sticks for to harvest wood like stay, you know,
<v Speaker 1>because when it sends up new suckers, you can cut
<v Speaker 1>the steaks when they're like the diameter of a thumb,
<v Speaker 1>and or cut the shoots and use the mistakes. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I got the but I got the I got the
<v Speaker 1>sawdust in my nose. It's bothered me. I'm just sitting
<v Speaker 1>out there in a Dego tea. We just came through
<v Speaker 1>a freeze. I'm out there standing in a Dego tea.
<v Speaker 1>Just get showered and saw dust holding the polse up
<v Speaker 1>about me? Got anyway? I hope you're not eating. I'm sorry.
<v Speaker 1>If you are, you know what, you gotta fucking be fine,
<v Speaker 1>all right, princess. It's a non gender specific princess. So anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I finally got to see Caparis in Canaan al Quadrilla
<v Speaker 1>and cana which you know, I saw people, I saw
<v Speaker 1>people posting about. I've known about for a while. It
<v Speaker 1>grows near Brownsville, which is, you know, further east than
<v Speaker 1>I am and Brownsville and Harlingen down here in the
<v Speaker 1>Rio Grand Valley, right here in the Mexican border. We
<v Speaker 1>could smell the burning plastic from Mexico's garbage fires occasionally,
<v Speaker 1>and by occasionally, I mean every weeknight around nine pm.
<v Speaker 1>They always burn the plastic at night I don't know why,
<v Speaker 1>unless it's some sketchy factory on this side of the border.
<v Speaker 1>It's certainly whatever it is, it doesn't sound, it doesn't
<v Speaker 1>smell nice. It smells toxic, you know, like sustained decades
<v Speaker 1>of that, you definitely get cancer and the fucking you know. Okay, anyway,
<v Speaker 1>we're getting distracted here. Brownsville and Harlingin have a more
<v Speaker 1>mediated climate, being that they're closer to a large body
<v Speaker 1>of water, which helps mediate the climate, so it doesn't
<v Speaker 1>get as hot nor as cold during the very rare
<v Speaker 1>freeze events we have here, and it's more humid, so
<v Speaker 1>there's members of the flora down here that are not
<v Speaker 1>so tolerant of drying out. That kind of taper off
<v Speaker 1>as you head west towards Laredo Rio, Grand City, Laredo,
<v Speaker 1>Eagle Pass del Rio, you know, these wonderful border towns
<v Speaker 1>with an abundance of pawn shops and paid a loan
<v Speaker 1>places and you know, sleez bag motels. So I don't
<v Speaker 1>mean to distract the same, Sorry, but I've finally seen
<v Speaker 1>this plan and I was looking for it. There's a
<v Speaker 1>housing there's like all these mc mansions, like literally McMansions,
<v Speaker 1>they're pretty gaudy houses. I don't know why. It's a
<v Speaker 1>very weird style they got down here and building these houses.
<v Speaker 1>You couldn't probably pay me to live in one. I
<v Speaker 1>would get fucking depressed unless I had to cover the
<v Speaker 1>whole thing in plants, but cover the whole you know,
<v Speaker 1>outdoors and and like create a recreate a thorn forest.
<v Speaker 1>But the east their own, you know, they've got there's
<v Speaker 1>the stucco, They've got these really blots of black and
<v Speaker 1>gray air and b Airbnb colors, safe colors. Fucking amn,
<v Speaker 1>it's a it's a flavor. It's again, it goes against
<v Speaker 1>everything I've lived in Hispanic Carrious my whole life, well
<v Speaker 1>for most of the large personema of my life. And
<v Speaker 1>you know, we're living in Tucson, living in a Bay area,
<v Speaker 1>East Oakland, living in East uh, you know, or passing
<v Speaker 1>through LA. You know. I'm used to like brightly painted houses,
<v Speaker 1>fucking dope gardens, you know, the fuck you or Mexican
<v Speaker 1>that kind of like attitude, you know, and here it's
<v Speaker 1>very watered down. It's a very strang it's just very beige.
<v Speaker 1>It's very gray and black. Anyway, and there's reasons for
<v Speaker 1>this of course we're right. We're not fucking idiots here.
<v Speaker 1>We know why, all right, And it's they're dark reasons
<v Speaker 1>and it's sad and but you gotta have compassion for anyway.
<v Speaker 1>But maybe I'm reading too much into it. Okay, there's
<v Speaker 1>anyway we're not getting. We're not getting. This is in
<v Speaker 1>the fucking sociology pocket. The point is, I finally saw
<v Speaker 1>this member of the mustard order. I finally saw it.
<v Speaker 1>I was looking for it. I was in this neighborhood
<v Speaker 1>with the mcmachins. They've got some old Guaya cons on there,
<v Speaker 1>Guya cum and Gusta Fulliam. Iron wood, I think is
<v Speaker 1>a common name for it. You see him in the
<v Speaker 1>Sierra Madre. They're old growth specimen. It's probably five hundred
<v Speaker 1>years old. They're like fifteen feet tall. You know, you'll
<v Speaker 1>see him in West Texas tapping out, you know, a
<v Speaker 1>much more arid climate. They grow, but they don't thrive,
<v Speaker 1>topping out of like four feet. Wonderful fucking plants. Wonderful plants,
<v Speaker 1>not grown enough. I just picked them up from my
<v Speaker 1>friend David, who's got a nursery and Harlingen, great guy.
<v Speaker 1>We were sitting there cooking blue corn tortillas in his
<v Speaker 1>front yard. He's barefoot, you know, And I said, damn,
<v Speaker 1>this is this is the life. You know, our kids
<v Speaker 1>were playing together. I'm like, how do you you know?
<v Speaker 1>I could never see someone like you existing where I live.
<v Speaker 1>It's much too stiff and square. The mar A Lago
<v Speaker 1>face is really popular where I live. Again, I'm getting distracted. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>I'm sorry. I got some shit I gotta work through.
<v Speaker 1>I should have talked to my therapist. I can't talk
<v Speaker 1>to anyone because you're just doing the bucks a fucking hour. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>but so I'm talking to you, so just fucking deal
<v Speaker 1>with it. You'll be fine. So anyway, but he was
<v Speaker 1>growing guya coon. There's not enough people growing these down here.
<v Speaker 1>My friend Rosie Rozziel is growing guaya con. He's got
<v Speaker 1>a nursery in Edinburgh, right, little just small growers, right, members,
<v Speaker 1>you know, members of a squirre coman. If you're building
<v Speaker 1>tracked houses, you're not going to go to these guys
<v Speaker 1>for plants. You should, but you're probably you know, a knob. Again,
<v Speaker 1>I'm fucking being a dick, not a knob. You're probably
<v Speaker 1>don't hit you want the crape myrtles in the box
<v Speaker 1>woods and shit, you know what I mean, and the
<v Speaker 1>ornamental crowtons. Okay, we're doing it, you know anyway. But
<v Speaker 1>so there's people down here growing good stuff, right, but
<v Speaker 1>it needs to get bigger. We need to get you know,
<v Speaker 1>fucking get some of those plants so that members of
<v Speaker 1>a square community learn to appreciate them. That's what we
<v Speaker 1>need to go. That's where this podcast is going. And
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to get into why again. Turns out because
<v Speaker 1>the city's fucking with me from my yard and they
<v Speaker 1>are fucking with me for planting street trees. They just
<v Speaker 1>don't want street trees. And then it just made me
<v Speaker 1>realize this whole kind of inner hatred of nature that
<v Speaker 1>exists down here and in much of Mexico. Not I
<v Speaker 1>wouldn't say to maybe it's a hatred. People love plants,
<v Speaker 1>they like horticulture, but they don't like nature. And it's
<v Speaker 1>like this in the United States as well in more
<v Speaker 1>Anglo areas. But it's just a different flavor, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's a different flavor. And well, how do we change it?
<v Speaker 1>That's what I got to know, you know, how do
<v Speaker 1>you change it without dos in your appolita, right, without
<v Speaker 1>doing like this, you know, a clinical therapeutic mushroom trip
<v Speaker 1>with their right because it's not gonna always she's not
<v Speaker 1>gonna agree to that, okay, and then it you know,
<v Speaker 1>and then at some point you've got to be conniving
<v Speaker 1>and like lure her into she's not gonna do that, right,
<v Speaker 1>how do you you know, especially the old people, the
<v Speaker 1>old people, you really got to reach. Not all old people.
<v Speaker 1>There's some dope old people. All right. I want to fight.
<v Speaker 1>I want to offend any of the old people because
<v Speaker 1>people get ages. They think I'm being ages rather right,
<v Speaker 1>and so you know, you mentioned there's like, uh, there's
<v Speaker 1>some grannies out there who hate street trees. And then
<v Speaker 1>every granny thinks you're talking about them. You gotta say, hey, listen,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not talking about you. You seem pretty cool. Chill out, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>this is this isn't a do you hate street trees?
<v Speaker 1>Do you hate plant? Do you hate nature? Do you
<v Speaker 1>hate native plants? Don't? So it's not about you, don't worry,
<v Speaker 1>but but your horticulture. Let us not confuse horticulture, which
<v Speaker 1>is filled with a bunch of garbage. I feel, in
<v Speaker 1>many ways much of horticulture further alienates and isolates. It's
<v Speaker 1>from the real living world, right, because it's gaudy cultivars
<v Speaker 1>that don't really exist in nature. They've been bred in greenhouses.
<v Speaker 1>They're fucking corny, they're gaudy, they're tacky or whatever. Anyone
<v Speaker 1>who spent time in nature sees a lot of what
<v Speaker 1>constitutes modern hortor culture and fucking gasps. It looks fake.
<v Speaker 1>It's the minecraft landscaping. It looks like it's the plant
<v Speaker 1>version of the Marra a Lago face. Something ain't right,
<v Speaker 1>you know, you can tell it's like a human there,
<v Speaker 1>but it's not right. There's something. The lips are too big,
<v Speaker 1>the fucking no one really has cheekbones like that. Something's
<v Speaker 1>wrong with the skin. Looks like it's about the melt off.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, I don't know. This is problematic what
<v Speaker 1>I'm saying. It might be, thank you. I just can't
<v Speaker 1>listen to that, okay. Anyway, So, uh, we're trying to
<v Speaker 1>get rid of those people. Anyway. We're trying to filter
<v Speaker 1>the fucking people that say shit like that. Okay. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>So I went to go see this plant. I was
<v Speaker 1>going to this neighborhood. They got old guyacons they got
<v Speaker 1>Tlanzia BAILEYI hanging into trees and these old ebonyes. It's
<v Speaker 1>weird because it's mostly MC mansions, horrible, horrible looking a neighborhood.
<v Speaker 1>I would probably kill my I couldn't exist in there
<v Speaker 1>for longer than a week, I'd probably kill myself. It's
<v Speaker 1>Saint Augustine Grass. It's all the corny shit that got
<v Speaker 1>done here. I mean, looks like a death cult. It
<v Speaker 1>looks like a spiritual death cult. Parts of me die
<v Speaker 1>when I have to go through and walk through these areas.
<v Speaker 1>Right they look they're completely artificial. They're existing on water
<v Speaker 1>that's not even going to be here in ten years.
<v Speaker 1>You know. The people inside are all aligned to themselves,
<v Speaker 1>no offense. I hope they find what they're looking for
<v Speaker 1>in life eventually, but they're a lying on themselves. And
<v Speaker 1>if I can make a sweeping generalization, there's probably some
<v Speaker 1>very wonderful people in there, probably some very lovely people,
<v Speaker 1>probably some not so nice ones too, But that's that
<v Speaker 1>we're not focusing in that. We're focusing on these two
<v Speaker 1>little lots that are left where the owner has not
<v Speaker 1>sold and converted it to this hideous tract house slum.
<v Speaker 1>Very wealthy tract house slum. It's a spiritual slum. Wealthy
<v Speaker 1>they're doing fine economically, but spiritually it's a slum. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>it's broke, it's broken. Okay, it's empty, it's depauperate and
<v Speaker 1>so but there's these these couple of these plants left
<v Speaker 1>that are growing and thank god because it's you know,
<v Speaker 1>I go every year to check up on it. A
<v Speaker 1>lot of members of a native plant whatever the hell
<v Speaker 1>you call it down here. We come from all different backgrounds,
<v Speaker 1>you know, we come together because we like the living world.
<v Speaker 1>They know this spot, there's a well known spot, right,
<v Speaker 1>so I went to go check it. It's got like
<v Speaker 1>a construction sign and the sign looks so it looks
<v Speaker 1>like they were going to demolish it at one point.
<v Speaker 1>But maybe the project fell through or someone was hoping to,
<v Speaker 1>you know, they were the only reason the project may
<v Speaker 1>have been going through was because someone in city hall
<v Speaker 1>was connected. And then that person in city hall got
<v Speaker 1>caught embezzling money and taking primes, and so now the
<v Speaker 1>project fell through and they couldn't get it approved. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know, I don't know what the deal is. Right,
<v Speaker 1>there's all kinds of corruption because the city politicians down
<v Speaker 1>here mostly work for the developers. They do, and that's good.
<v Speaker 1>I hope they keep doing that because that's great. That's
<v Speaker 1>good for them. They can get their fourth car and
<v Speaker 1>send their kids to private school and whatever. It's much
<v Speaker 1>more important than actually helping make the community a better place.
<v Speaker 1>But okay, I'm getting distracted. I'm my distain is showing through.
<v Speaker 1>I said, I wasn't good theutist. I was going to
<v Speaker 1>be soft and nice and smile and you know, make
<v Speaker 1>the stiffs feel good. Sorry, getting distracted anyway, So I
<v Speaker 1>went to this area and then I said, oh, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>there's I remember, there's supposed to be capris and kana here,
<v Speaker 1>which is a cool shrub to like ten or twelve feet.
<v Speaker 1>It's much more abundant than Matamoros Tamalipas just over the
<v Speaker 1>border a few miles south, at least for now, until
<v Speaker 1>other sleazy development projects go through on that side. But
<v Speaker 1>Mexico is not. You know, if there's a race between
<v Speaker 1>who's destroying more of their native landscape to turn it
<v Speaker 1>into single use you know, development garbage for developers to
<v Speaker 1>please the developers. In the Elisee, the United States is
<v Speaker 1>winning by a long shot. Mexico's got a lot of
<v Speaker 1>work to do catching up demolishing what's left of their
<v Speaker 1>new living biota. So so anyway, so I was looking
<v Speaker 1>for kapris. I knew about this plant, I said, I
<v Speaker 1>know it's rare. I don't know why. It seems like
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot of plants that only grow in this
<v Speaker 1>border region, northern Mexico southern Texas. That's really interesting too,
<v Speaker 1>because it's such a specific area. You start going further south,
<v Speaker 1>you encounter I mean, unless you're going to Vera Cruz,
<v Speaker 1>which is lowland, but you know, you start going further
<v Speaker 1>south and head up west a little bit, all of
<v Speaker 1>Mexico starts to go up in elevation, and so the
<v Speaker 1>climate and the regional environment changes. And so this lowland
<v Speaker 1>Rio Grande Valley, it's not really a valley, it's a floodplain.
<v Speaker 1>There's not really any topography here. But this is a
<v Speaker 1>very specific area where a lot of stuff grows here.
<v Speaker 1>But it's not going to grow as well. I say
<v Speaker 1>it three or four thousand feet. I don't think ebeny's
<v Speaker 1>grow in the Sierra Mandre maybe a little bit, but
<v Speaker 1>they're more of a lowland plant. There's a lot of
<v Speaker 1>plants that are like that. So it's got this very
<v Speaker 1>specific region dictated by different water sheds and elevations, and
<v Speaker 1>were at a low elevation. I remember most of Mexico's
<v Speaker 1>at high elevation. So it's very very cool these plants
<v Speaker 1>that are restricted to this region. Of course, like Jerseys.
<v Speaker 1>Gerdowski said, how are you pronounced that? I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not Polish. But he was a famous Mexican botanist,
<v Speaker 1>wonderful man who had actually been in as a child.
<v Speaker 1>He was in a concentration kid because he was Polish. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I think he was a Polish too. I don't know,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, but anyway, he just passed away two
<v Speaker 1>years ago. He wrote a lot of great books, Flora
<v Speaker 1>Funeralgamica the Mexico as a one of the like one
<v Speaker 1>of the first Flora books that he wrote. Someone actually
<v Speaker 1>just gave me, my friend, the jusuag just gave me
<v Speaker 1>a paperback copy which was very kind of a you know,
<v Speaker 1>like printed at original printing in the seventies, fucking doll anyway,
<v Speaker 1>So so there's a very specific regional flora here, appreciated
<v Speaker 1>by maybe three percent of the population that lives here
<v Speaker 1>maybe a little bit more right, maybe maybe, but the
<v Speaker 1>majority don't like it. They don't like it. It's just
<v Speaker 1>the culture. Why does anybody anywhere paying attention to nature.
<v Speaker 1>It's like this, whether you go in most places in
<v Speaker 1>the world, they don't give a shit. People. Humans don't care, right,
<v Speaker 1>because everything was put here for us and we don't.
<v Speaker 1>We don't care. Right. You got to put it on there, right,
<v Speaker 1>You got to educate them, You got to show them
<v Speaker 1>how cool it is. Technologies allowed us to believe that
<v Speaker 1>we're estranged from it, then we don't need it, and
<v Speaker 1>so we don't pay attention to it unless it's psychoactive
<v Speaker 1>or medicinal or edible or whatever. So, uh, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's just the way it is. It's okay. We got
<v Speaker 1>to change it. But but I go and I look,
<v Speaker 1>I'm looking for this cap person. Can't I talk. I
<v Speaker 1>call my friend Ken. I asked, where did this thing grow?
<v Speaker 1>And he tell me the road. It was on stagecoach drive.
<v Speaker 1>I can tell you that because the whole area is
<v Speaker 1>getting destroyed. It's not gonna it's just not gonna be
<v Speaker 1>therer much longer. And I go there with my friend Ava,
<v Speaker 1>and we find all these beautiful quiet cons It's like
<v Speaker 1>dense thorn scrub, right, which looks not inviting. Right. I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure you've got to steward these landscapes. That's I'm sure
<v Speaker 1>that's what native people did here for thousands. You've got
<v Speaker 1>to steward them. You gotta, you know, clip shit back,
<v Speaker 1>prune stuff up, make sure you can get in there.
<v Speaker 1>But we have you do that. They're they're wonderful. They're
<v Speaker 1>they're shielding the ground from the intense sun. They're creating
<v Speaker 1>a microclimate of humidity. They're they're nurturing places right you want,
<v Speaker 1>and they're they're shielding the ground from baking into a
<v Speaker 1>hot clay ball like it would otherwise be, and like
<v Speaker 1>you see it being in much of the area where
<v Speaker 1>it's been developed or turned into parking lots, and absolutely
<v Speaker 1>no concept of the heat island down here by the
<v Speaker 1>way too. I've talked about that numerous times. This is
<v Speaker 1>like basic high school physics when you think about it.
<v Speaker 1>But again, none of us are really ever inclined to
<v Speaker 1>think about it, right, unless you're going on into nature
<v Speaker 1>and seeing how much cooler in temperature it is there,
<v Speaker 1>and then you're going to the parking lot and being like, God,
<v Speaker 1>this is a fucking I mean, I've hated the shopping
<v Speaker 1>center since I was like ten years old. They've always
<v Speaker 1>seemed bleak to me, whether they're in Chicago, whether they're
<v Speaker 1>down here, very fucking bleak. Driving and shopping that's all
<v Speaker 1>you do. Oh and eating and most of the food
<v Speaker 1>is not very healthy. Okay, sorry, we're getting distracted. I
<v Speaker 1>know you've probably already bummed out about recent events and
<v Speaker 1>I'm not helping it. Okay, but listen, it gets better.
<v Speaker 1>It does get better. So we see all these wonderful plants,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, I had heard that the caparis and
<v Speaker 1>kana specimen that I was looking for, and this is
<v Speaker 1>a shrub that gets about twelve fourteen feet tall, beautiful
<v Speaker 1>silver undersides, just the cool. It would probably be great
<v Speaker 1>in landscaping here. They should plant that around the margins
<v Speaker 1>that these bleak shopping centers instead of crape myrtles because
<v Speaker 1>they always die or the native they use natives, they
<v Speaker 1>use fracts. In this berlandier rye, which is an ash tree.
<v Speaker 1>It's riparian. They die unless they're on irrigation or growing
<v Speaker 1>in an arroyo. Doesn't make very much sense. To use
<v Speaker 1>them as yard trees or street trees. Right, unless you're
<v Speaker 1>just watering, you're Saint Augustine grass with water. That's not
<v Speaker 1>gonna beat her in ten years anyway, because the Rio
<v Speaker 1>grand is trying up. Okay, so I'm looking for this thing.
<v Speaker 1>It's a it's a mode down shrub because they just
<v Speaker 1>mow the shit out of it. It's going right on
<v Speaker 1>the fence line, and I don't see it, but I
<v Speaker 1>see some vasis adelia, which is a kind of like
<v Speaker 1>rubbery stemmed shrub to about twelve feet tall. Really cool
<v Speaker 1>plant host plant for the Mexican blueing butterfly. Fucking dope
<v Speaker 1>looking butterfly. Who doesn't like butterflies? You really, you don't
<v Speaker 1>like butterflies? You're an asshole. Really? They fucking unclench, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>they quit trying to be macho. You don't have to quit.
<v Speaker 1>You can. You can let it go, all right, go
<v Speaker 1>to therapy, allow yourself to cry once in a while
<v Speaker 1>when something really sad happens. No one's gonna think you're
<v Speaker 1>a pussy. Okay, you can do this, all right. It's
<v Speaker 1>not unclenched quit front thing. This is a Texas thing.
<v Speaker 1>It's everywhere, but especially in Texas, right, you gotta you
<v Speaker 1>gotta keep up that bullshit front, and you're just fucking
<v Speaker 1>dying inside. You live thirty years of your life like that,
<v Speaker 1>at least if you're a male. Oh god. Anyway, I
<v Speaker 1>was just crying because Jack, my dog, faked his own death.
<v Speaker 1>And we'll get into that later. He's still alive. Motherfucker
<v Speaker 1>wouldn't die. He freaked me out. He's a dick. He
<v Speaker 1>just freaked me out. I was crying. I was holding him,
<v Speaker 1>and he wasn't eating or drinking. He was couldn't get
<v Speaker 1>up and walk for like two days. I was like, fuck,
<v Speaker 1>this is it. The vet almost came by Saturday, but
<v Speaker 1>then she bailed. Thank god she flaked because I got
<v Speaker 1>these vets that'll come put your dog down in your house,
<v Speaker 1>you know. Fucking hell So anyway, and then Sunday night,
<v Speaker 1>he's like he gets up and I'm like, what the
<v Speaker 1>fuck man? You know? And then I fed him. I
<v Speaker 1>was like giving him food. He wouldn't eat. Sunday night,
<v Speaker 1>I gave him, put a hot dog in. He wasn't
<v Speaker 1>even eating hot dogs. I put a hot dog in
<v Speaker 1>front of his face and he ate it. And now
<v Speaker 1>he's fucking I mean, he's fine. He's fine as he
<v Speaker 1>was for a sixteen year old duck. Okay. Anyway, See
<v Speaker 1>there's a little bit of good news make you feel better.
<v Speaker 1>So I'm looking around. I see Vasi's Adelia. I see
<v Speaker 1>these beautiful old guiacns. This is still in the same
<v Speaker 1>neighborhood where the T. A. Bailey I and the Guayacns were.
<v Speaker 1>And there's already McMansions and there's two just two lots yet,
<v Speaker 1>you know, left that haven't been developed yet. But we're
<v Speaker 1>about four blocks seas to there on stagecoach drive. And
<v Speaker 1>so now I'm looking and I see, you know, in
<v Speaker 1>the background, I can see they've just cleared a whole
<v Speaker 1>bunch of woods. On the satellite map, the woods are there,
<v Speaker 1>the thorn forest. And then I can see on right
<v Speaker 1>in front of me, and physically in front of me,
<v Speaker 1>they're not there anymore. They've been cleared. They've got the
<v Speaker 1>bulldozers in the back hose, they've cleared all this shit.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm just it doesn't even phase me anymore because
<v Speaker 1>I'm so used to it. I've seen so much wreckage
<v Speaker 1>and destruction since I've not only moved to Texas, and
<v Speaker 1>they're doing this all over central Texas, in southern Texas,
<v Speaker 1>but but they're you know, but especially down here in
<v Speaker 1>a Rio Grande Valley. Right, I've seen astrophyte and mysterious
<v Speaker 1>get destroyed, thousands of payote plants get bulldozed, and it's terrible.
<v Speaker 1>It's you know, you just you just kind of keep
<v Speaker 1>the geologic timescale in mind when this is happening. And
<v Speaker 1>and uh realize you're gonna laugh when the comic comes,
<v Speaker 1>because this is this is self destructive behavior, and there's
<v Speaker 1>nothing you can do. It's like having a friend that's
<v Speaker 1>a fucking drunk or a junkie, and like nothing you
<v Speaker 1>say is going to get them to stop. They kind
<v Speaker 1>of have to hit rock bottom and then may then
<v Speaker 1>and only then maybe will they walk into an AA
<v Speaker 1>meeting or decide to quit drinking. It's very similar, very
<v Speaker 1>similar behavior, you know, modern civilization, the leaders in modern
<v Speaker 1>chiliz and and alcoholics and junkies. Okay, so I'm looking
<v Speaker 1>at you know, I've it's still I've given up looking
<v Speaker 1>for the capwards because I couldn't find it. I don't
<v Speaker 1>see anything that looks like it's been mowed down. I
<v Speaker 1>walked the perimeter, I didn't see anything, so I'm just now,
<v Speaker 1>I'm just going againder An google at the guyacons and
<v Speaker 1>the faces Adelli and see what else is there. And
<v Speaker 1>then suddenly right in front of me, and the only
<v Speaker 1>way I realized I was gonna find this plant was
<v Speaker 1>it would be the one plant. I had no idea
<v Speaker 1>what it was because I know all the other plants
<v Speaker 1>down here. And suddenly I look and I see this
<v Speaker 1>multi stem shrub do about twelve feet with these beautiful
<v Speaker 1>silver undersize of the leaves, mahogany shoots and petioles maybe
<v Speaker 1>a centimeter long, petioles of a centimeter line. And I said,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what the shit that is. I look closer,
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, oh, this is it. This is capers and cana.
<v Speaker 1>It's a full, full grown individual. Holy shit. I was
<v Speaker 1>so ecstatic. And then I look at the flowers. I
<v Speaker 1>see the four white petals, and I think it had
<v Speaker 1>eight stamens the four petals. Of course, remember we look
<v Speaker 1>at flowers when we're trying to figure out what plants.
<v Speaker 1>We're looking at what family it is. And that's how
<v Speaker 1>you start. You start with what family, right, And if
<v Speaker 1>you don't know what family it's in. You try to
<v Speaker 1>figure out what fucking order it's in using things called
<v Speaker 1>sinapa morphis, which are traits of different levels of taxonomic classification,
<v Speaker 1>like this, A genus has its own sinapa morphis. A
<v Speaker 1>family has its own sanapa morphis. For the pea family,
<v Speaker 1>it's banner and keel flower morphology at least for the
<v Speaker 1>Faboides subfamily, or the mimosa style flower for the mimosoid
<v Speaker 1>subfamily of Pabasi, for the p family. For the Brassica family,
<v Speaker 1>it's four petals, six stamens. And not only is it
<v Speaker 1>you count numbers here, but the anthers have a tip
<v Speaker 1>look to them in the in the mustards, right, and
<v Speaker 1>so do the sepals. They're kind of cupped, right. And
<v Speaker 1>as the racy of course, the sunflower family, it's it's
<v Speaker 1>a capitulum of what looks like a single flower is
<v Speaker 1>actually composed of many different flowers. In the evening primrose
<v Speaker 1>family own a gracie, it's four petals, eight stamens. You know,
<v Speaker 1>we're count of numbers, You get it, right, and so
<v Speaker 1>on and so on with every fucking angiosperm family, and
<v Speaker 1>with the ferns you're looking at the sporophylls and the
<v Speaker 1>sri and what have you. And where they're aligned on
<v Speaker 1>the underside of the leaf? Do they have an dusium,
<v Speaker 1>a pseudo indusium? Are they linear? Et cetera. You know,
<v Speaker 1>so I look at these flowers, I said, okay, because
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't familiar with capareci, the caper family. You know,
<v Speaker 1>what is a caper? I don't think I've even had
<v Speaker 1>a caper before. What do you do with capers? You
<v Speaker 1>put them in martiniz or theme. I don't drink. What
<v Speaker 1>do you do with capers? You put them in booze,
<v Speaker 1>you put them in salads and shit, I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>Do you put a caper in jardanira, the Chicago style
<v Speaker 1>olive oil marinated pizza topping. No, jardonira is not just
<v Speaker 1>for pizza. But you can put it on a tany
<v Speaker 1>beef sandwich too. But I don't eat that chick because
<v Speaker 1>I don't try to eat mammals most of the time,
<v Speaker 1>because it's just, you know, it's a it's a health thing, right.
<v Speaker 1>I come from a line of Dagos that I'll get
<v Speaker 1>they get all get ass cancer, they get the colon cancer. Shit. Now,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not going to refuse it if someone offers me some,
<v Speaker 1>but I generally don't seek it out. Right, I just
<v Speaker 1>got a vegetable steamer. I've been steaming fish. I've been
<v Speaker 1>steaming cauliflower, really trying to clean my fucking tubes out.
<v Speaker 1>It's been wonderful. Right, I make smoothies and should drink
<v Speaker 1>a lot of green tea, and then i'll, you know,
<v Speaker 1>indulge in taco polenke, eat far too much taco plunk.
<v Speaker 1>My five year old always wants to go to talk Polenke.
<v Speaker 1>I can't convince her to eat anything else. She doesn't
<v Speaker 1>even fucking like pizza. I don't know. I've never met
<v Speaker 1>a kid that doesn't like pizza. She just wants taco
<v Speaker 1>polnke all the time. She wants to live on bean
<v Speaker 1>and cheese tacos. So you can't do that. That's not healthy.
<v Speaker 1>You have to eat something else besides taco polenke. For
<v Speaker 1>Christ's sakes, you're gonna make me look like a bad parent.
<v Speaker 1>They're gonna call DCFS. I can't just feed you taco Polenke.
<v Speaker 1>But then I realized she's five, and just whatever, just
<v Speaker 1>deal with it. People don't get a broadened palate. For
<v Speaker 1>foods until they're older. Right to do. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>what the fuck I wanted to eat. I didn't even
<v Speaker 1>know what refried beans and cheese were when I was five, right.
<v Speaker 1>I learned it later on when I got sent to
<v Speaker 1>this our bound program for fucked up kids. I was
<v Speaker 1>there with this guy who got cast selling five hundred
<v Speaker 1>hits an assid got sent there by the court. I
<v Speaker 1>was there with another guy from wait, wonderful community of people,
<v Speaker 1>wonderful youths. I was thirteen. You know. I got in
<v Speaker 1>a fistfight with this kid I later became close friends with.
<v Speaker 1>That's a great way to become close friends. By the way,
<v Speaker 1>if you're curious about how to make friends, just go
<v Speaker 1>up to someone and punch them in the face and
<v Speaker 1>then but then be nice to him afterwards, and it works, wonders.
<v Speaker 1>It's a great bonding experiment. That's how I met my lawyer.
<v Speaker 1>We didn't punch each other in the face. We were
<v Speaker 1>talking shit to each other. I told him to go
<v Speaker 1>fuck himself, and it wasn't an endearing way like the
<v Speaker 1>way I signed off on the videos. We really, you know,
<v Speaker 1>we were mad. And then a day later he said, well,
<v Speaker 1>I guess we know each other. We you know, we
<v Speaker 1>we know each other much closer now. And I said,
<v Speaker 1>you're right in and so let's work together. And so
<v Speaker 1>now he's my lawyer. So anyway, that said, where were we?
<v Speaker 1>So I see this thing. I'm I can feel the
<v Speaker 1>dopamine rush. I'm getting excited. I'm looking at this rare plant.
<v Speaker 1>I say, holy shit, we need to cultivate this. I
<v Speaker 1>call my keep, I say, we got to get cuttings. Stat.
<v Speaker 1>I take an herbarium about your stat. I gotta go.
<v Speaker 1>Where the fuck did I put the Irbarian boucher too?
<v Speaker 1>By the way, I can't remember, God damn it. It
<v Speaker 1>was dry and somewhere. I don't know how I did
<v Speaker 1>with it. Anyway, I'm sure I'll find that at some point. So,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I tell uh, I tell my friend. I
<v Speaker 1>just I said, we're gonna be here for a minute. Now.
<v Speaker 1>I got it, and we we start looking immediately looking
<v Speaker 1>for more. I couldn't find anymore. There's just this one.
<v Speaker 1>I do a video on it. Whatever, take a voucher.
<v Speaker 1>Then we go out for typhoon and it was it was.
<v Speaker 1>It was good food, but it was expensive. It was
<v Speaker 1>fucking overpriced. And I don't get typhood in Brownsville, no offense.
<v Speaker 1>Wonderful people that run it, but they're not you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's not the it's not affordable. Okay, but if
<v Speaker 1>you're in Alpine, Texas, go to the type place there.
<v Speaker 1>That's a wonderful way. Okay, let's keep going. I'm getting distracted.
<v Speaker 1>Here are you still listening? Even I don't know what
<v Speaker 1>are you doing? You work? What the what are you fucking?
<v Speaker 1>What are you doing? I don't know? Do you what
<v Speaker 1>are you doing? I don't care, never mind some of
<v Speaker 1>my business. So we uh we go. And the next day,
<v Speaker 1>after the video comes out, I get contacted by a
<v Speaker 1>gentleman who tells me he's the forester, the city forester
<v Speaker 1>for the city of Brownsville. I didn't even know they
<v Speaker 1>had one. That's pretty cool. I can't imagine the town
<v Speaker 1>I live in having a city forester because they don't
<v Speaker 1>have trees. They hate trees, they don't want trees. They
<v Speaker 1>want to cut all cut down all the trees. And
<v Speaker 1>the ship they plant is horrible too. Again, it's like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, live oaks, which aren't really native, don't do
<v Speaker 1>that well. And uh, I mean they're native to the continent,
<v Speaker 1>but not down here. It's just they're not thorn scrub plants.
<v Speaker 1>And and then you know the fracss berlandier rye, crape
<v Speaker 1>myrtles and all this shit, right, stuff that's not really
<v Speaker 1>going to be good. They've totally turned off to the
<v Speaker 1>native legumes that are so dominant here and such great
<v Speaker 1>street trees. So and so this guy tells me, he said,
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna wait, can you shut tell me where this
<v Speaker 1>spot was? And I said, oh, yeah, I just left
<v Speaker 1>the location open an eye naturalists because I want people
<v Speaker 1>to go there. They're going to destroy it anyways and
<v Speaker 1>build some fucking mc mansions. So and they are McMansions.
<v Speaker 1>They're large houses. You can see what they're building. So
<v Speaker 1>he looks it up. He finds out they didn't pull
<v Speaker 1>their permits correctly. He goes to you know, he's like,
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to order a stop to the construction whatever,
<v Speaker 1>to the whatever they're doing. And then I get a
<v Speaker 1>call from him later and it turns out he actually
<v Speaker 1>he reached out to the guy that the owner, who
<v Speaker 1>he went to high school with. And so it's it's
<v Speaker 1>not even this antagonistic situation anymore. It's just like the
<v Speaker 1>guy said we could go remove it, I'm going to
<v Speaker 1>call this tree farm to go do it with a
<v Speaker 1>tree spade. By that point, my friend David and Mike
<v Speaker 1>Heap and a few other people had gone and taken cuttings,
<v Speaker 1>and so hopefully we can get this thing at the cultivation. Meanwhile,
<v Speaker 1>I know a guy at Wardo and another dude on
<v Speaker 1>the other side of the border in Mexico and tam
<v Speaker 1>Alipus where there's a very small but the enthusiastic native
<v Speaker 1>plant community, and they're collecting seeds from the wild plants
<v Speaker 1>left over there. So now the goal is to just
<v Speaker 1>grow the absolute shit out of this and get it
<v Speaker 1>into cultivation. And as much as I even hate going
<v Speaker 1>to home despot in all these other places, we need
<v Speaker 1>to start working on these focks to get them to
<v Speaker 1>grow native plants. Low's home despot. You got to start
<v Speaker 1>working on them. What we need to do is change
<v Speaker 1>the entire concept of what horticulture is supposed to be.
<v Speaker 1>It's not. You know, for so long, horticulture has just
<v Speaker 1>been about what's esthetically pleasing to rich old ladies. That's ridiculous.
<v Speaker 1>That doesn't mean anything. People that are disconnected from the
<v Speaker 1>living machine in their region. Why are we concerned about
<v Speaker 1>their opinions about what's pretty. We need to start treating
<v Speaker 1>plants as infrastructure, and the whole concept in the context
<v Speaker 1>itself is what's beautiful? This plant supports these other species
<v Speaker 1>of insect bird, They nurture the land they've They're perfectly evolved,
<v Speaker 1>fucking perfectly evolved for this set of conditions, whether it's
<v Speaker 1>the soils, the extreme summer heat for flooding, whatever, they
<v Speaker 1>evolved there, and why are they built perfectly for it?
<v Speaker 1>Because the environment literally selected for them. The environment literally
<v Speaker 1>bred them. The same way that if you're trying to
<v Speaker 1>grow heat and humidity tolerant tomatoes, because most heat most
<v Speaker 1>tomatoes are not heat and humidity tolerate. They're from eight
<v Speaker 1>thousand feet in the high dry and these where they
<v Speaker 1>grow with brown Ninea condilaris, which is a giant cactus,
<v Speaker 1>beautiful cactus Pronygia, right, that's where the ancestors of tomatoes
<v Speaker 1>are are native. So they don't like the heat and humidity.
<v Speaker 1>They don't like the the higher nighttime temperatures that that
<v Speaker 1>humidity creates because their metabolism can't slow down, so they
<v Speaker 1>hit the compensation point too easily. They're burning the machine's
<v Speaker 1>always on, the machine being the plant, and so it
<v Speaker 1>quickly burns out its energy because it's only it's running
<v Speaker 1>twenty four hours a day, but it's only photosynthesizing for twelve.
<v Speaker 1>So at some point it just hits a tipping point
<v Speaker 1>and they decline. Right, A lot of plants from high
<v Speaker 1>altitude environments, well, you're not gonna have luck growing bristol
<v Speaker 1>cone pines for very long in say, the Southeastern United States,
<v Speaker 1>because bristol compines are from a high altitude environment where
<v Speaker 1>they get cold nights and the machine shits down and
<v Speaker 1>of course it's just hot as ever living shit and
<v Speaker 1>humid as balls in the Southeastern United States. You get
<v Speaker 1>you catch my drift. So if you're trying to get
<v Speaker 1>tomatoes to grow, you're trying to you're trying to breed
<v Speaker 1>a heat and humidity tolerant tomato. You it's gonna take selection.
<v Speaker 1>And so how do you do that? You grow a
<v Speaker 1>thousand seedlings with a you know, pooling from a broad
<v Speaker 1>genetic diversity, all different cultivars that have been bred by
<v Speaker 1>humans over the last few hundred years since uh, you know,
<v Speaker 1>since tomatoes hit it big with the human populace. The
<v Speaker 1>Europeans took them over and they said, what you get
<v Speaker 1>what I'm saying you take you select a broad genetic pool.
<v Speaker 1>You grow a thousand seedlings, maybe more, the more the better,
<v Speaker 1>select them to heat and humidity. Most will die. That's
<v Speaker 1>those that survive. You then start breeding those, and now,
<v Speaker 1>because the rest have died, you've opened up this huge palate,
<v Speaker 1>this huge canvas for more to grow and thrive. And
<v Speaker 1>there's not as many competing for the limited resources of
<v Speaker 1>you know, root space and water and whatever. And so suddenly,
<v Speaker 1>within a few generations you've created a heat in humidity
<v Speaker 1>toweran tomato. Right, look at what humans have done selecting
<v Speaker 1>for different dog breeds that they've all bred from the
<v Speaker 1>same ancestral species of wool. For selecting for broccoli and
<v Speaker 1>kale and colabie, which are all the same species of
<v Speaker 1>Brassica brassica olerasia. Right. If humans can do that in
<v Speaker 1>a few centuries, what can the environment do in a
<v Speaker 1>few million years? And that's what's happened in every region
<v Speaker 1>where there's a plant list and a plant community that's
<v Speaker 1>native is those plants were literally built and selected for
<v Speaker 1>by the environment. Human selection is a great way to
<v Speaker 1>introduce you to the concept of natural selection. It's nothing
<v Speaker 1>to do with only the strong survived, dumbest shit I've
<v Speaker 1>ever heard. Okay, It's got more to do with literally
<v Speaker 1>selection by the environment, and what's advantageous in one environment
<v Speaker 1>may not be an advantageous adaptived in another environment. We
<v Speaker 1>talk about this all the time on this podcast. Do
<v Speaker 1>I need to get this through to you again? This
<v Speaker 1>is for a people who haven't heard it yet, right, So,
<v Speaker 1>then that's why the native plants make sense. That's why
<v Speaker 1>they're pragmatic, That's why they do so well. I mean
<v Speaker 1>they literally pop up unassisted, especially down here. A lot
<v Speaker 1>of the natives, a lot of the aggressive plants are
<v Speaker 1>not invasive. The ruteral plants, the plants you see growing
<v Speaker 1>after they bulldoze a lot and then the project falls
<v Speaker 1>through because the sleeves bag developer couldn't get the funding
<v Speaker 1>for it, or couldn't you know, wasn't able to get
<v Speaker 1>the bribe to the city council person in time before
<v Speaker 1>they retired or got voted out, you know, something like that.
<v Speaker 1>Like those plants literally pop up mesquites paalo verdes, Parkinsonia
<v Speaker 1>koliata in this case, not my favorite Parkinsonia Texana. But
<v Speaker 1>you know, that's why they pop up so easy, because
<v Speaker 1>they mean, you look at how they're just built for
<v Speaker 1>this environment. They're great. They're great plants. And that's one
<v Speaker 1>thing that's really cool about South Texas is most of
<v Speaker 1>the pioneer species we have, except for buffalo grass and
<v Speaker 1>guinea grass and I think KR. Bluestem too, they're all
<v Speaker 1>invasive grasses. The pioneer species except for those, most of
<v Speaker 1>the pine, the ruteral plants, the plants that thrive around
<v Speaker 1>human environments, on the sides of railroad tracks, drainage ditches,
<v Speaker 1>the shit that's gonna pop up if you bulldoze a
<v Speaker 1>lot and don't do anything disturbance event. The pioneer species,
<v Speaker 1>the rutural plants kind of the same thing, are all
<v Speaker 1>going to be native, which is very cool. So why
<v Speaker 1>don't we use it? We have such an extreme climate
<v Speaker 1>down here, right, And so this was something that was
<v Speaker 1>hard for me to grasp when I was younger, when
<v Speaker 1>I just wanted to grow fucking medicicoias everywhere because I
<v Speaker 1>thought they were cool trees. Oh it's a cold tolerant redwood.
<v Speaker 1>Was let's grow medicaquoias and you know the Mediterranean climate
<v Speaker 1>of California where it doesn't rain during the hottest part
<v Speaker 1>of Ye, that makes sense. Right. Let's take a plant
<v Speaker 1>from a climate that's more akin to that of eastern
<v Speaker 1>North America, where they get fifty to sixty the inches
<v Speaker 1>of rain a year and the tree grows in floodplains.
<v Speaker 1>Try to grow that, you know, in a front yard
<v Speaker 1>in West Oakland. Right, it doesn't doesn't make sense. It
<v Speaker 1>doesn't make sense. Rights. It's like trying to get a
<v Speaker 1>square peg to fit in a round hole. It's not
<v Speaker 1>gonna work unless the square is smaller than the roundhole.
<v Speaker 1>But you know what I mean, it doesn't work like that.
<v Speaker 1>So anyway, Uh, this is what we get to do,
<v Speaker 1>and you gotta do it, and you gotta talk, especially
<v Speaker 1>if you're in Mexico or you're you're you know, uh,
<v Speaker 1>you talk to your abolita. If you're in Mexico, you're
<v Speaker 1>obviously not listening to this podcast. It's in English. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>you are. I don't know a lot of them. A
<v Speaker 1>lot of my Mexican friends are bilingual, which makes you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's so pathetic for most Americans, since many Americans only
<v Speaker 1>speak English. But anyway, you talk to your appolita, talk
<v Speaker 1>to your talk to your tears, talk to everybody. Start
<v Speaker 1>to start convincing them that the concrete backyard is not nice. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>unless you're like a fucking professional NBA player, you need
<v Speaker 1>to practice a lot or something. Okay, all right, you
<v Speaker 1>gotta we gotta stop doing this, Gotta get rid of
<v Speaker 1>the Mexican lawn Gotta stop doing the Mexican equivalent of
<v Speaker 1>the lawns of the concrete backyard. Gotta stop doing that.
<v Speaker 1>You gotta start convincing your a belita that maybe instead
<v Speaker 1>of all the crape myrtles and the horticultural home despot
<v Speaker 1>garbage that she picks up at the polga and don't
<v Speaker 1>call it then in front of it, be very nice,
<v Speaker 1>but start saying, Look, the native plants are beautiful too.
<v Speaker 1>You see the birds hanging out in the native plants.
<v Speaker 1>They might have spines, but it's because they have to
<v Speaker 1>protect themselves, because they evolved in this harsh climate that
<v Speaker 1>we live so much, and so let's respect them. You
<v Speaker 1>can do this. You can advocate these things. This is
<v Speaker 1>something you can do, Okay, And if you're in in
<v Speaker 1>fucking ioware or whatever, and they just want to have
<v Speaker 1>you know, you could do the same thing. The tall
<v Speaker 1>grass prairie is pretty amazing. It's not filled with ticks
<v Speaker 1>all right. When it's filled with ticks, it's because it
<v Speaker 1>hasn't burned like it was for you know, every two
<v Speaker 1>or three years and two or three year intervals by
<v Speaker 1>the people that took care of this land for twenty
<v Speaker 1>thirty thousand years, you know, before settlers came. Right, he's
<v Speaker 1>got to manage it, right, The tall grass prairie is amazing.
<v Speaker 1>You're not gonna get ticks in the front yard unless
<v Speaker 1>you got our models of deer hanging anyway, So settle down, right. Stop,
<v Speaker 1>we got to encourage people stop planting just because you
<v Speaker 1>can still plan dow nty whatever. But the but the
<v Speaker 1>native plants are what makes sense. Right. Stop stop having
<v Speaker 1>the go to be the horticultural atrocities in the garbage. Right,
<v Speaker 1>Have it be the natives. Right, this is don't create
<v Speaker 1>a religion out of it. Don't be a militant asshole
<v Speaker 1>about it. Don't be like the kid with the sept
<v Speaker 1>and piercing who's twenty four years old and you know,
<v Speaker 1>just learned what colonization is and it's going to annoy
<v Speaker 1>the shit out of you and lecture you and morally
<v Speaker 1>condescend to you. Right, That's what helped us get where
<v Speaker 1>we are today. That's what that shit turns people off.
<v Speaker 1>It doesn't work. Just politely imply, politely and kindly imply.
<v Speaker 1>I can coach switch. I talk a lot of shit.
<v Speaker 1>I talk a whole lot of shit, right, I've got
<v Speaker 1>disdain and contempt in my voice sometimes, right, Not really,
<v Speaker 1>it's just I'm just spiny and the inside I'm soft.
<v Speaker 1>I'm soft, fluffy, okay, But I can also code switch.
<v Speaker 1>And if I'm sitting in front of, you know, a
<v Speaker 1>bunch of stiffs in front of city Hall, like I
<v Speaker 1>was a few days ago when I was trying to
<v Speaker 1>convince them to plants street trees, and then also to
<v Speaker 1>leave my yard alone because I just got a code
<v Speaker 1>violation for the yard, which I'm pretty sure is just
<v Speaker 1>a personal it's personal now, because we already went through
<v Speaker 1>this two years ago and I pissed someone off there.
<v Speaker 1>They got a heart on for me, even though they're
<v Speaker 1>about to retire, and so they're coming for the yard again,
<v Speaker 1>and so they don't even know what they're upset about.
<v Speaker 1>But I code switch and I talked to them. I said, look,
<v Speaker 1>can we just stop doing this. You guys don't even
<v Speaker 1>know what you're upset about. I don't live in an Hoa.
<v Speaker 1>You guys are not an Hoa. Come over to the yard.
<v Speaker 1>I'll show you what's up. I'll show you what all
<v Speaker 1>these plants are, how wonderful it is. Right, it's technically
<v Speaker 1>not breaking any of the code. They're cultivated plants. Well,
<v Speaker 1>they don't look cultivated. How would you know what looks cultivated?
<v Speaker 1>And you can't tell by look alone whether something's cultivated. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>let's be honest with ourselves. You're not used to this,
<v Speaker 1>and you don't like it because you're not used to it,
<v Speaker 1>And that's okay. But let's come over. Let's pick it apart,
<v Speaker 1>and I'll show you what's up. It's not about height limits,
<v Speaker 1>it's not about any of this. It's because you don't
<v Speaker 1>know what it is. Every single person who's ever been
<v Speaker 1>over to my house fucking loves it. Talks about how
<v Speaker 1>wonderful it is. All the birds hang out there. It's great. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>it doesn't make sense to have mode bermuda grass and
<v Speaker 1>an irrigated saint augustine lawn in a climate where it's
<v Speaker 1>summer for eleven months out of the year. That's insane,
<v Speaker 1>that's crazy. We don't have the water for that, and
<v Speaker 1>nor should anyone be forced to pay for that, because
<v Speaker 1>if you're not paying the irrigated, then what you're gonna
<v Speaker 1>have is a barren dirt lot that gets mowed. And
<v Speaker 1>I can see them mowing around my neighborhood too. It's
<v Speaker 1>really cute. These guys go out. They've got the face
<v Speaker 1>masks down. They look like fucking ice agents, but they've
<v Speaker 1>just it's because they got to have these scarves because
<v Speaker 1>there's not really any grass there in these lots that
<v Speaker 1>they're mowing. They're just kicking up clouds of dust, so
<v Speaker 1>they have to have these masks so that they can breathe.
<v Speaker 1>And don't you know, get some sort of fungal infection
<v Speaker 1>from inhaling long dormant spores in this compacted silty clay soil.
<v Speaker 1>Because there's you can't can't have that. You can't have
<v Speaker 1>a grass a lawn here without it being irrigated because
<v Speaker 1>it's just too fucking hot. Right. The grass blades are
<v Speaker 1>not long enough to shield the ground from getting baked
<v Speaker 1>to shit. Okay, you know it is good at shielding
<v Speaker 1>the ground from getting baked to shit. The native thorn
<v Speaker 1>scrub flora, the native thorn forest flora, the same thing
<v Speaker 1>that the native chachilacas hang out in and the cool
<v Speaker 1>indigo snakes and god knows what cool animals that went
<v Speaker 1>extinct only ten thousand years ago. You can do that
<v Speaker 1>and you can still see what a thorn scrub forest
<v Speaker 1>looks like if you go to like say Kinta Mazatlan
<v Speaker 1>over McCallan, or some of the rare patches of thorn
<v Speaker 1>forests that are left Itteria brush tracks La Puerta saying
<v Speaker 1>something wildlife refuge. You know, just look for the green
<v Speaker 1>parcels on the map down here that haven't been bulldozed yet,
<v Speaker 1>that were thankfully that previous generations were thankfully considerate and
<v Speaker 1>forward thinking enough to set aside, and which developers probably
<v Speaker 1>will come for at some point because they're doing that
<v Speaker 1>for all over. I mean, these developers really got a
<v Speaker 1>heart on for the land. They're not concerned about, you know,
<v Speaker 1>community well being at all. They are only concern is
<v Speaker 1>to make as much money as possible, and they're probably
<v Speaker 1>lying to themselves too, So they're they're probably they're probably believing,
<v Speaker 1>they're probably getting high on their own on their own sauce.
<v Speaker 1>They don't, you know. So it's not like they're malicious.
<v Speaker 1>They're intentionally conniving. Certainly some are, but a lot of
<v Speaker 1>them just I think, believe their own lives. They believe
<v Speaker 1>the bullshit they tell other people and they believe it themselves. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>we're probably make more holthy for people at the point.
<v Speaker 1>And now you're trying to make as much money as
<v Speaker 1>possible by coming for whatever little morsel of land is left.
<v Speaker 1>And you view land as a resource that you can
<v Speaker 1>manipulate and exploit. You don't view land as though this
<v Speaker 1>this has a purpose, it's got a you know, it's
<v Speaker 1>preserving the wild living world that's left there. It's a
<v Speaker 1>little crumb. You don't view it like that. It's it's
<v Speaker 1>whatever's left. Right, Like pigs at a trough, they'll go
<v Speaker 1>for the gobble up every last little bit. So they'll
<v Speaker 1>come for the lands down here at some point eventually.
<v Speaker 1>But again I don't say this to discourage you. I
<v Speaker 1>say it to motivate you. You got to advocate. If
<v Speaker 1>people don't know what the native plants are in a
<v Speaker 1>certain region wherever it is, they're not going to give
<v Speaker 1>a shit when developers come to destroy it. There's going
<v Speaker 1>to be no outrage. There's going to be no one
<v Speaker 1>to speak up for it. Right, whether it's fucking hunters
<v Speaker 1>and fishermen, or whether it's people that just want to
<v Speaker 1>go cool their head and go on a hike, or
<v Speaker 1>nature lovers or birdwagers or whatever. Right, you advocate for it.
<v Speaker 1>And you have to realize how the horticulture that's been
<v Speaker 1>a part of human sociey. The shit we plant in
<v Speaker 1>front of new developments, the stuff your grandma might plant
<v Speaker 1>in front of her house unless she's really dope, grandma,
<v Speaker 1>and is in the native plants. The stuff that you
<v Speaker 1>see planted in front of the wells Fargo, and you
<v Speaker 1>have to go in there and cash a check, and
<v Speaker 1>you really don't like doing it because the bank just
<v Speaker 1>feels terrible anyway, and you know they're fucking you. Right,
<v Speaker 1>you see the little deductions monthly and your statement, right,
<v Speaker 1>you look at that stuff that is not that those
<v Speaker 1>are that's garbage. That further, it's as bad as the lawn,
<v Speaker 1>as far as I'm concerned, as bad as the lawn.
<v Speaker 1>It further alienates us. It creates this paradigm that views
<v Speaker 1>nature as messy and things that if plants are going
<v Speaker 1>to be growing where we exist, that they've got to
<v Speaker 1>be flowering all the time and have shiny leaves and
<v Speaker 1>and be hedged and neatly spaced. It's a deranged, fucking mindset.
<v Speaker 1>That's not okay. You live in places like that. That's
<v Speaker 1>going to affect your mental health, whether you like it
<v Speaker 1>or not. Okay, get rid of this weird Victorian European
<v Speaker 1>garden esthetic. Let that go. That's not nature. Where do
<v Speaker 1>we look to see what we can do in those
<v Speaker 1>places instead? And this is my message to all the landscapers.
<v Speaker 1>I want to dose all of them, because horticulture doesn't
<v Speaker 1>need an enema. Where do we look? We look at nature,
<v Speaker 1>We look at the habitat, whether it's the California Maritime
<v Speaker 1>Chaparral and coastal southern California, or whether we're in the
<v Speaker 1>thorn scrub of the Tama Leap in thorn thorn forest,
<v Speaker 1>or whether we're in the Illinois Prairie or in Northeast
<v Speaker 1>woodland or the coastal plain of the Southeastern United States,
<v Speaker 1>or the Ozark Plateau or the grasslands of Nebraska and
<v Speaker 1>Kansas and western Oklahoma. That's where we look to. You
<v Speaker 1>got to stop trying to deny these places. You got
<v Speaker 1>to stop living in ignorance of the plant communities that
<v Speaker 1>exist there and trying to plant ship from the home
<v Speaker 1>depot garden section like boxwoods or fucking whatever in your yard.
<v Speaker 1>When you live in these places, okay, because we've been
<v Speaker 1>severed from the land, you've had it. Yeah, it's not
<v Speaker 1>been severed from it, it's been stolen from you. And
<v Speaker 1>you've been lied to about what a landscape should look like,
<v Speaker 1>what the world that we live on should look like.
<v Speaker 1>So advocate for it. And you see this in Mexico too.
<v Speaker 1>It's the same thing. It really takes apart all the
<v Speaker 1>weird identitarian bulls. Oh, Mexicans are technically half the digital though.
<v Speaker 1>They just automatically know how to stewar the land. Now now, bullshit, bullshit. Now,
<v Speaker 1>it's not the case. So many people, my friend Carlos,
<v Speaker 1>so many bonis in Mexico, my friend calls. The first
<v Speaker 1>time I met him, he was he was amazed to
<v Speaker 1>see astikiam. He was amazed to see people that were
<v Speaker 1>excited about plants. He said, there's no one down here
<v Speaker 1>and grow. Granted he lives in Monterray, which could be
<v Speaker 1>fucking bleak. Okay, there's like a lot of they've got
<v Speaker 1>like the Mexican version of the mar A Lago face
<v Speaker 1>down there, lots of phrases, lots of fancy shit, lots
<v Speaker 1>of glossy garbage. It's all poison that value systems poison.
<v Speaker 1>You don't want that, right. There's some dope shit too,
<v Speaker 1>but there's the phrases. Shit is really popular in Monterray.
<v Speaker 1>You could look at the billboards and whatever. Okay, it's
<v Speaker 1>a really cool movement. There's some page I found that
<v Speaker 1>is all about all about restoring that river because they
<v Speaker 1>kind of did in Monterey what they did in La
<v Speaker 1>you know, fifty years ago with the La River. They
<v Speaker 1>cemented it and turned it into a dish, which is
<v Speaker 1>just a shit for Brainwaight, I mean, come on, that's ridiculous.
<v Speaker 1>It's gonna you're gonna speed up the flow so fast,
<v Speaker 1>right that there's people who restoring the La River too.
<v Speaker 1>So people are correct the mistakes. Stuff can change, but
<v Speaker 1>you need to be part of that. You need to
<v Speaker 1>advocate for it. Okay, you need to really inject it
<v Speaker 1>into the popular consciousness. The traditional landscaping's horrible. It's it looks,
<v Speaker 1>it's fucking ridiculous, it's gaudy, it's not real. We want nature,
<v Speaker 1>We want what was real here. If we don't know
<v Speaker 1>what it is, we have to seek it out. We
<v Speaker 1>have to find out what did these plant communities look like?
<v Speaker 1>What is ecological secession? We have to realize it's not
<v Speaker 1>always static. There'd be a disturbance event and there'd be
<v Speaker 1>pioneer species. Then they would taper off as the secondary
<v Speaker 1>secessional species took over, and then they would taper off
<v Speaker 1>as the climax, the you know, the the climax species
<v Speaker 1>took over, right, the really cool shit, The stuff that's
<v Speaker 1>slower growing and can't take full sun and get you know,
<v Speaker 1>can't grow on a barren environment that's been recently cleared
<v Speaker 1>by a bulldozer, a landslide or a fire. What do
<v Speaker 1>these places look like? What was real? What is real
<v Speaker 1>where you live? What was there before? If there weren't houses,
<v Speaker 1>go back in time five hundre right, if at least
<v Speaker 1>if you're in North America, what was growing there before?
<v Speaker 1>Those things? Okay? And also might as well, while you're
<v Speaker 1>here to learn who was living there before? And I'm
<v Speaker 1>talking about like guilty, you know, self flagellating honky land acknowledgments,
<v Speaker 1>But who was there before? What was going on here?
<v Speaker 1>You know, curious about where you live? That's what I'm
<v Speaker 1>talking about, right, figure out what species were there? All right?
<v Speaker 1>Got the fucking land? Are people still doing land acknowledgments?
<v Speaker 1>That is a corneus shit? God damn it. I mean
<v Speaker 1>it's again, this is nothing to change. Putting pronouns and
<v Speaker 1>bios and land acknowledgment absolutely nothing to change the material
<v Speaker 1>conditions of anybody. In fact, they might have done more
<v Speaker 1>to reverse them, because it just alienated people that maybe
<v Speaker 1>weren't that smart and didn't understand it. And so now
<v Speaker 1>now they're voting for a fascist, which is what we have.
<v Speaker 1>And so we've got American cit Gate getting killed in
<v Speaker 1>the streets. Let's not get into it. I want to
<v Speaker 1>get into that. Okay, we're not. We don't get into that.
<v Speaker 1>Jesus Christ and I keep those do you have those
<v Speaker 1>rich college take over your You know it's not a
<v Speaker 1>good idea. I Dentity politics was not a good idea.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe it came from a good place for a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>But you know, once you reach you know, beyond the
<v Speaker 1>age of twenty years old, you gotta get a little
<v Speaker 1>bit more depth of the human experience. You realize it
<v Speaker 1>gets a little bit deeper than Okay, here we go.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, so anyway, so back to Caperson came. So
<v Speaker 1>I guess they're gonna go in. They're gonna take this
<v Speaker 1>thing out with a tree spade. Maybe you could put
<v Speaker 1>some super thrive in there. You know, it's like, what
<v Speaker 1>is that, like B vitamin super Thrive was like, it's
<v Speaker 1>like a like it's a liquid concentrate you mixed with
<v Speaker 1>water and you sprinkle it on the roots of something
<v Speaker 1>that you just a plant that you just stressed. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>it'll help. And of course if they dig this thing up.
<v Speaker 1>We used to talk about that when I was volunteering
<v Speaker 1>at San Francisco Botanic gart and a bunch. I wasn't
<v Speaker 1>volunteering so much. I never signed their formal waiver. I
<v Speaker 1>was more so just lurking around, and then Don and
<v Speaker 1>Diane and then kind of got the idea that I
<v Speaker 1>knew what I was doing, at least mildly, and just
<v Speaker 1>let me fuck around. I grew a ton of rare stuff,
<v Speaker 1>and I learned to lot about propagation there, which was great.
<v Speaker 1>And then ten years later some new they got some
<v Speaker 1>new head honcho who threw out all the interesting stuff
<v Speaker 1>and wanted to grow petunias and design backdrops for weddings
<v Speaker 1>and corporate events so they could rent out. They Oh,
<v Speaker 1>it's tragic. It was tragic what they did at San
<v Speaker 1>Francisco Botanical Guard. Maybe it's not like that anymore though,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, but it used to be a really
<v Speaker 1>great God. I had so much fucking fun there. It
<v Speaker 1>was so interesting. They had a cool library in the greenhouse,
<v Speaker 1>these rickety old greenhouses. I think they demolished them eight
<v Speaker 1>or nine years ago, rickety old greenhouses that had this
<v Speaker 1>smell to them. But it didn't smell bad. It was just,
<v Speaker 1>you know that we'd all get it. We'd all eat
<v Speaker 1>our burritos there on lunch break at the main table
<v Speaker 1>and talk like old people young people. You know. It
<v Speaker 1>was a fucking great part of my life. And I
<v Speaker 1>was just growing all these rare conifers. Got a bunch
<v Speaker 1>of stuff from New Caledonia rare era carriers. It was
<v Speaker 1>the same time I germinated a bunch of Fitzroya Cooper
<v Speaker 1>Sodi's seed somebody had sent me from Chile, which I
<v Speaker 1>guess was illegal under sighties, but whatever, who keeps a shit?
<v Speaker 1>It was pointless. You're not cutting down the tree, you're
<v Speaker 1>taking seeds to forexit do conservation. Mind blowing how counterintuitive
<v Speaker 1>sightis could be in some places, you know, just more paperwork.
<v Speaker 1>Well intentioned, but I certainly saw backlash against it. But
<v Speaker 1>then it's good because maybe, you know, maybe there's some
<v Speaker 1>lady coming over with a bunch of endangered frogs or
<v Speaker 1>some shit in a trench coat, you know, tortoises stuffed
<v Speaker 1>into roundies or something, and she's trying to sell them
<v Speaker 1>for the petrate. So maybe that's more what it's for.
<v Speaker 1>They should have made it exempt for plants, at least
<v Speaker 1>for seeds. Okay, I digress. Could you fit a tortoise
<v Speaker 1>in your under You couldn't fit a tortoise in your
<v Speaker 1>well maybe if they were some of those little tortoises.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. I saw the cutest fucking tortoise in
<v Speaker 1>South Africa, the parrot beak tortoise Homopus areolatus. God damn,
<v Speaker 1>it was a fucking adorable little bit, little bastard. I'm
<v Speaker 1>still working on videos, man. I got videos from exactly
<v Speaker 1>a year ago when I was in Chile that I'm
<v Speaker 1>just finally editing a lot of the high alpine stuff. Incredible.
<v Speaker 1>So many different plants. It's from seven thousand feet in
<v Speaker 1>central Chile. Take on the rosette leaf form, whether they're violets,
<v Speaker 1>violas like the rosolate violets, you know, rosette leaves like
<v Speaker 1>an ecaveria or a seatum or something looks like that, right,
<v Speaker 1>So many different families converge on this form. Really fascinating. Shit,
<v Speaker 1>I forgot how cool it was. I love doing it.
<v Speaker 1>But those videos have just been sitting on my phone
<v Speaker 1>the whole fucking time. I didn't work on them. Now
<v Speaker 1>I finally am like, I'm going Ecuador in a few days.
<v Speaker 1>I got a clear shit off my phone, got her
<v Speaker 1>three hundred d barium specimens to make labels four. I'm
<v Speaker 1>stressed out. I gotta go pick my kid up on
<v Speaker 1>a bike. She gets mad when I don't show up
<v Speaker 1>on the bike because I got this little bicycle. It's
<v Speaker 1>like a Tannem bicycle. She wants me to, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and uh so I bike over there. I think she
<v Speaker 1>just wants to show it off to her friends. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know, but it's either way, it's great. It's really fun.
<v Speaker 1>It's a wonderful time to bike too, because it's not
<v Speaker 1>one hundred degrees like it probably will be in two months.
<v Speaker 1>But it's you know. That's the other thing I wasn't
<v Speaker 1>used to is like the when I grew up, we
<v Speaker 1>walked to school, and in Texas, I guess it's a
<v Speaker 1>regular thing throughout much of Texas because it's such a
<v Speaker 1>car dependent state. It's so everyone's kind of such a
<v Speaker 1>slave to the automobile here, just because the way the
<v Speaker 1>infrastructure is built in cities at least. But I see
<v Speaker 1>these lines of cars, it looks like a fucking Bears
<v Speaker 1>game getting out. Man, it takes twenty minutes. These people
<v Speaker 1>wait in line twenty minutes to pick their kids up.
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy. Why don't they just park on a side streets,
<v Speaker 1>walk a block, and then go get their kids. That
<v Speaker 1>seems like it'd be so much easier, you know, because
<v Speaker 1>nobody wants to walk here. They hate it. You go
<v Speaker 1>to a fucking drive through coffee shop, there's like, you
<v Speaker 1>go to a coffee shop to drive through, gotta line
<v Speaker 1>at fifteen cars and you park and walk inside. There's
<v Speaker 1>no one. It's crazy get out the car. You got
<v Speaker 1>to convince people to get out the car, and you
<v Speaker 1>got to convince your ab willitas to start embracing the
<v Speaker 1>native plants around them. But again, that's the hard part
<v Speaker 1>we reentrough is where they actually encounter them because so
<v Speaker 1>much with that' spin destroyed. Thus comes the importance of
<v Speaker 1>the native plant movement and advocating for it. But there's
<v Speaker 1>always that one species that's gonna be a hook. Right,
<v Speaker 1>my friend Willie was talking about, you know, this redneck
<v Speaker 1>guy he's friends with wasn't in the natives at all.
<v Speaker 1>He was like doing landscaping stuff. He's playing all this
<v Speaker 1>horticultural shit, garbage that needs you know, irrigation and gets
<v Speaker 1>sick and dies because it's not from here and whatever,
<v Speaker 1>or it just takes over because it's invasive. And uh,
<v Speaker 1>the guy couldn't get into the native thing. He didn't
<v Speaker 1>really care. And then he saw Salvia DARCIAI and he
<v Speaker 1>was like, goddamn, he loved it. The guy loves hummingbirds.
<v Speaker 1>This redneck loves humming birds. I fucking love that. I
<v Speaker 1>love that, right, loves hummingbirds and so, and he saw
<v Speaker 1>that these hummingbirds were actually going absolutely eight ape shit
<v Speaker 1>for Salvia DARCIAI. So then he started getting more aut
<v Speaker 1>Salvia darcia I was wanted to plant them. He just
<v Speaker 1>fucking planted plant. It's hard to not like Salvia DARCIAI.
<v Speaker 1>I was so stoked to have seen that in the
<v Speaker 1>wild in uh Waeva leone or now it's what are
<v Speaker 1>they gonna call it? Salvia Schafner. I know there's some
<v Speaker 1>guy I've been uh communicating with an I naturalist Mexican
<v Speaker 1>bonus that studies Salvi, A great fucking guy. Forget his name,
<v Speaker 1>but he was telling me he's he I go to
<v Speaker 1>him for all my lamy aces stuff. And there's still plants.
<v Speaker 1>I have no clue what the fuck I saw when
<v Speaker 1>I was in Hidalgo uh last month. We started off
<v Speaker 1>in San Luis Poto C, went through Hidalgo, Carrectro and
<v Speaker 1>uh and in Wahaka. But I did see Vaccalinia australis,
<v Speaker 1>a shrub in the rose sea which was grown with
<v Speaker 1>fucking Fukiria purpussii and Pakassiri's WEBERI incredible man, goddamn Wahaka
<v Speaker 1>is so nice. What a fucking amazing state and city.
<v Speaker 1>But anyway, you gotta if you live in Oahaka, you
<v Speaker 1>gotta commiss your belief to embrace the native plants there.
<v Speaker 1>You know, they really and they need to label some
<v Speaker 1>of those goddamn plants at the Ethno Botanic Garden there,
<v Speaker 1>which they give this kind of like limptic excuse as
<v Speaker 1>to why they don't do it. They're like, oh, it
<v Speaker 1>it kills They're like, what they're saying is we don't
<v Speaker 1>label the plants here. I've got incredible stuff. It's all native.
<v Speaker 1>They say, we don't label the plants here because it
<v Speaker 1>kills the magic. The fuck No, that's not why. No,
<v Speaker 1>it's like, it's a wonderful spot. You get a chance
<v Speaker 1>to go there, it's a wonderful spot. You're gonna get
<v Speaker 1>followed by a bouncer on this tour. You have to
<v Speaker 1>do a paid tour and they got a bouncer that
<v Speaker 1>follows you. But whatever, it's worth it. The pain the
<v Speaker 1>tour is not that bad. But the bouncer that follows you,
<v Speaker 1>and the fact that no one there knows what any
<v Speaker 1>of the genus and species names out of the plants
<v Speaker 1>gets frustrating unless you look out and you got a
<v Speaker 1>dope tour guy. But the tour guide I had didn't
<v Speaker 1>know it. So anyway, okay, I want to speak at
<v Speaker 1>a high school Friday after my meeting with the city,
<v Speaker 1>which was depressing. It seemed like they were almost intimidated
<v Speaker 1>by me. They didn't have much to say. They're probably
<v Speaker 1>still going to try and annihilate my yard and fuck
<v Speaker 1>with me over any other CO violations they can find.
<v Speaker 1>But I was very kind and did the code switching.
<v Speaker 1>Think was very nice, and I just want them to start.
<v Speaker 1>Some of them were actually really cool, but some just
<v Speaker 1>seemed totally out to lunch, not listening at all, so
<v Speaker 1>that was kind of depressing. I had Ken King and
<v Speaker 1>a couple other people from the Native plant the movement
<v Speaker 1>down here with me, and and so that kind that
<v Speaker 1>was good because they had like eight people at this meeting,
<v Speaker 1>which was not like eight people from the city at
<v Speaker 1>this meeting to meet with me, which was hilarious. It
<v Speaker 1>was like Jesus, really, it's like you got to bring
<v Speaker 1>this much muscle. So I left and I went and spoke.
<v Speaker 1>I got invited to speak at a junior high and
<v Speaker 1>the kids were fucking dope, but was the great. It's
<v Speaker 1>always nice talking to kids, you know, especially like you know,
<v Speaker 1>they were all really nice this one. I was surprised
<v Speaker 1>one kid actually knew the age of the universe. I
<v Speaker 1>was like, how old is planet Earth? Can you tell me?
<v Speaker 1>And he said thirteen billion years? But I was like, Okay, well,
<v Speaker 1>I know what you're talking about. You're talking about the
<v Speaker 1>age of the universe at least or the galaxy. Excuse me,
<v Speaker 1>was it galaxy universe? I don't know anyway, but you've
<v Speaker 1>obviously been reading up, which was cool. And so I
<v Speaker 1>just ranted to them for twenty or thirty minutes, no
<v Speaker 1>cursing whatsoever about plants and native plants and you know,
<v Speaker 1>why don't we have more? And do you guys know
<v Speaker 1>what the native plants there are? Can anybody name a
<v Speaker 1>single native plant that grows here? And none of them could.
<v Speaker 1>It was really sad. But then I showed them how
<v Speaker 1>to use my naturalist and the teacher was really cool
<v Speaker 1>for inviting me. Some Cajonis man seriously to invite me
<v Speaker 1>to a junior high right. I think a lot of
<v Speaker 1>people down here look at me and they're scared of me,
<v Speaker 1>or they think I'm some I don't know, because you know,
<v Speaker 1>the look for down here is like tucked in shirt
<v Speaker 1>and very you know what I mean, eric can be
<v Speaker 1>and I think I just I defy the stereotypes. So
<v Speaker 1>I freaked people out, and I got fucking neck tattoos
<v Speaker 1>and hand tattoos whatever, and I don't know, I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>Tattoos shouldn't be a point of contention. It's fucking twenty
<v Speaker 1>twenty five, twenty six now, but you know, but still,
<v Speaker 1>I guess whatever. You get what I'm saying. It's a
<v Speaker 1>very high and tight clenched area at times. So I
<v Speaker 1>went through this speak to this high school, went really cool,
<v Speaker 1>went great. The kids seemed genuinely interested. They you know,
<v Speaker 1>they were actually watching me as I spoke. And then
<v Speaker 1>as I was leaving and the teacher was walking out,
<v Speaker 1>you know this. The whole high school is like the
<v Speaker 1>Soviet block style, very bleak architectural style. And we walked
<v Speaker 1>and there's no trees anywhere except a couple dying phracsinists,
<v Speaker 1>which again need arroyos to grow. They need arroyos or
<v Speaker 1>constant irrigation. They're not ideal trees for this. This campus
<v Speaker 1>should have mis guts or polo verdes all over it,
<v Speaker 1>but it doesn't or Ebony's even better, Ebony's can be
<v Speaker 1>really drought tellers. So the teacher then points to an
<v Speaker 1>oak tree and she says, look, that's that's like the
<v Speaker 1>one of the few trees we had here, and they
<v Speaker 1>just hacked it, like eighty percent of it back. And
<v Speaker 1>I asked the principle why he did it, and he
<v Speaker 1>said because it was messy, which is something you always
<v Speaker 1>hear down here. It's messy. It's so messy. The plants
<v Speaker 1>are messy. Okay, Well, have you heard of a broom?
<v Speaker 1>You just go out out there and you sweep every
<v Speaker 1>once in a while. It's not that bad. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>what is the issue here with this? Are you are
<v Speaker 1>you handy capable or something? Are you not able to?
<v Speaker 1>Is it what's impeding you from just sweep? Because it
<v Speaker 1>takes about three minutes to do this. What's the problem? Right,
<v Speaker 1>So instead of doing with the mess and instead of
<v Speaker 1>realizing the benefits that trees provide, like absorption of water
<v Speaker 1>and infiltration of water into the ground with thus reducing
<v Speaker 1>flooding or keeping the sun from warming the ground and
<v Speaker 1>the concrete that surrounds it and thus creating a heat
<v Speaker 1>island because it takes upwards of fourteen hours for asphalt
<v Speaker 1>it's at one hundred and forty five degrees fahrenheit to
<v Speaker 1>finally cool off within ten degrees fahrenheit of the ambient temperature.
<v Speaker 1>And as you know, summer nights are nowhere near that long.
<v Speaker 1>So then that effect built up over many weeks, is
<v Speaker 1>that you've created a heat island in a giant space
<v Speaker 1>here that's fifteen degrees hotter than it would otherwise be,
<v Speaker 1>thus making it more miserable for people. Right, instead of
<v Speaker 1>realizing that, oh, sweeping is just a small price to
<v Speaker 1>pay for the many benefits vite about his tree, Well,
<v Speaker 1>let's just cut it back, right, and we're not going
<v Speaker 1>to cut it down because people might actually complain about that,
<v Speaker 1>so we're just gonna cut it back. Well, that's this
<v Speaker 1>kind kind of shit that you got to be loud about, right,
<v Speaker 1>nice but loud. Let's not do this. This doesn't make
<v Speaker 1>sense and point out why and talk about how it's
<v Speaker 1>affecting everyone. It bums everybody out, you know, And if
<v Speaker 1>people aren't bummed out, then they need to be and
<v Speaker 1>you need to bum them out. You need to bum
<v Speaker 1>them out about it. Oh, just don't don't don't make
<v Speaker 1>any wave, just bake, keep your head down, smile, don't
<v Speaker 1>bake any waves. Oh God, anyway, how'd they work out
<v Speaker 1>for the housewives in nineteen fifties? They didn't leave to
<v Speaker 1>do a bunch of mental health issues, right, keep your
<v Speaker 1>mouth shut and just avoid conflict at any cost, avoid
<v Speaker 1>anything that might be unpleasant. God, that's not a healthy
<v Speaker 1>way to do things. So anyway, But yeah, so that
<v Speaker 1>was kind of a I mean, that was testament to it.
<v Speaker 1>And you see that everywhere, at least down here, you know,
<v Speaker 1>the health strip, the strip between the sidewalk and the
<v Speaker 1>street completely barren, just the giant heat island, just so
<v Speaker 1>few trees everywhere. It's crazy. So you can change advocate
<v Speaker 1>for it. I also, I went to go visit a
<v Speaker 1>friend of mine at his house and he works for
<v Speaker 1>the Highway Department here and they're building a new road
<v Speaker 1>around Rio Grande City, which has resulted in a lot
<v Speaker 1>of destruction of plants. And he luckily was able to
<v Speaker 1>save like he had like thirty more tonias that he
<v Speaker 1>had dug up. And when you dig him up, you
<v Speaker 1>got to cut back eighty percent of the top because
<v Speaker 1>you're disturbing the roots. You're destroying the roots. Right, the
<v Speaker 1>roots are doing most of the absorption through the distal
<v Speaker 1>five percent of the end of the root, because that's
<v Speaker 1>where the root hairs are. Right, most of the root
<v Speaker 1>is just transporting water. It's only the tips that have
<v Speaker 1>the root hairs on them. For most plants with agaves,
<v Speaker 1>that might be a little bit different. And you look
<v Speaker 1>at a gave roots under a microscope, they've got hairs
<v Speaker 1>and little projections around the whole thing. But you know,
<v Speaker 1>a guylways have to they are desert plants, so they
<v Speaker 1>have to absorb water as quickly as possible make use
<v Speaker 1>of that sparse rain that they're getting. But but he
<v Speaker 1>had dug up these mortonias, and Mortonia is in the
<v Speaker 1>family Cellistracy, which, uh, what what order is cellistracy? And
<v Speaker 1>I should know this, but I don't. Oh, it's in
<v Speaker 1>the order cell Australis. Okay, that's not family cellistracy order
<v Speaker 1>cell Australis. Uh. Celeustrace is one of two families in
<v Speaker 1>Cel Australis. Celeus Tracey is one of two families in
<v Speaker 1>cel Australia's, the other being Lepido boutriacei. Where the shit
<v Speaker 1>is that? Where is Lepido boutriace It's a family of
<v Speaker 1>two genera Lepido boutrous and a Reptilio carpon, which are
<v Speaker 1>both tropical genera. Oh beautiful, bark on it. Oh it's
<v Speaker 1>got the like red Flowum. It looks like a red cambium.
<v Speaker 1>I think celistraci has orange red cambium as well. I'm
<v Speaker 1>not sure anyway, Yeah, Mortonia, So Mortonia, you get Mortonia
<v Speaker 1>utai insis in the Mojave Desert, Mortonias and perviians in
<v Speaker 1>West Texas, Mortonia scabrella in New Mexico and Northwest Texas.
<v Speaker 1>It's a really wonderful genus. The leaves look really cool
<v Speaker 1>on it. Their imbercate kind of like snake scales or
<v Speaker 1>roofing shingles. They kind of point upwards. They tend to
<v Speaker 1>on most of the species. But Mortonia gregory is the
<v Speaker 1>one we get done here, and it's more common in
<v Speaker 1>Mexico and especially in the Sierra Madre where it grows
<v Speaker 1>out of rock walls and it'll be growing with a gave.
<v Speaker 1>Sorry it was a phone call anyway. So Mortonia Gregory,
<v Speaker 1>I there will be growing with a gave albo palosa
<v Speaker 1>growing out of rock walls. And here where you see
<v Speaker 1>it growing in South Texas, it's normally growing in very
<v Speaker 1>rocky areas, often on these these little cerro's, these little zartos,
<v Speaker 1>these little hills composed of rocky conglomerate, you know, rocks
<v Speaker 1>that were transported by the ancestral Rio grand however many
<v Speaker 1>millions of years ago, and then cemented, deposited and then
<v Speaker 1>cemented with caliche into what formation is it is? It's
<v Speaker 1>not the catahula, it's the Goliad formation, the Goliad gravels,
<v Speaker 1>and so you'll see moretonia grow in there. It's a
<v Speaker 1>really rare planet. It needs to be planted more in cultivation.
<v Speaker 1>It's fucking dope. It's incredible. So he was able to
<v Speaker 1>save many of them, but there's you know, we're we're
<v Speaker 1>witnessing a lot of destruction down here. So it makes,
<v Speaker 1>you know, it all the more imperative in a state
<v Speaker 1>that's ninety six percent privately owned, it makes it all
<v Speaker 1>the more imperative to grow things, to grow them as
<v Speaker 1>much as possible and get them out there and expose
<v Speaker 1>people to them. Whether it's even if it's in the
<v Speaker 1>landscaping of like a bleak shopping center or especially better yet,
<v Speaker 1>your front yard, and it's you know, I know this
<v Speaker 1>is this is specific to South Texas, but it's the
<v Speaker 1>same for wherever you are, right especially if you're on
<v Speaker 1>the East Coast, because so much habitat has been cleared
<v Speaker 1>in the East Coast compared to the west, because that's
<v Speaker 1>where the settlers landed first, and where this mentown that
<v Speaker 1>just annihilates and gobbles up land, uh with no with
<v Speaker 1>very little regard for the living world on it. That's
<v Speaker 1>where the that's where it landed first. Right until we
<v Speaker 1>update the system, the culture, which hopefully we can do,
<v Speaker 1>you know. Uh, that's that's the status we're living on
<v Speaker 1>right now. Right till you get you get respect and
<v Speaker 1>reverence for these things. That's where we're at right now.
<v Speaker 1>Everything's threatened. Anyway. On a lighter note, I was walking
<v Speaker 1>to the pizzeria and there my house, me and Louis
<v Speaker 1>were my dog, my other dog, the one that's not
<v Speaker 1>faked his own death. Okay, Jack, you know, Jack faked
<v Speaker 1>his death. He pretended like he was gonna die. He
<v Speaker 1>wasn't eating, drinking, or walking for two days. I had
<v Speaker 1>to carry him outside the piss. Suddenly he started eating
<v Speaker 1>hot dogs against Sunday night. What the fuck? You know,
<v Speaker 1>right when I was sitting there crying with them on Sunday,
<v Speaker 1>telling him how much I loved them, how grateful I was,
<v Speaker 1>and then you know, and then that he just comes
<v Speaker 1>with what he's making me look like an asshole anyway.
<v Speaker 1>Uh so we already went through that. So I'm walking
<v Speaker 1>to the pizzeria to just get a slice, just really quick,
<v Speaker 1>and this this car. You know, the drivers and the
<v Speaker 1>drivers in Texas are terrible, but in South Texas especially,
<v Speaker 1>like they're just aggressive. In all of Texas, they're aggressive.
<v Speaker 1>They ride your ass. They drive these giant, jacked up trucks,
<v Speaker 1>which sometimes they need, which I totally get. But most
<v Speaker 1>of the time these things are just parking a lot princesses.
<v Speaker 1>They have not a single scratch on them, right, they're
<v Speaker 1>like excellent paint job. Not you know, they really it's
<v Speaker 1>it's just you know, like a dick measuring contest, which
<v Speaker 1>is kind of cute. It's kind of funny. It's like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>you didn't get enough love from your father, so you
<v Speaker 1>got it, okay, anyway, not let him offending people out there.
<v Speaker 1>But whatever the reason. So the cars are coming at me,
<v Speaker 1>I'm crossing the street, and I do that thing that
<v Speaker 1>you see in Chicago, especially in black neighborhoods, and I
<v Speaker 1>fucking love it. Where there's like West or South Side,
<v Speaker 1>you're crossing the streets, some dude jaywalks and then when
<v Speaker 1>he sees it you're not slowing down, he intentionally slows down.
<v Speaker 1>And I fucking do this one hundred percent. It's where
<v Speaker 1>do you think I learned it? And he's and he
<v Speaker 1>then he gets like a fucking swagger in his step,
<v Speaker 1>like he says, Shane slowing down as he crosses the street,
<v Speaker 1>looking right at you, and his eyes just say go ahead,
<v Speaker 1>hit me, motherfucker. You know, like he wants you to
<v Speaker 1>hit him. So that's what I do here because people
<v Speaker 1>don't slow down. And you know, normally you look and
<v Speaker 1>it's like some three hundred pound woman no offense, uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, driving you know, texting and like eating something
<v Speaker 1>while she's driving, and then she gets a upset that
<v Speaker 1>you're in the middle of the road even if you've
<v Speaker 1>you know, even if there's a red light like one
<v Speaker 1>hundred yards down like she's going to be stopping a
<v Speaker 1>red light anyway. You know. He's a Texas thing and so,
<v Speaker 1>and I've just gotten accustom to it. And so I'm
<v Speaker 1>crossing the street and it's this car honks at me.
<v Speaker 1>And I didn't do anything, luckily, because then as a
<v Speaker 1>car passes by, you know, I'm doing that thing that
<v Speaker 1>the dudes on the western south side of Chicago do
<v Speaker 1>when you look at the people, like I look at
<v Speaker 1>them to make sure they see me, and also to
<v Speaker 1>see that I don't care if they hit me, because
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna fuck up their car. If they hit me,
<v Speaker 1>you hit me, I'm taking I'm definitely taking out a headlight.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm gonna you're gonna have to get a new windshield.
<v Speaker 1>I'll make absolutely sure, right, I'll make sure I get
<v Speaker 1>it and give it an elbow. I don't care about
<v Speaker 1>a fracture. I'm gonna fuck up your car, you know.
<v Speaker 1>So this dude Hanks, and I look, but he doesn't
<v Speaker 1>look angry. I can like see through the tinted glass.
<v Speaker 1>And then as he passes me, he rolls down his
<v Speaker 1>window and he goes, I can't wait for your book, man,
<v Speaker 1>you know, And I'm like oh that's not go right on, man.
<v Speaker 1>And he looks he's like he's like a he's like
<v Speaker 1>a fat dude in a mini van, looks like your
<v Speaker 1>average Chicago Bears fan. And the amount of pride, and
<v Speaker 1>he's wearing a hat. You know, it just looks like
<v Speaker 1>some some working class slub like me. And the amount
<v Speaker 1>of pride I felt at that being my fan base
<v Speaker 1>was overwhelming. You know. I wanted to go give that
<v Speaker 1>guy a hug. I was like, fuck, yes, thank you,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and it's at THEIRS fan base, the crime
<v Speaker 1>Pace fan base, you know, and it's and I'm glad
<v Speaker 1>that I have that those dudes. You know, I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if he works as an electrician or something or
<v Speaker 1>if what. I don't know what his deal is, but
<v Speaker 1>to that, sir, I will buy you. I owe you
<v Speaker 1>a slice. I should have gotten a slice of pizza
<v Speaker 1>for him. If if he was pulling into like the
<v Speaker 1>payday loan place that's next to the pizza spot, I
<v Speaker 1>would have gotten him a fucking slice. So would have
<v Speaker 1>been like, hey, brother, you know so uh. You know,
<v Speaker 1>there's college kids and stuff to follow this too, and
<v Speaker 1>teachers and stuff, but you know, there's certainly It's funny.
<v Speaker 1>I can trust the the demographics of people that I've seen,
<v Speaker 1>you know, right me or just on the street, say
<v Speaker 1>I love what you do, and then I can and
<v Speaker 1>that they always make me feel good, like just knowing
<v Speaker 1>who they are, you know, because it's it's I approve
<v Speaker 1>if I can be so judgmental, whereas the people that
<v Speaker 1>it's always the people that say they have a problem
<v Speaker 1>with me or they don't like it's always a certain
<v Speaker 1>I can fit. I know exactly what kind of person
<v Speaker 1>it's gonna be, all right, And I'm only being partially hyperbolic,
<v Speaker 1>partially exaggerative when I say that it's gonna be you know,
<v Speaker 1>the stiffs. Someone's kind of apprude, kind of a you know,
<v Speaker 1>it makes that the face, you know the face people
<v Speaker 1>that are really happy, you know that face they make,
<v Speaker 1>but m like they're squinting, like they just ate a
<v Speaker 1>turd or like they were eating a doughnut. And then
<v Speaker 1>there was like a they found bird shit or like
<v Speaker 1>a pube on it, like something like that, you know
<v Speaker 1>what I mean, MM, like that kind of you know
<v Speaker 1>what I mean, You're generally Anglo, right, not always, but
<v Speaker 1>generally generally generally from a wealthier background. Right, I'm pigeonholing here.
<v Speaker 1>Take it with a great as salt. But I know
<v Speaker 1>who it's gonna be. Mmh. You know what I mean?
<v Speaker 1>The people who are gonna call me problematic or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>He's yeah, he's he said he was called someone fatter.
<v Speaker 1>He said the R word, you know, something like that.
<v Speaker 1>That's it's always gonna be that that. It's always gonna
<v Speaker 1>be that person. I know who it's gonna be. So
<v Speaker 1>when I've got the demographic of people that don't like
<v Speaker 1>crime pays and the people that i'mographic people that are
<v Speaker 1>fucking stoked on it, and I'm I will say I'm
<v Speaker 1>content with who those like. It's it's rarely someone that
<v Speaker 1>I actually on the surface, I'm looking at superficial features
<v Speaker 1>and traits. It's it's rarely someone that I respect, that
<v Speaker 1>that hates what I do. What I do. It's always like,
<v Speaker 1>oh yeah, of course, I say, yeah, oh that person
<v Speaker 1>hates me. Yeah, of course, you know. I saw that.
<v Speaker 1>It's you know, or the page, because I try it
<v Speaker 1>to take it personally. It's not about me. It's about
<v Speaker 1>the page. It's about me sometimes, Right with those rich
<v Speaker 1>college kids with the check group, they got a fucking
<v Speaker 1>you know, they don't look very happy. It's always that's
<v Speaker 1>like a perfect demograt. That's that's who, That's exactly who
<v Speaker 1>I You know, those are the people that it wasn't
<v Speaker 1>meant to be. I could guarantee you pigeonhole in here,
<v Speaker 1>pigeonhole on right. I hope they get therapy. Those the
<v Speaker 1>college kids with the check group. Anyway, they're rich kids
<v Speaker 1>with the check group. Not not all of them are
<v Speaker 1>in college, but anyway, so I felt good. The thing
<v Speaker 1>that's an important point to note, and this is something
<v Speaker 1>I want to start doing more, is uh because people
<v Speaker 1>are always asking me what the plant like, people that
<v Speaker 1>have no idea about this, like I want to kill
<v Speaker 1>I want to kill my lawn. I don't know what
<v Speaker 1>to put in. And I always say, pick five plants
<v Speaker 1>right to five pioneer species. The pioneer species is going
<v Speaker 1>to be the easiest things to grow, right. The things
<v Speaker 1>that they get established after disturbance, they can be weedy,
<v Speaker 1>especially if they get to other contents. They can be weedy,
<v Speaker 1>like golden rod, very important pioneer species in the Midwest
<v Speaker 1>and more temperate latitudes Midwest East Coast. But when they
<v Speaker 1>get when that genus gets Solidago and that genus gets
<v Speaker 1>to Europe, it can be very very problematic. So you know,
<v Speaker 1>to find the pioneer species and and just listed like
<v Speaker 1>fives like here in the in South Texas, I give
<v Speaker 1>I have like a list of like I've got I
<v Speaker 1>love using everything, but five sturdy shrubs that I recommend
<v Speaker 1>the people. And if I was in you know, the
<v Speaker 1>tall grass prairie area regions, I would it would be
<v Speaker 1>five you know, fast growing, relatively long lived or bacious
<v Speaker 1>pregnice not long lived. I guess I shouldn't say that
<v Speaker 1>Sylphium can Sylphium terriment, that nacium can last a century
<v Speaker 1>or so, but but I would, you know, I would.
<v Speaker 1>I've got my five plants. I recommend the people. If
<v Speaker 1>you don't know what you're doing, just get plugs of
<v Speaker 1>these five plants. And you know, in Illinois, and then
<v Speaker 1>the same thing for South Texas. Like for South Texas,
<v Speaker 1>it's uh Lucophylum protestants Sydneya tenuifolia aka skeleton leaf one
<v Speaker 1>hundred percent uh Cythererexylum. Though cythereexlum is like an Eastern
<v Speaker 1>Rio Grand Valley species. It tends to like a little
<v Speaker 1>bit more humidity. It doesn't do so well in drier areas.
<v Speaker 1>There's a cythereexylum that does better in UH. In drier
<v Speaker 1>areas of like Star County, it's got reduced leaves and
<v Speaker 1>flowers sizes. Trixis Inula or californica, because if you get
<v Speaker 1>up towards Laredo you get more Trixis californica, and we
<v Speaker 1>got TRIX's Californica at thornscrub. Actually it's like a weird
<v Speaker 1>intergrade between Ula, the broader leaved species adapted to more humidity,
<v Speaker 1>and then Trixis uh Trixis californica. Trixis, of course ascerace.
<v Speaker 1>It's a mutissioid, the Mutisicioe subfamily fucking dope genus Trixis
<v Speaker 1>Californica grows in the Mojave desert too. It's got a
<v Speaker 1>broad range. And then you get into you know tom
<v Speaker 1>Alipis noble own, you get the Trixis Inula East Texas,
<v Speaker 1>East Southeast Texas Trixis inenula as well. So Trixis Inula
<v Speaker 1>cid the Rexalum Lucophylum protestants aka Siniso skeleton leaf aka
<v Speaker 1>Sydney at Tenuafolia isisen Hardia Texana. That's a fucking solid one.
<v Speaker 1>It smells incredible, can get ten feet tall. But you know,
<v Speaker 1>you tell people get these perennials established because especially in
<v Speaker 1>terms of shielding heat from hitting the ground, that's going
<v Speaker 1>to be really important. And then also the pollinator benefit.
<v Speaker 1>You want to get all the cool bugs in their
<v Speaker 1>beneficial insects. That's what you know, that's what you've got
<v Speaker 1>a plant. Sidniso does it. I don't see too many
<v Speaker 1>things pollinating Siniso lucophiling for testins family scrow fularyac. But
<v Speaker 1>but Sidney attendu Afolia definitely. You know, I'm sure there's
<v Speaker 1>a lot of stuff that pollinates luco filing for testants.
<v Speaker 1>I just maybe I just don't know about it. That's
<v Speaker 1>just more of like a really sturdy, fast growing cover.
<v Speaker 1>It's important for shade. They looked ope, they got silvery leaves, right,
<v Speaker 1>So find that in your region. And if you find
<v Speaker 1>that in your region, do me a favor and email
<v Speaker 1>me five six, seven plants whatever that are really easy
<v Speaker 1>to get established and very important to grow after somebody
<v Speaker 1>kills their lawn for the purposes strictly of you know
<v Speaker 1>long killing you having a native plant card, and then
<v Speaker 1>I will put those up on the website for every
<v Speaker 1>different region of the United States. Okay, keep the email
<v Speaker 1>short if you can't, because I'm probably not going to
<v Speaker 1>read them. No offense. I just I have too much
<v Speaker 1>shit to do. And I'm fucking sick again too. I
<v Speaker 1>got sick, I got I got It's weird. I just
<v Speaker 1>have like it's like a head cold. I've been taking
<v Speaker 1>those those Chinese tablets to it's like a compressed pill
<v Speaker 1>or compressed plants, like herbal Chinese Erbo medicine. Lily recommended
<v Speaker 1>it to me, and then I I wasn't going to uh.
<v Speaker 1>I was kind of making fun of him, like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>it's a placebo. But then I was like, fuck it whatever,
<v Speaker 1>I'll take them. And they actually they actually seem to work,
<v Speaker 1>so they've held it off. But I still feel pretty
<v Speaker 1>fucked up. And I had a sore throat last night,
<v Speaker 1>and I just feel that stuffy head feeling where you
<v Speaker 1>feel like you're on bad acid or something, you know,
<v Speaker 1>where you just like your head or like cough syrup.
<v Speaker 1>I get the same thing when I take coughsp it
<v Speaker 1>feels terrible. So figure out what those five or six
<v Speaker 1>species are, right, and then tell other people too. Right,
<v Speaker 1>So once, some for the Northeast, like some of the
<v Speaker 1>Sympio trichoms, some for the Southeast, some for the central
<v Speaker 1>East coast eastern seaboards, some for Appalachia, some for Ozark Plateau,
<v Speaker 1>some for the some for the dryer grasslands, some for
<v Speaker 1>Colorado and the rocky mountain areas or foothills of the Rockies.
<v Speaker 1>Some for the Pacific Northwest, you know, coastal California. Backris
<v Speaker 1>pillolarius would be there. Of course, coyote bush backers neglected,
<v Speaker 1>don't forget that. For Central Texas poverty weed, whatever the
<v Speaker 1>stupid common name is for you know, south southwestern the
<v Speaker 1>southwest areas from you know, the high deserts in New
<v Speaker 1>Mexico to the lower deserts of Tucson, Arizona, to the
<v Speaker 1>Mojave Desert areas of southeastern California, to the La Chaparral
<v Speaker 1>La and San Diego Chaparral. Russ probably right rous, integrafolio maloes, malorhina.
<v Speaker 1>Those are important shrubs. But the shrubs are really important.
<v Speaker 1>Shrubs are really really important. It's it's like a blanket
<v Speaker 1>that protects the ground from getting baked to ship by
<v Speaker 1>the sun and provides ample pollinator benefit and his host
<v Speaker 1>plant for numerous things. That's the things. You know, what
<v Speaker 1>you if it's a native insect, you want your plant
<v Speaker 1>to get eaten. You want the leaves to get eaten.
<v Speaker 1>And we got Texas leaf cutters here and I was
<v Speaker 1>stoked to see they were taking leaves off a tepe wai.
<v Speaker 1>They totally denuded it. But it'll bounce back. It's like
<v Speaker 1>a fifteen foot tall tree. It'll be fine. You know.
<v Speaker 1>I enjoy watching the little fuckers right the feeding, you know,
<v Speaker 1>cutting the leaves off, feeding, the feeding the leaves to
<v Speaker 1>the fungus in the ground. In other news, I was
<v Speaker 1>at Thorn Scrub a couple of days ago, and yeah, man,
<v Speaker 1>the pigs are just We got like a pig couple
<v Speaker 1>living on the south and we have to we have
<v Speaker 1>to take him out some hot they're not going in
<v Speaker 1>the trap. Willy helped me. My friend Willy helped me
<v Speaker 1>bring a trap down there that we got and they're
<v Speaker 1>not going in it. So it's just it's a pain
<v Speaker 1>in the ass. It's I don't know how they know,
<v Speaker 1>you know, because I don't know if they've seen a
<v Speaker 1>trap before or what. But we're probably gonna have to
<v Speaker 1>get hunters with thermal scopes, which people want to do,
<v Speaker 1>but it's just it's hit or miss. You might be
<v Speaker 1>waiting all night, you might be waiting for three days,
<v Speaker 1>who knows if they're gonna come by or not. But
<v Speaker 1>that's what you gotta do. You gotta you gotta kill
<v Speaker 1>the pigs. Thermal scopes and and you know, good strong rifles, right,
<v Speaker 1>you could kill AR fifteen would work if you could
<v Speaker 1>put a nice scope on it. Right, that's like a
<v Speaker 1>AR fifteen from what I understand from my limited firearm knowledge. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>they're like the be all rifle. They're just like the
<v Speaker 1>general multi tool rifle. Right you can you can use
<v Speaker 1>them for hunting. They just you know, uh, you can
<v Speaker 1>also use some brother terrible ship too. But uh, but uh,
<v Speaker 1>you know, when I was getting or because for killing pigs,
<v Speaker 1>AR fifteen's or that'll work. That's good. I mean, I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure like pro hunters could recommend a better rifle, like
<v Speaker 1>a more accurate long range but but the but they
<v Speaker 1>work for me, They work for me. And again, this
<v Speaker 1>pig thing was like completely new to me until a
<v Speaker 1>few years ago until I realized the damage they do.
<v Speaker 1>Mammalarias spherica especially is basically wiped out from the land.
<v Speaker 1>It's a it's a really cool clumping cactus with yellow spines,
<v Speaker 1>and it forms heads just like peyote, but it doesn't
<v Speaker 1>and it forms a big tap root just like paeoti,
<v Speaker 1>but it doesn't have that all the alkaloids in it.
<v Speaker 1>So it's you know, because the pigs will destroy payoti,
<v Speaker 1>but they'll they'll uproot it and kind of take a
<v Speaker 1>bite and realize it tastes bad and then leave it.
<v Speaker 1>But the Mammalaria spherica they've just totally destroyed. And it's
<v Speaker 1>such a it's such a wonderful species, man, especially when
<v Speaker 1>it's lit up, you know, when it's blooming like big
<v Speaker 1>yellow flowers the size of golf balls, and it'll be
<v Speaker 1>covering the whole thing. You can't even see the tubercles
<v Speaker 1>of the plant. Some of them get some of the
<v Speaker 1>clumps I've seen get upwards of like a summer foot across.
<v Speaker 1>But nobody grows it. That's an nothing. Nobody grows. You know.
<v Speaker 1>You could have such dope native cactus gardens down here,
<v Speaker 1>but nobody even like the cactus and succulent people down here.
<v Speaker 1>They don't grow. They don't really grow. Many of the natives.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe you'll see a horse crippler homolo cephalith text on it,
<v Speaker 1>but you don't see any of the Rio grand Rio
<v Speaker 1>Grand valley barrows like Hamado cactus hamatacanthus, which has both
<v Speaker 1>an East uh you know, or South Texas and West
<v Speaker 1>Texas ecotype. The West Texas ecotype looks totally wild, totally different,
<v Speaker 1>much longer were curved spines. But uh, you know, you
<v Speaker 1>like the there's cactus nurseries around they all sell like
<v Speaker 1>South American stuff. It's so bizarre. There's just everywhere you
<v Speaker 1>go in the world there's such a hesitancy to embrace
<v Speaker 1>the natives, which is for me that's so interesting. Like
<v Speaker 1>I don't watch something that evolved in Uruguay. Is if
<v Speaker 1>I lived in Uruguay, I would want that. That's cool,
<v Speaker 1>there's a context there. What the fuck am I going
<v Speaker 1>to do with it here? Right? Not only is it
<v Speaker 1>probably not the best adapted for here because it didn't
<v Speaker 1>evolve here, but I want the shit that's native. I
<v Speaker 1>want context, you know, that's that's really about what all
<v Speaker 1>of what it is. And I talk about that in
<v Speaker 1>concrete botany. I want the context for this place that's
<v Speaker 1>specific to this place. I want the plants that were
<v Speaker 1>made by this place, by this region. And there's so
<v Speaker 1>many cool ones here. You know. The Coraphantha macro maris
<v Speaker 1>roun yonii. That's another one nobody grows. Absolutely. You could
<v Speaker 1>find mounds of that four feet across and when they
<v Speaker 1>when they bloom, they're just fucking lit up. It's so
<v Speaker 1>so crazy, man. So But I've got a little native
<v Speaker 1>cactus garden in my front yard. It's a lot of
<v Speaker 1>hamato Cactus astrophytum, a kindo serious postselgarai. The pencil cactus
<v Speaker 1>that I've grown from seed, you know, the one that
<v Speaker 1>like blends in camouflages itself. With the white stems of
<v Speaker 1>shrubs that it grows up through. You can get five
<v Speaker 1>feet tall. We got an individual at thorn scrub that's
<v Speaker 1>a four four, it's like five feet a five foot tall,
<v Speaker 1>a kindo serious postselgraai. That whole clade they used to
<v Speaker 1>call will will Coxia, that whole evolutionary group they used
<v Speaker 1>to call will Coxia. They're like the diameter of a straw,
<v Speaker 1>But then they can get five feet tall, and they
<v Speaker 1>just kind of grow up scantily, like leaning on shrubs
<v Speaker 1>and ship and then when they bloom, it's you won't
<v Speaker 1>know it's there. That's the coolest thing is you won't
<v Speaker 1>you won't see these things. You'll you'll it'll be next
<v Speaker 1>to a path you walk by daily, and you won't
<v Speaker 1>know it's there until it blooms, and then suddenly you're like,
<v Speaker 1>holy shit that you realize how good it camouflages itself
<v Speaker 1>in It's the same thing with like aerocarpis and astrophyt
<v Speaker 1>them as well. So you gotta you gotta grow these things,
<v Speaker 1>especially if you live down here or just you know,
<v Speaker 1>if you live in Texas in general. Right, and there's
<v Speaker 1>a whole cast of cool Mojave native cacti I used
<v Speaker 1>to be obsessed with when I was doing work out there,
<v Speaker 1>you know, the Mojave Desert. And of course Arizona has
<v Speaker 1>got its own shit ton of cool native cacti, But
<v Speaker 1>you want the stuff that's got the got some context anyway,
<v Speaker 1>you could probably Well, I sound like I'm on kludes
<v Speaker 1>right now because of this flu or this virus, whatever
<v Speaker 1>the fuck it is. So I'm gonna relax. I just
<v Speaker 1>made Jack some hot dogs, and uh, motherfucker won't take
<v Speaker 1>his guy. I saw he had a he had a
<v Speaker 1>flea on him the other day, which he's you know,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know where he picked it up, because I'm
<v Speaker 1>normally good about that, but I didn't. He's not taking
<v Speaker 1>his trifexus now, so I got to figure out a
<v Speaker 1>way to you know, sneak it to his ass. I'm
<v Speaker 1>gonna be such a mess when he goes, you know,
<v Speaker 1>just just crying, right, just crying a bunch, just bawling.
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to Ecuador in two days for this this
<v Speaker 1>tour we're having down there, getting paid to beat a
<v Speaker 1>plant guy and then and then hopefully teach some plant
<v Speaker 1>id and uh then I'll be back. I'm going. I'm
<v Speaker 1>gonna be in Saint Louis around February twenty eighth. I
<v Speaker 1>forget who I'm speaking with? What is it? What am
<v Speaker 1>I speaking for? What is it? I forget what the
<v Speaker 1>thing was? I wish I could tell you, but let
<v Speaker 1>me look up. Okay, here it is Partners for Native Landscaping, Saturday,
<v Speaker 1>February twenty eighth, eight am to noon. It's a workshop
<v Speaker 1>and uh oh, they're having a tour and a plant sale.
<v Speaker 1>A plant sale on the twenty eighth of February and
<v Speaker 1>Saint Louis. It sounds very chilly still the uh what
<v Speaker 1>the hell is it? Oh? For more information and registration
<v Speaker 1>www dot b T dot L Y Bitley b T
<v Speaker 1>period L Y Forward Slash twenty twenty six p NL
<v Speaker 1>Workshop Partners for Native Landscaping p and L Workshop. I
<v Speaker 1>guess I'm speaking there, and then I'm gonna be at
<v Speaker 1>the Carnavorus Plant Society thing in North Carolina in May,
<v Speaker 1>and then I'm gonna be at the Aeroid Society thing
<v Speaker 1>in September. So come out to one of those if
<v Speaker 1>you want to shoot the shit and listen to me
<v Speaker 1>rant so oh yeah. And then if you could pre
<v Speaker 1>order my book, if you're interested in that, I think
<v Speaker 1>you'll I think you'll enjoy it. Right, it's going to
<v Speaker 1>be audiobook two. Just recorded the audiobook, uh so two
<v Speaker 1>weeks ago. It'll be uh Genie dot U s g
<v Speaker 1>E N I g N I dot us Forward slash
<v Speaker 1>Concrete Botany And uh, you can order they're try I
<v Speaker 1>guess they're trying to pump up ordered on Scamazon if
<v Speaker 1>you want. I don't give a shit it doesn't matter.
<v Speaker 1>There are these people that lecture you if you get
<v Speaker 1>if you like, buy one thing on Scamazon. You're not
<v Speaker 1>buying a car on it. You're not giving them that
<v Speaker 1>much money. It's a fucking book, right. They're like the
<v Speaker 1>same people that lecture you if you if you like
<v Speaker 1>ask deep seek AI a question to like summarize a
<v Speaker 1>paper for you because you don't have time to read it. Right,
<v Speaker 1>it's always the same fucking I gotta stuff, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's but it's like a trend. It's like a performative thing. Right.
<v Speaker 1>There's reasons to use AI and reasons not to use AI,
<v Speaker 1>and you're not going to save the world by not
<v Speaker 1>reading it. Don't be a lazy schmuck and use it
<v Speaker 1>for stupid stuff when you could just use a search option.
<v Speaker 1>But people turn these things into religions and they just
<v Speaker 1>get they and then they start moralizing and you know,
<v Speaker 1>morally talking down to people, and it's just so fucking annoying, Like,
<v Speaker 1>I how how how do people on the on on
<v Speaker 1>that particular side of the political I mean they do
<v Speaker 1>every left and right to it, but especially the left
<v Speaker 1>does this. And this is something that moving forward, if
<v Speaker 1>you ever want to get get rid of fashion. Left
<v Speaker 1>is going to have to get over this. And you know,
<v Speaker 1>instead of finding like the ways to be as annoying
<v Speaker 1>as possible about things right, because there's there's there's some
<v Speaker 1>people that are just they're just going to shut down
<v Speaker 1>the minute you pull that shit right. I've had to
<v Speaker 1>learn code switching for certain things, right, and I can't.
<v Speaker 1>Why can't the others? It's fucking crazy. Yeah, some guy
<v Speaker 1>lectured because I during when I was looking up how
<v Speaker 1>long it takes a uh uh a slab of asphalt
<v Speaker 1>at six inches deep to cool from one hundred and
<v Speaker 1>forty five degrees fahrenheit, I asked deep sea because I
<v Speaker 1>didn't want to fucking I don't know physics to that
<v Speaker 1>extent that I don't want to didn't want to do
<v Speaker 1>the maths like I just wondered. So I had deep
<v Speaker 1>Seak look it up for me, and this guy, you know,
<v Speaker 1>knew that I did it, some guy online, you know.
<v Speaker 1>And it's, of course, it's like a white dude with
<v Speaker 1>a mask on a fucking mask selfie Jesus Christ. And
<v Speaker 1>there's reasons to wear a mask. There's race, I get it,
<v Speaker 1>but like for a fucking selfie, at what point is
<v Speaker 1>it just obviously performative, you know, to your specific peer
<v Speaker 1>group and so, and then he said some comment like
<v Speaker 1>I'm really disappointed to see that you use you use
<v Speaker 1>a shit the fuck up? Spar Spur met this. Okay, Spur,
<v Speaker 1>talk to your shrink. Why do you feel the need
<v Speaker 1>to do that? Ask your shrink? Why do I feel
<v Speaker 1>the need to do this? Why do I feel the
<v Speaker 1>need to talk down to people? You know, It's like
<v Speaker 1>you can't there's no I don't know what you hope
<v Speaker 1>to get by talking to me like that. But now
<v Speaker 1>I'm just gonna tell you to go fuck yourself and
<v Speaker 1>really not listening. Now I'm gonna now I want to
<v Speaker 1>use AI. I'm gonna ask it to make me a
<v Speaker 1>fucking picture of a cartoon dog, you know, wearing a
<v Speaker 1>sailor hat and you know, waving around a three foot
<v Speaker 1>long dildo on a cane, just just for you. God
<v Speaker 1>damn it. It's like the same thing that's what people
<v Speaker 1>always shitting on vegans, right, Okay, It's not enough to
<v Speaker 1>just be like, yeah, I'm not gonna die of a
<v Speaker 1>cholesterol of a heart disease like so many people will.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm just gonna keep that to myself and be
<v Speaker 1>they gotta like they gotta like ruin it. They have
<v Speaker 1>to be an asshole and just like the most obnoxious,
<v Speaker 1>lecturing cunt about it. I don't I don't understand. Why
<v Speaker 1>where does it come from? Do you just not interact
<v Speaker 1>with normal working class people to realize that, like, that's
<v Speaker 1>just not a nice way to be like that pisses
<v Speaker 1>people off. It's just shitty. You just seem like a snap. Anyway,
<v Speaker 1>I'm sorry, I'm right again, I'm right. Think I gotta
<v Speaker 1>take this up with my shrink. Have a g rest
<v Speaker 1>of your day. Hope you enjoyed that, and uh yeah,
<v Speaker 1>check out the book if you feel like it, and
<v Speaker 1>please kill your lawn and convince your neighbors to kill
<v Speaker 1>her law and talk to you about Wala and tell her,
<v Speaker 1>you know, nature's pretty cool, actually not everything, you know.
<v Speaker 1>We gotta how about the native plants? Right, the stuff,
<v Speaker 1>the the you know, cultivar marigolds and a pot look nice,
<v Speaker 1>But what about some of the natives? What do they do?
<v Speaker 1>What's get her? Get her to embrace some more holistic
<v Speaker 1>view of the living world. Anyway, that's I got have
<v Speaker 1>a rest to day. Go fuck yourself by and convince
<v Speaker 1>people to stop doing it. Concrete backyard thing. It's not good.
<v Speaker 1>It's not good for you. Okay, that's all. I gotta go.
<v Speaker 1>Fucus it by