Diatomaceous Earth, Horse Cripplers & Leaf Blowers

You know. You know, I talked to the guy and he said it
was fine. I talked to the guy. No, no, no,
I talked to the guy and he said it was fine. So I'm gonna
go. I'm just gonna get somebody sand and then we'll work. I'm gonna
put it in a truck and then it you know, I I said,
I asked him, because I asked him. I said, is it okay
if I take some of this stuff? And he said it's fine. So
I said, okay, Well, thanks to last sir. So that's why
I'm here taking his stuff. And it's let me. Let me turn off
this fucking industrial hippa. It's a hippa. I got it for the dogs,
you know. I got it for the dog. You know, the
dogs making some tackles. Ah, god fucking hell, you know, because
the dog here gets so bad here. You know, I got two of
them. You know, Javier is trying to convince me to get a third,
which I don't appreciate. You know, I don't what am I gonna
do? Am I gonna I'm trying to finish a fucking book, which was
late, but the publisher was cool about it. Now I gotta work on
the photos. You know what am I gonna do. I'm gonna be cleaning
up shit and piss for the next That doesn't sound fun, you know,
Hey, to noe. To Texas males, around twenty twenty eight, it's
finally gonna be socially acceptable to admit that you have feelings and talk about how
you feel. Just want to let everyone. Not ready yet, but around
twenty twenty eight, men in the state of Texas will be able to admit
things like I go to a therapist, that shit hurt my feelings. What
you said. You know, sometimes I feel envious, sometimes I feel like
I'm not enough. It's you can't say that now. It's not socially acceptable
now. But in twenty twenty eight, you're finally gonna be able to fucking
admit that you have feelings as a human being. All right, maybe,
and then slowly, I think twenty thirty two will start hitting the southeastern corner
of the Alabama, you know, Florida. You know, not a lot
of fucking self insight in these places right now, but you never know,
all right, That's why we're gonna dose the water supply and going out there,
you know, anyway, here's the microdos and ascid because I don't want
to fucking leo. You know, where did it go? He gave me
a little micro doose ten milligrams. I did I know? Ten micrograms.
Jesus f excuse me. I know I talked about this before and I took
it and it was so it was so pleasant because you know, not everyone
wants to spend the fit, but you don't need to. You don't even
need to do psychedelics to just you know, get some self insight, look
at how you feel. You just have to, you know, go to
a safe space through some self self work, some self honesty. You know,
it's and it's not about not giving a shit what people think. It's
about not giving a shit what people think more than you. Then you care
about what you think of yourself, like what you genuinely think about you know
what I mean? You know what I mean. That's just a message to
the young people. That's what it is. If you you analyze yourself and
which takes time and good. You know, you got a rigid spine of
ideology and values that you've assessed to yourself, and then you would you look
inside and be honest and humble. That's what you listen to, not so
much what other people, because everyone, you know, you kind of learn
everyone's slightly to massively full of shit, especially in this society. Everyone's just
trying not to look them anyway. Welcome through another episode of The Crime.
What the fuck was that? I don't know what this stuff is. I
just knocked something over. Oh it's a pen. Welcome through another episode of
The Crime Pays What Badeny Doesn't Podcast. I've been losing my fucking mind.
I have been. I've been journeying into the depths of my own neuroses and
own feelings of inadequacy with writing this book. It's been kind of bad,
you know, it's really it's been kind of bad. But it's almost done,
and it's fucking I think it's gonna be good. It's gonna be a
first half autobiographical, it's gonna be an memoir, and then the other half
is gonna be you know, the other half is gonna be photos and shit.
But most importantly, I've been amazed at the power of my own subconscious
to fuck around and procrastinate. Man, I have done everything to avoid sitting
down and writing and shout out to Loretta Peterson, all right, who was
who just wrote me out of the blue. She was just a fucking fan
of whatever the shit it is that I do. I don't even know anymore.
I'm trying to do nine things at once all the time. And she
said, she's a professional letter She said, why don't I just offer you
my services pro bono? And I said, I said thank you very much,
and she did. And she's fucking she's in Washington. She's been editing
all my stuff. It's holy shit. I'd be so fucked without her because
I just puked this shit out, you know, I just puke it out,
and now I don't want to have to look at it again. And
I'm a verbose motherfucker. I had to cut a bunch of words down.
I wrote eighty thousand fucking words. The word count was fifty. There's a
lot of repetition. There was a lot of shit, you know, because
I would just make notes about key concepts and be like, I'm gonna write
about that later, you know, making a little notes app and I go
sit down and write. You know, my friend pri was visiting me for
a while. She's a she's a writer, so she was helping me.
We sat down, you know, I gave her some of my my eighty
D meds. I'm ten Milligram's riddle and she'd never took it before. She'd
never taken it before, and it blew her mind. She's totally fucking add
like me, you know, just just done. But I mean, really
that's been the weird thing is so we were just sitting here writing to get
it was really nice. You know. It's like having a friend that makes
art, you know, and you could just sit and draw together and like
shoot the shit every once in a while. But anyway, but yeah,
she'd never taken like eighty D meds before. And it wasn't like I noticed
her. It wasn't she wasn't speedy. It was like the legit shit.
It sucks. I don't know how to how to fuck the normal people focus.
Man. I walk into a room all the time and forget what I'm
looking for, forget what I went in there for. You know, I've
had relationships I've been in people got mad at me that like, I can't
stand you when you don't take your meds. I can't fucking be around you.
So uh and then I you know, I try not to take the
meds every day because I don't. I don't fucking like what it does.
I don't like what it does. You know, I don't like thinking I
got to take a pill. But for real, I mean I would,
I would go, I'd go into the backyard, I'd fuck around. I
repotted a bunch of stuff. I was cleaning the house. I was.
I mean, I'm not cleaning the kitchen. It's a little too much,
but you know, I was. It was amazing what I would do,
And I realized, this is all just an attempt to avoid doing what I
know I got to do. And uh. And also it was hard to
get a hold of the publisher first and get any direction. I mean,
it was like trying to get a hold of the pope. And the lady
who reached out to me initially about the book dipped out moved to Germany,
and then the lady who replaced her had no clue. I don't think they
filled her in on what the fuck the book was about. Like she thought
it was just like a like a pop science like I feel a good plant
book. You know, that's another quirky book about planning. No, this
is written from a very intense perspective of a working class schmuck during the long
and gradual period of America's intellectual and cultural decline. That's what this is.
You know, this is a fucking you know, and I'll do it till
I burn out or it sucks or it's not you know, people aren't into
it anymore, that's fine. But uh and then yes, I was.
I was fucking plant native plant gardens around too. Like that was another thing
that was just driving me. I was like, I've got a fucking book
to write, and I'm going to install a fucking garden at my guy Hector's
house, you know, like a fucking native which is nice. It's nice.
I mean they he had a big uh, it's funny. He had
a big burr oak Corcus macrocarpa, which I didn't even think they would grow
down here, because this is like the fucking where the golf transitions to desert.
They're not native down here, but they were being planted back in the
day as kind of like a suburban esthetic, you know, even though it's
it's not really a suburb where I live. But uh and and you know,
they don't. But of course, once you stop beargating, they die.
So he stopped irgating a couple of years ago. I don't even I
don't know what either way, the fucking things dying. It's on its last
not lastly. He's probably like five years left. But it's got dead branches
everywhere, and so he's like, what can I do to save it?
Oh, and it's got ganaderma growing out of the trunk of it too,
So it got weakend from the drought. It got weakened from the drought,
and then the ganaderma moved in and my celium's eating the the vascular tissue,
you know, eating the roots probably, I would assume whenever the vascular tissue
died from not getting enough moisture. So he said, what can I do?
I said, just let it go, you know, just let go
and uh, you know, let it go and accept where you live.
And then we'll plant some fucking awesome legumes, some fucking wonderful stuff. We'll
plant some. I planted a bunch of yuccas. I fucking Parkinsonia Texana,
also known as the Texas barbed ass wire peak because when it's leafless, those
photosynthetic stems look like almost like concertina wire. But then when you grow it
in cultivation, it loses its thorns like it's somehow whatever whatever hormones. I
would assume it's probably a stress hormone of some kind that you know, gets
triggered and then triggers in turn triggers the production of thorns on the new growth.
When it's in a happy setting and it's got an easy life, you
know, in a cultivated setting, it turns those off. But this thing
grows out in the fucking scrub with peyote and all this other shit, you
know, all these all these cacti. So yeah, anyway, so I
was doing that, and then I was, you know, I miss printing
shirts. I haven't been printing shirts anyway. The fucking point is the book
is almost done, and then I've got to start another one, which is
probably gonna suck. The I mean, the book will hopefully be nice,
but working on it's gonna suck. And that's my summer. I'll be traveling
around, Uh, just traveling around. I can't work in my house either,
because it's too distracting. There's too much shit to distract me. And
then uh, it's just I got to make sure I run every day.
If I don't run two or three miles. I feel fucking nuts, like
really like severe mental decline if I'm not getting decent cardio, like sweating like
a pig heart rate up above one point fifty, you know. And I
got it. I took it easy in the coffee too, because I can't
do coffee anymore. Just sucks. It fucking makes me feel terrible. It
makes me feel insane. It fucks up my stomach. So I've been drinking
this. Uh was drinking Yerba mate for a while, which doesn't give the
stomach upset. And then I got this yo pond macha stuff that shout out
to Eric Knight, one of the best botanists in Texas. On iinaturalists.
If there's a rare plan, Eric's seen it. There's another Eric too.
It's seen a whole bunch of shit in Texas. I forget anyway. He
it's his company, like him and his wife started this ilex Vomitatoria Macha company.
And it's fucking good. He gave it to me like a year ago,
and it's sat on my counter and it finally uh jav Aer Javier actually
went and bought. Someone was telling me this is good, and I was
like, oh, yeah, my friend. That's my friend's company. So
I went and I made some macha out of this stuff, and it was
It's fucking delicious, man, It's really good. I mix it with a
little bit of oat milk or something, you know, because I got the
lactoasted tolerant. I didn't know I was lactosting tolerate until I got a twenty
three in me test. You know. It also told me I was a
prick. It's like you've got the genes that code for a severe conflict a
conflict prone personality. Anyway, but it's good. And then I got a
dude like green tea, shir I'd drink a shit ton of green tea,
but I had this. I had to stop the coffee. It was really
it was messing me up. Goddamn, you come here, you talking about
all this therapy shit talking about your feelings. Don't CALIFORNI you up my Texas.
All right. We like our perpetual emotional states of silently suffering because of
an ability to deal with our feelings or looking we're anyway. So so what
I was gonna say. The other thing that I that happened to me was
I got in my first auto accident. It sound just to me, it's
just hearing myself talk. It sounded like I was about to do an ad
spot for a fucking insurance company. Yeah, They're all pigs, aren't they.
And that was That was a fucking bummer. That was. That was
a two thousand dollars pile of ship that I stepped into because that was my
deductible because I figure, if I get in a fault, if I get
in an accident, then it's my fault. Then fuck me, you know,
And it is tendingly my fault because I rear rendered this dummy, But
uh, it was really the guy's fault because he didn't know that. You
know, in the United States, you don't have to stop at a yield
sign unless there's traffic coming, So it's a it's a choice, you know.
So I was following this guy who was a soft turn, and yeah,
man, guy, it was fucking I was going like fifteen, like
ten fifteen miles a prior, not even that fast. He was like forty
feet in front of me, and you know, there was no the traffic
was stopped on the I was going north, merging onto an eastbound laye of
these massive fucking streets down here, because it's just a car slum, you
know. And so there was a soft it was a soft corner turn,
like you know where they cut into the corner and there was a yield sign,
and uh, I'm used to people. There was no one in front
of him, there was nobody else on the road, and the traffic was
stopped. There was a cop stopped at the light. Actually, who watched
all of us go down? I should have gotten I didn't think to get
him fucking sign something so I could at least get the insurance to you know,
do it as fifty to fifty. But I as right as I turned
to look over my shoulder to make sure no one was coming, you know,
just double check inherently, fucking you know, look over your shoulder.
This fucking idiot slams on the brakes. No offense to him, all due
respect, but he was a moron. It's okay, you could say it
not everyone's born with a full set. And uh I was, you know,
all of a sudden, I just write it right, like the timing
was just fucking perfect. And before I could even turn my head back around,
I mean we're talking like half a second. This fucking guy slammed on
the brakes. I don't know what the fuck. There was nobody in front
of him, there was nobody coming. And when I asked him in Spanish
and he didn't have insurance. When I asked him in Spanish, I was
like, why did you stop? He's like, ah, because the light
was yellow. And I'm like, what the fuck does that have to do
with anything? That's nothing at all to do with You don't have to stop
at a yield man, you don't have to. And then I thought,
oh, wait because he was from Mexico's I oh, the dude in Mexico,
they don't really have yield signs, So maybe that's what happened. I
don't know, but you know, it is my fault because the rule,
the rule is always to drive like everyone's a fucking idiot or people are trying
to kill you, which is when I used to bike a lot. That
was what it always was. You know, is my is my driver driving
teacher mister Abdulis said, he said, not, Joe, that can be
no. What did he say? He said, there can be no.
I'm not going to try to do a mister Abdulah And I can't live at
That guy was a fucking gem. That guy was like fucking Golden just the
fucking classic, classic personality. He would say. He would always say there
can be no there can be no accident without the element of surprise. He
used to be a boxer and I think he was just in Chicago. You
know. He looked like Ray Charles too, super nice fucking guy too man
he was. He was always really really soft and kind, but he would
always and mellow, like soft spoken mellow, not soft spoken, but mellow,
you know, real mellow. And uh, I think maybe he was,
you know, doing a dude before our driving lessons. But uh,
but yeah, he would always say there can be no no fucking accident without
the element of surprise. And he was right, you know. The element
of surprise was this jackass slamming on his brakes in front of me. Oh
god, I just fucking I don't know whatever, you know. I I
just uh, it was a big pile of shit to step into. But
I you know, I should have been anticipating that, you know, because
I this is like the worst I think, the worst driving I've lived and
traveled all over to US. The worst driving in the US is down here
in the Rio Grand Valley. I mean, holy shit, you see I
see people doing. They're either driving super aggressive, like you know, making
a big deal. You're not going fast in the form, so they're going
to make a big deal and cut you off so they can stop at a
red light one hundred and fifty feet in front of you, or they're just
so timid and scared and and oblivious. It's good generally, I guess to
be cautious to a point. But anyway, the fucking point was, it's
you know, two grand in a hole. So now I got to figure
out how how I can avoid paying the bill. Maybe the insurance company will
take me to small claims court. I don't know. I'll figure it out.
And then I hit a fucking deer, which wasn't my fault. A
month and a half ago. I should have just stayed on I thirty five,
but I got off. I was driving to a buddy's house and I
was with Lily, and we hit a fucking deer. The thing ran into
me. I was already going slow because it was super foggy out, but
this fucking deer, like literally it's like it was just standing there in the
middle of the road. The fucking thing. It attacked me, it ran
out into me, and so my comprehensive was uh same thing. I had
high comprehensive deductible. So I ended up paying for the well I didn't pay
yet. I'm not going to It was the fucking dealership. It was a
dealership rental because my truck was in the shop. So I don't know.
Fucking a way whatever. You know, Adam to the list of debt collectors.
How much medical that you got out there? I got quite a bit.
Never gonna pay that. Yeah, So anyway, shut out to mister
the where's mister Abdullah? Now? Where is he? It's almost it's been
almost twenty five years. It was good. He's on the south side of
Chicago. Probably he's probably still alive. You know, he was healthy.
But yet there can be no accident without the element of surprise. In other
news, I went to Uvaldi, actually just north of Uvaldi, to a
It was like a friend's little get together, like people haven't seen it five
years. And it was on the Newatis River to see the eclipse. And
we caught the eclipse, which was cool. It was gray out the whole
day, which I was like, man, it'd been like sunny the whole
week before. It was gray out the day of the eclipse, but just
at the right moment, the clouds parted and you could see, Oh,
it was so fucking cool. It was great. You could see the solar
flares, you know, when they were blocked out. And then this old
man who was a caretaker at this property. It's been in my guy Logan's
family for like one hundred and twenty years. This old man took this really
nice photo. You could see all the solar flares on the sun, and
shit, holy hell, it was cool. But the property was excellent,
man, I mean it was I didn't know there. And there was mountains
there too, like just southwest of San Antonio. I've never been. I've
never spent much time in that area. God, Texas is so extensive and
cool. There's so much good shit. And then on the way back,
I found another population of Prude's tex Ana, which I was calling the Texas
almond, but it's actually more like an apricot. I wasn't prepared for how
fucking delicious the fruit is on those things. So I went back a couple
of days later. My friend Matt we we just collected like a bucket and
a half of seed, because my thinking is, I just want to get
these out there. If I get the seeds out there now, then in
four or five years, maybe i'll see this thing in cultivation, you know,
if we're still alive before War three hasn't started yet. So you know
which is you? Really? You know, you got the odds look kind
of wishy washy at times, you know, but uh yeah, Uvaldi was
fun. I saw a horse crippler cacti. Really cool, you know,
for anyone not in Texas. It's such a cool little squat. It's like
a big it looks like a cow patty, like a bit like a fatter
cow patty of green stem, green flattened stem with ribs and spines, big
pink spines. Almost looks like it would be a barrel cactus. But it's
homolocephala text census. Used to be a Chino cactus. Now it's homolocephala,
just like the cotton top cactus in the mojave. Homolocephala polycephalus is that one
because it's gotten multiple heads. Polycephalus. I used to fucking love that.
I haven't seen I haven't seen that species in a while. That was like,
that's a true barren ass, beautiful plant, beautiful species. Homolocephala polycephalus.
Anyway, Homolocephala text census. I saw this. It was growing out
of an old roadbed like asphalt, like like the seeds had germinated in a
crack and then continued to grow and we're busting out the asphalt. It was
fucking It was so cool to see. And there were these beautiful old oaks,
big ass old oaks Quirkus fuse of formists, which I guess at one
time was classified as a quirkus Virginianus virginianah, which is, you know,
the typical evergreen with a live oak, southern live oak. But this is
a little bit more. Some people still classified as a subspecies, Like it's
just a different ecotype, you know, for the drier climate as you move
west from the American South, you know, Texas starts to dry out.
But it was, Yeah, there was fucking limestone everywhere. Uh it looked
I mean, it looks just like parts of West Texas, but a little
bit more I wouldn't say lush, but vegetated because it's further east and get
a little bit more rain. It's a little bit more humid, but it
was such a such a cool uh god, I just there's so many cool
spots in the state to do botany to stu what plants are coming up,
and there's so much, there's so many endemics. Prunas texane is an endemic.
I want to see Prunus minute to flora too, Which is I guess
is the plant that is actually got the common name Texas almond. I don't
know is anyone tried the fruit. What is it like? It looks like
Prunas texana, but the leaves are a little bit more glabrous, a little
bit more slick and smooth. They're not, you know, whereas the leaves
on Pruna's taxain are almost like glandular. You knows. As many plants that
grow on the sand are on the Texas sandsheet a lot of fuzzy ass plants.
That's themodia that wooly Stemodia st. E m o Da grows on the
sandshet Aria goona multifloorm. I got that coming up in my yard right now.
I just threw seed down and forgot about it. It's coming up.
That's an immensely kanescent and tomentoast plant at least on the underside of the leaves.
So all these plants on the sandshet tend to be woolier and hairer because
obviously hair reduces boundary layer humidity, which we've been through this before, and
that's kind of a needlessly complicated way to say that. It just slows.
It prevents airflow across the leaf from you know, from drying it out,
you know, because their flow. You know, you want to dry something
ow, you put it in front of a fan. You know, wind
is very drying. It's a drying factor. So, uh, anyway,
but the where the fucking prudence text aana grows? First off, this is
it's an apricot, most delicious fruit that native fruit I've ever tasted in any
native plant. And although, uh, what is it? Malviviscus arboreous is
close, you know what they call the turk's cap. It's got like that,
but meviviscus isn't like, you know, it's kind of mealy. It's
like mostly you just taking it for the flavored. It's a little bit of
sugar and those things. But anyway, but where prudence Taxana grows. It
grows on these sandy flats like it's you know, it doesn't grow in thick
scrub and scrub where it's gonna get shaded out. It needs that sun.
I got. I got a couple I germinated in the ground. I should
have separated him. I didn't separate them. I just I was so scared
to lose them. I just plant through the whole pot of five ceilings in
the ground. So now I'm you know, I'm basically going to be sacrificing
four of them to let one go big. But they're stretching for the light.
I've got them in almost nearly full sun, but they're still stretching for
the light. I mean, these things need. That's what blows my mind
is why is no one Why has nobody grown thiss? Like? Why is
it so little known? It's a fucking delicious tasting fruit that is super drought
tolerant and doesn't just you know, tolerate full sun, but needs it.
Which is Texas. That's like fucking half of Texas. How does fuck and
sunny as shit? And just you know, I'm surprised no one has put
this into cultivation. And yeah, it doesn't like many sand, like many
endemics, like many soil endemics, whether serpentine or fucking gypsum. You know,
Prudence taxana grows on sand in situ and habitat, but it doesn't need
it, just like serpentine endemics in California. Ultramophic endemics don't. They don't
need the serpentine. They'll grow in a garden without it as long as you
keep the What they do need is a lack of competition. And this is
that's the same thing for Prudence taxana. Like all the serpentine endemics in California,
there's other ship growing around them, you know, cramp in their style.
They're not gonna they're not gonna thrive. And it's the same for Prunace
taxana. You know, you gotta keep all the other ship away from it.
Give it a spot just sunny as hell out in a in a fucking
open front yard. Keep everything, at least anything that's gonna get any significant
height, anything that's gonna get the same height, which is three or four
feet tall. That's how big this thing gets. It's like a shrub.
It doesn't get any bigger than that. Anything that's gonna get bigger than then
three or four feet uh needs to be way far away from it. And
anything that's gonna get three or four feet tall needs to be like three or
four feet away from it. You know, give it as much distance up
as you can wide, you know, give it a berth because where it
grows in habitat. I mean it's got it's such a cool, unique habitat
too. It's not there. There might be occasional miscuits and uh diasporos texting
and Texas Texas per simmon, you know, scattered here and there, but
generally it's an open sandy plain with little blue stem and the fysalis I think
it was Heterofolia, one of the annual fyxalis. The ground cherry is really
delicious fruit on that fucking thing too. You know, it's it's nothing's getting
that tall out there. Prunas Texsaya at three or four feet tall is the
tallest thing in its habitat. And you just see these mounded shrubs, you
know, maybe six feet six feet wide, eight feet wide at the most,
three or four feet tall. Got. It's such a it's so fucking
cool. And it was just yeah, man, it was lit up.
There was flocks everywhere. There's all these endemics that grow on the Texas sandsheet,
which is again I think, you know, I think it's mostly just
windblown sandy alien sand. But there's a couple exposures where we saw west of
fel Furious, beautiful Fell shut up to fel Furious, Texas. How long
until people start talking about their feelings and Fell Furious, until people start taking
any any great? I shouldn't knock Fell Furrious. It's a nice town.
I'm just saying it's it's cutty here. Man. It's like thirty years by
the rest of the country and in off the map, but it's kind of
nice too. And there's you know, in certain ways, there's nice things
about that, you know, like affordability anyway that the habitat on the sand
sheet is just I mean, this is cool. This is a cool parcel
that we came upon, you know. Whereas most of it's been plowed or
or turned into agriculture, this is like a relatively intact parcel of of sanscrub
that I think has never been developed or maybe even raised. And the pigs,
the pigs are having a lena, but they were very obviously enjoying the
the Texas apricots, the Prune's Texano his pig shit, or it could have
been have Alena shit too, everywhere with tons of seeds inside. So Matt
got a bag of that because he's like, well that's already been you know,
seed treated, these will germinated a lot easier. Just wash the ship
off, don't don't let your hands touch it. You know, you don't
need the fucking weird brain parasites or something, and uh and and sew it.
But you know it's weird though too, because I've reached out to this
guy and though at Mobile I haven't heard back from yet who the fuck knows,
but he studies seed dormancy in plants, and so I was I want
to know if if he'd be I want to know if I wrote him,
because I want to know if he'd be down to study whatever the dormancy is
and Prune's Texana seed because it it won't germinate if it's super hot. But
so, you know, so we were on this, we were we were
having a sand sheet bonanza. Again. There's a yuck on the sand sheet
too. It's classified as yucca constricted, but it's probably a new species.
It's undescribed because it looks slightly different. I don't, you know, I
shouldn't say anything that I actually know the you know, unless I unless I
actually have a good Yucca constrict that to compare with. But the one that's
in Star County, right on the border looks much different from the one that's
on the sands sheets. So maybe maybe it's just a different eco type.
But I've seen it, you know, mentioned to other places that this is
an undescribed species as well, And uh, I don't know. Yeah,
who the fucking man, there's so many, there's so many, there's so
much room for study in this region, you know, and I at the
same time, everything's getting demolished and destroyed so quick, you know. I
hope, I hope at some point the I don't know, there's more people,
more people, more botanists working on things down here, you know,
trying to classify things, describe new species, study things like pollina biology or
soil soil microbes. But that also brings me to my next topic, which
is the fucking thorn scrub land we've had. We've gone through three parcels.
The first one that we were gonna get that I made the video about it
was too infested with buffalo and the guy was asking too much, which he
was asking. It was like seventy five hundred and acre he wanted, which
is just it's just not worth it. Man. It's nice, but it's
we don't have that kind of money, and also, uh, it's just
not worth it, especially with all the work involved. And this other spot
we found was nice, but but uh it was owned by like three siblings.
They you know, two were down to sell it at the price that
we offered. The third was a greedy fuck and they were all squabbling amongst
each other, and so we made an offer and they just ignored us.
They said they were down, and then they just ignored us for three weeks.
So we said, all right, fuck you. And then we went
to this other property, and this was one I was looking at that uh,
you know, the I'm such a fucking I gotta just chill out because
in my mind, I'm like, oh, I just want to get land,
and we're gonna just plant all the natives and turn into kind of like
a native botanic garden and then be able to, you know, eventually build
a building with the nice bathroom and have researchers come out and students and shit
like that. But uh, I need to just take it easy, you
know, just just cool it down, you know, because I saw this
spot, this last spot, and got all excited about it, and then
we went back to visit and I was gonna do it. And then we
went back to visit the next week, Javier and some NAC guys and they
saw it and they were like, don't no fucking way, man. And
the fucking gnats were really bad too, and so they're like, oh,
it's a sign. It's a sign we're not supposed to, you know.
And and and then Javier took me and says like, look, man,
don't you don't want to be And I was like, well what no,
No, we're five. We're just gonna plant a bunch of shit. But
it was when I when I looked at it, and I thought And when
we rolled up too, the seller was there too, and this guy was
like he owned it for four years. It was also he was selling it
for way too much, and and I was under the impression it had never
been never been root plowed. It turns out it had. It was just
like fifty years ago. So all the Native vegetation was gone, you know,
five like a quarter mile up, a quarter mile up the road,
there was still intact thorn scrub a little bit higher, like eight foot elevation
higher, which is a lot down here. That's enough to get a change
in the plant community, thinner soils, and it was it looked beautiful,
but that parcel, of course, wasn't for sale. The parcel that was
for sale was lower lying and it was super lush, like felt subtropical.
But when you started to pay attention, you noticed not only was there pig
damage, but it was primarily just nopal. It was a punch of Alta
or anglemanii, whatever the fuck they're all hybridizing with each other anyway, I
don't know which species lenheim Rai, Anglemanii, alta, and then an overstory
of misky with some every once in a while. There were some other cacti
species, but it wasn't that diverse. It wasn't that dense, and there
were fucking points everywhere though, Like there were arrowheads and chipping tools everywhere,
which was kind of cool. I mean, God, I could just what
I would give to be able to see what those communities looked like. You
know, a thousand years ago, five hundred years ago, whatever. But
anyway, we decided, you know, they tucked me out of it.
They were like, don't do this, don't fucking get this. It's it's
turned the land has not been treated well, and it's just the monoculture of
a puncha angomanii with an overstory of misky, you know. So now it's
like, yeah, it's a native. You're not clearing buffalo grass, but
you're clearing a native that's much much nastier to clear due to the glockets,
you know, those little fiberglass hairs in the aerial of the cactus that'll get
stuck in you. So yeah, it was just a fucking anyway. So
now looking at another parcel that is much more affordable and has never been root
plowed or tarnished, and so we're gonna go check that out on Saturday.
But people are asking me, like, what's up with the thorn scrub,
And I'm like, for I think part of it for me too, is
like I want to be able to have something to show for it, for
the money we raised and that we're gonna have to continue raising, because I
don't want I want people to think I took the money and like went and
spent it on coke and hookers and Rito no offense to coke or hookers,
well offense to coke at least, it's a horrible fucking drug. But uh,
anyway, so and I think I just want a spot, you know,
I'm just so land hungry for a spot to plant things and set up
that I need to just take. I need to just cool it down,
you know, I need, I need a cooler. But I'm hopeful about
this other property because it's you know, it's more intact, and it's I
mean, it's all intact. I don't think it's ever been. There's buffalo
on it, but it's not that bad. And uh, I think it's
just along the road. There's fucking buffalo everywhere. God damn it. I
can't. I can't believe coming down here in twenty fourteen and there was no
buffle. The buffal wasn't that bad. Yet that was so wild to see,
especially not, I mean shit compared to now where buffalo grass is just
everywhere, you know, penacetum, silly air, God, what's see?
And then there's guinea grass too. It's the fucking grasses, these grasses that
evolved with with African megafauna, just super robust and vigorous grasses that were selected
That habit was selected for by these massive mammals that were you know, spent
the last how many million years co evolving with these things and gnawing them down
to the fucking appleical marius them. So in other news, when I was
driving to Uvaldi and this was really cool to see it was it was thick
with butterflies, specifically Chricogonia lycety the Guyacon sulfur their host plants Guyacon guyacum,
and Gusta fulliam is the binomial for that. That's the species. It's in
the kreosol family Zygo falsi. And you know down like Nuevo Leon and the
Sierra Madre they get you know, upwards of fifteen feet tall where they're when
they're really slow growing too. So if you see a fifteen foot tall Guyacon,
it's a fucking old one. But here, you know, you'll see
in West Texas they get like three four feet tall, you know, because
you'll see them out on these open, exposed, much drier sites. But
here, you know, there's one in actually there's one in Brownsville it's like
the last lot in this suburban subdivision. It's actually kind of depressing. It's
probably gonna get you know, plowed under in the next five five years,
maybe a decade that no one's like twelve feet tall. But anyway, it's
the it's the host plant for this, this sulfur butterfly, these yellow butterflies.
And it was so thick on the up to Uvaldi, no fucking cars
on the road. It was just just empty, beautiful sunny day with blue
sky. Not super hot yet. It was like in the eighties, you
know, it wasn't wasn't miserable hot like it is here in the summer,
which is just the same. I mean, at that point when it's that
hot, it's just the same as living in Minneapolis in the winter when it's
that fucking hot out. But anyway, they were. It was so thick
it looked like snow flurries. It was really cool to see, sadly about
you know, eighty of them ended up in my radiator on the grill I
looked in later, like through the actual grill of the truck. This was
before I smashed it and drove into that dummy who decided to stop at a
yield and no offense to the dummy. And uh yeah, it was like
I looked inside that was just covered with these yellow butterflies. Man, it
were so many that got hit and they were hitting all the circium, texting
them all the they were pollinating all the the Texas thistle. God they were.
It was such a beautiful day. It was so nice. Man.
Spring is so fucking nice here, and then in summer everything just goes dormant,
you know. It's there's not much shit blooming if you're in the way
of flowering plants. If you're trying to look out, you know and get
good you know, flower morphology shots, which is all that I'm trying to
do most of the time, like get get good reference photos, you know,
for presentations and for teaching this shit later and also for updating a tax
on pages, I naturalist tax on pages. You know, you need a
good comparison shot of a flower morphology or anything notable about a plant that distinguishes
it from a congent or a closely related species and the same genus. But
it's yeah, man, it's so hot. I don't know what I'm gonna
do in the uh in the song, I mean, I'm gonna be on
the Me and Al are trying to go on tour. If you know anyone
who would want to have us. We're trying to book a tour where we
could just you know, run our mouth. It's gonna be like a blend
of like just shooting the ship, question and answer session, showing photos,
uh and uh, comedy basically, like just stand up comedy talking, just
telling jokes, shooting the ship. Whatever the fuck should be fun if we
can actually book it. But I'm mostly doing that just the fund the travel
that I need to do because the publisher said they're not covering it. They're
like, it's like the travel is necessary for this book, you know.
Like that's the thing that's been driving me nuts down here is I feel,
you know it. I feel like atrophy. Like I feel like mental fucking
atrophy that just that happens if you don't if you're not getting out, If
I'm not getting out, you know, I need mental stimulation. I need
shit in front of me, Like for me to be in in like a
dense, walkable city where I can you know, walk is a pedestrian on
the streets and just see all this cool shit, like look left, look
right, look up, look down. There's tons of cool shit everywhere,
little shops, little fucking uh cool libraries, parks, whatever the fuck.
That's such a way, that's such a nice way to spend a day.
You know, just go on a long walk, lurk at a little cop
shop or something, right, read for a while, you know, go
fucking plant the garden. Go then go on a run and then walk,
you know, walk back around, you know, sit, sit down with
some people, have a nice conversation, Like just never having to get in
the car is so pleasant. And then of course I'm in like the worst
state for that, next to Florida, Like Texas and Florida are the biggest
automobile slum states in the Union. Oh shit, there he goes, he's
going. He's going off about the car slums again. He won't stop talking.
Every every fucking episode he brings it up. Oh being trapped in a
car. No, but today I took you. I took a little break
from when I stopped recording yesterday. Only had forty minutes to me say.
Anyway, I went to the clinic today to get my yearly check up.
I got my got little annual postcard it's the STD clinic too, and so
there were people in the man, that was a fucking depressing. Everybody in
there looked worried, and it was almostly women too. Sucks to where the
fuck are the men? Why ain't the men getting checked up? Here?
You go, you get the doctor to find out your balls and turn your
head and cough and swab your groin area. Whyn't the men doing that?
I mean the ladies they all look bumped too. Fucking hell. And then
then it's so it's a clinic. It's like a low cost clinic because I
don't have insurance. Is fucking America, no one's got it right. You
just go to the ear, you give a fake name, and then fucking
dream of like murdering health insurance executives. Can you say it on a podcast?
It's just a joke anyway. Uh So I went. So I go
to the clinic and they make you find they make you sign all this shit
that says you know how much money you make and you're fucking broke whatever,
All this make you jump through all these hoops. It's fucking ludicrous. Man.
Also, fucking Ken Paxton, because this state is these fucking motherfuckers don't
want to pay, you know, pay for fucking health care for poor people
or for working people or whatever. It's just it's fucking I just sat there
and I filled out the forms, and then I just thought of my fucking
hatred for Ken Paxton, the Attorney General. Look him up. He's such
a fucking dirty pig. He's the most big gross cocksucker, just fucking filthy,
filthy, dirty, fucking unethical man. He's so just look him up,
man. This guy's been indicted by his own people. He's been indicted
by his own fucking crooks. Bye bye, he's been He's so, he's
too dirty for the fucking crooks, like the fucking the Cabal of Texas.
Fucking right wing, you know, crooked politician, slimy assholes man, and
they are. I'm not just saying it because they're right wing. I don't
give a fuck, you know, I'll be down with right wing Pete.
We could talk. We just don't talk politics. I want more conservatives to
get into the shit that I'm always run in my mouth about. I am.
I'm just talking about. These guys are like legit hit slimy motherfuckers,
like really pig fucking hands in real estate deals and fucking construction firms, and
they're all corrupt, They're so fucking oh my god, ah, I have
like hate orgies about them. I'm I'm fucking it's like I'm jerking off with
just fucking hatred wearing a pinwheel hat. That's a fucking it's a joke I
stole from Doug Stanhope. We're in a pinwheel head jerking off just thinking of
them getting in like a giant car wreck. That's That's that's how much I
hate the fucking who's the other guy? Who's the other who's the lawyer that's
always with Ken Paxton. He's a real slimy fuck too. Anyway. Uh
anyway, So yeah, I was in the clinic and I was just yeah,
I was just fucking ridiculous. Man. I'm like, this is you
know, this is this is fucking basically class class war. Like this is
what I mean, not just this case, but like what's going on,
like especially where I live, Like the wages are so low, people are
so underpaid, and at the same time there's like such a gross display of
wealth like this this just a culture that really wants to be seen as wealthy
too. There's elements of that, you know. Oh it's so fucking gross,
like this phrase of culture. Man, oh my god, it's really
sad. Like the women always have too much makeup, like the you know,
and the fucking dudes are always wearing too much colonna, looking all like
juiced up, but like with the tiny legs, and they're driving like muscle
cars and shit. It's like a it's just a weird. I don't even
talk about that. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just, you know,
I just start thinking about this sad stuff, and I said, you
know, why don't these people who are into this stuff just realize you don't
got to do it. You don't gotta do it. Let it go.
Go take a walk, go, you know, go see the beauty in
a world that's out there. You know, you don't need to see all
this stuff. This is a dead end road, poison. It's gonna lead
you to fucking spiritual decay and a lifetime of lives and you're not gonna realize
it, you know, and given too much of a shit what other people
think of you more than you care about what you think of yourself. That
kind of shit, you know, real fucking poison anyway. So going back
to the sands sheet, God, there's so many cool fucking endemics. Ment
Zillia noodle was there. That's like a I think it's an annual a lot
of annuals, which is weird because you don't normally see annuals, at least
even in South Text. I don't think you see annuals. No, Like,
everything's got a perennial habit, like it go, it goes dormant or
something. But the annual that's more of like a mojave desert where it's it's
so fucking hot and so dry for so long that you get the annual headit,
because that's what makes sense, you know, you get plants literally only
live for three or four months and then they just fucking die, and they
only exist alive as seeds in the seed bank. There's no fucking living tissue
beside seeds on on the surface. It's just the seed bank and the soil.
And then of course when it fucking rains, like some seeds will germinate
this year. Some seeds their dormancy inhibitors, they're germination inhibitors. Excuse me,
won't won't be removed or won't be you know, triggered the whatever they
Germany, you know they all German at the same time, Simple Germany at
this year. Sim will Germany fucking twenty years from now from the same same
seed batch too. So but I think you see that annual habit on the
sand sheet a lot more annuals because it is that fast training nutrient poor sand.
It was I was reading, I was reading and watching YouTube videos about
cat ion exchange capacity last night, which is still a little over my head.
I'm no soil sell into this, but but uh, that's fascinating shit.
You gotta do. The higher the calcium level, the less hydrogen.
And that's what pH is. Phs is a measure of hydrogen. So less
hydrogen, you got a higher pH. More hydrogen, you got a fucking
lower pH. Is that right? Is that someone out there knows a lot
more about this than meet us. Listen to this right now, and it's
saying he's so full of shit anyway, and that brings me. That's a
nice segue into my next thing I'm talking about, which is that I was
working on. The next thing I'm working on is mixing soil. I'm trying
to find affordable sources for soil for growing cacti seedlings and all the cool natives.
Something. I don't have the water that much. It doesn't because the
soil mix I would have used when I lived in Oakland, where it only
gets to like seventy five degrees most of the time, is way too fast
draining for here. I would worry about things rotting in Oakland because it just
doesn't get hot enough. Here. It gets so hot that to use that
same mix shit which is dry out so quick, you know. So what
I need something that's both fluffy and puffy and has a nice good aeration,
doesn't turn into a brick if it does dry out like a lot of clay
does, but also holds moisture. So I tried using the native soil,
because the native soil here is this really fine particled sandy claylum shit that holds
moisture for a while, Like if it rains, the ground will stay wet
for a while. It gets muddy as fuck too. But then when it
does dry out, it's baked. It's baked into like a clay, and
it's got that it changes volume, it contracts, so like a in a
you get like the soil that's next to a house, that'll start pulling away
from the house. That's why in Texas they tell you to water your god
damn water your boundary, water to perimeter your house. You know, just
like a fucking old Italian man waters is driveway, just like that. You
know that, Nancy so so tonight. So I was fucking around with all.
I was like trying to add larger particle size organic materials. They I've
got the soil conditioner shit that's basically just like a like a pine bark that
you can throw into this native soil. So I took a big I got
a I got a big fucking Oh yeah, I'm using my rental because I
fucked up my accent my car. There's the other thing. Insurance company called
me today and said, yeah, it's your you gotta assume one hundred percent
liability for this fucking accident, which I already knew. And they basically said,
yeah, even though the guy stopped when he didn't need to and slammed
down his brakes. Anytime you rear ends a buddy, which I already knew,
it's your fault. We wouldn't be able to win it in court.
In arbitration if he sued you, and he might, or if he sued
the insurance company, and he might. Because there's like every fucking other billboard
down here is an ambulance chaser. That's another good indication of where I live,
too. When you live in a spot where every other billboard is a
fucking ambulance chaser promising you millions, that's a good indication of like how low
brow the culture's no offense to the re This is everywhere, but especially in
the Rio Grand Valley, Man, it is. Fuck. I love it
here. Certain things I love, Maybe not the culture so much, would
love to see the culture fifty years ago now, maybe not so much.
But uh, I love the plants. I love the fucking geology. But
I'm also aware that like no one here does, it's like such a I
mean, it's already native plant minded people or just plant minded people, ecology
and evolution minded people, not like, oh it's medicinal or I like my
fucking hostas in my front yard. You know, I'm talking about actually like
a college and evolution, like there's a bigger picture going on, Like nature
is a fucking spirituality. Those kind of people are already a minority, and
here they're like a fucking infinitesimally small smaller minority. Nature is my fucking religion.
I shouldn't say I don't even like nature, you know what I mean?
Plants my religion. There would cool me down. There would keep me
out of the news. Maybe you two. Uh anyway, So I'm wucking
around with these soil. But here's my mix. So you there's a grower
I know who grows down here for fishing wildlife. He grew a lot of
the sleepiest prostrata that endangered milkweed. He grew a lot of them. He
grows shit in paper tubes. He grows these fucking these tubes filled with gold.
Like everything he grows, it just comes out so great. You go,
you buy tubes for two fifty three four bucks, depending on what it
is and how slow it grows. Yeah, you go buy tubes. Is
a zyphus which is now sart What is it? Circumbatis some goofy ass name.
It's uh, you know, is the zfus of twosifolius really common?
I think you get it pretty far west because I saw it in the on
Atum's elders yard. Grow with a bunch of Paota. I think you get
in Tucson, you get z zypus and two son grows cobra linear, he
grows all kinds of shit just in these tubes. You buy these tubes for
two or three bucks, and he grows for fish and wildlife because I'll do
him for restoration. You know, if some fun idiot rue plowed, you
know, forty acres fifty years ago to put up a cattle thing, burnt
the soil out, can't graze here or whatever, and now he's in fishing,
you know, the government fishing wildlife acquires it whatever, they're going to
restore it. That's what I shouldn't say, fucking idiot. I'm just filled
with spike today airth I die a little salty, I am. You know.
I think it was the clinic. I think it was going to Ken
Paxton. I don't think I got diabetes, so I convinced myself I had
diabetes. Three. We used to go shout out to Damon Tye for show
me how to get an A one C one test? Is that what it
is? I went and bought one at the CVS measures your blood sugar or
measures something. I don't know. Fuck I already forgot. I'm such a
jackass. I should have written it down. But uh, I don't think
I have diabetes, but I found out I got the gene for it.
So I was a little tense. You know, thought I had cancer twice.
And I'm not saying it's not gonna happen, right knock on wood,
it fucking will we all do. But you know, I'm just saying,
you get the diabetes to cancer, the rabies, scabies and a flu.
So this this anyway, this grower I know told me that he just uses
the native soil with vermaculite. Now vermaculite, as far as I was concerned,
is what from what I knew, is kind of shitty because it helps
maintain moisture in the soil, but I think it also adds aerration. It
makes it more peffy. It's peffy, so it makes the soil more puffy,
which is good because this clay, this sandy loam, fine particled rich
organic material, clay, you know, deposited by the Rio Grands over the
last however, many millions of years, and the meandering course at a Rio
Grand weather limestone mixed with lots of organic material. That's all it is limestone.
Weather's into a fine powder. All right, look at like a limestone
road cut. Go get someone that fucking powder a fine shit. Go do
a line in a bathroom. Go do a line of limestone that powders.
Seriously, I've been out there at those fucking road cuts collecting rocks before.
I'm I'm not a I's raid to say it. All right, just sellt
the marathon. Actually, just sell the Alpine. They got the first limestone
rod cook because out by Alpine in West Texas it's all fucking volcanic. But
you go far enough south you get the nice powder, that white limestone powder.
You know, I'm surprised I haven't been kicked out of Texas yet.
This fucking state is so stiff they'll kick me out one day, you know,
at least the bondans Man. There's a lot of fucking stiff bodaness here
too. Talk about needing to dose some people. Holy shit. Yeah,
I'm used to these California botanis. They get loose. They all you know,
you mentioned doing mushrooms around them. They're like, oh yeah I did
that once. You know, oh I took mushrooms last year. Even if
they're like older at fifty sixty here, fuck you mentioned any of that shit.
They're like, even if they did it, they don't talk about it.
It's weird. It's repressed state. Man. You gotta loosen people up,
right, You really gotta like let out a big fart at a banquet
party, you know, really just loosen people up. Well, just let
out a big fart and say, yeah, it was me. Gotta be
hard living like that, you know. Anyway, So I fucking I got
I got this soil conditioner. Well, first off, I went in a
rental car and filled it up with two truckloads with a guy with the skids
there the native soil mixed with compost. Now I knew this was a bet
because the compost is good and nutrient rich. But this native soil can be
kind of a fuck, you know, like they're like you'll find clumps that
feel like rocks, Like you think it's a rock when you stick your hand
in this big pile. You pull it out and then crunch it in your
hand and you realize, oh, it's just soil that's globbed together. It's
that sandy loam clay. So I gotta break the clay up. So I
was just fucking I hate Perlite. Two Perlite sucks, but I can't find
a good source for pummus, so that one eighth inch small pummice like man,
I remember seeing mountains of pummics like that in Situ, in fucking Siskiyou
County, beautiful like northeast Sisko County, Modoc County, California. I left
my heart over there, you know, left some of my blood there too.
Climb fucking around the big pile of obsidian out there at six thousand feet
elevation. And the shield, the Medicine Lakes shield volcano. It's a shield
volcano because it was relatively fluid as opposed to viscous lava, so when it
all extruded out of the earth, it had the shape of a shield rather
than a con. You know, more viscous and felsic magma produces a con
shape. It's a fucking con that I lose you yet, And I'm trying
through, trying to just clear out the stiffs. I'm really on one tonight,
you know, it just went on a run. I feel great.
So I was I can't get the pommesa. I was using the pro light,
but the pro light's too fucking light, and it flows to the top.
So I went to the golf course stole a big bucket of sand through
some of that in there. That's good for drying, but it can also
cause clumping. I was throwing that soil conditioner, which is just pine bark
in. Their smells really good and Ken King swears it's good for the roots.
Then I was using the pearlite. The fuck else was I use it?
Oh? I used a little bit of a meculite to make it puffy,
and then uh, and just put it in a big cement tray,
you know, and mixed it up, and and I was worried because I
want And then I just took you know, I took different I filled up
empty pots with no plants in them, and then would tag each pot more
sand, more pearlite, low sand, low pearlite, you know, different
different variations of the mix. And then I just soaked it and then was
waiting to see how it would dry out. And then but I fucking went.
I got ahead of myself and planted some cactus ceilings, and there's some
some Hamado cactus and now I'm worried it's too what for them I don't know,
we'll see, but Hamato cactus. I can't this the quote unquote Rio
Grand Valley Barrel actually likes the soil kind of wet. I've seen it growing
in some like muddy ass places, you know. But again, it's so
hot. The hotter it is, the faster plant metabolism is moving, the
more moisture they can actually use. At least these plants. The plants here,
like the cac die in a lot of these. I mean this is
basically the subtropical you know, thorn scrub. Excuse me, you know,
so the warmer it is, the faster the planet has tabolisms moving they can
actually use. Like you'll see peyote sitting in mud. Astrophytem grows in fucking
mud. It grows in mud like like you're walking around after a good rain,
and the soil is making that kind of armpit farting noise, you know,
like when you're ten, you've learned you could make fart noise with your
armpit, like that kind of stuff. It's just such a thick there's water
pooled up, and it's generally pretty salty too, you know. Viarrilla text
on. There's a lot of salt loving plants. There was a salt loving
grass growing with the astrophytem at one of these sites, at a private ranch
in Star County. She got to go to Star County tomorrow. God,
Star County just feels so icky and dirty. It's just so fucking everyone's on
a hustle. It's just fucking man, it's there's a lot of like just
feels icky, it feels tainted. It's greedy. It's a fucking greedy,
dirty area. I hate to say it. I loved it for so long,
the culture there, I used to love it, but it's fucking you
know. We've been looking for land and it's like, God, everyone's asking
too much. Everyone's greedy. It's just the fucking the fuck. There's a
lot of corruption too, like among the local politicians. Oh, it's so
weird. Jesus Christ. The illiteracy rate is high as fuck too. It's
such a weird, fucking god damn it. Education could just change so much.
That's how you change the values, you know. I feel like it's
just I mean, it's not to be rude, but it's such lowest common
denominator shit to always be on a hustle too, you know, you don't
realize there's anything more to life than that. You've never seen it, you
know, impoverished not only economically but also in spirit and passion and mind.
You know, fucking educating man anyway, Education is a broad where it fucking
gets thrown our an tendis meeting anyway. So the uh I mixing this soil,
I was trying it. I'm testing them out. It's really just driving
me nuts though, But it's like you got to get in there and feel
it, squish it, you know, feel the weight of the pot.
That's the other thing is like the pots. This shit holds so much water,
Like it's such a heavier pot. Like I was even doing some of
those four inch by four inch pots with heavy soil in it, and then
you know, it feels so much heavier than the mix I normally use,
you know, like like a fox farm mixed with like you know, pump's
uncs in it where the water just But again, if I was to use
that out here, it would I'd have the water every day, which I'm
not trying to do either. You know, someone even wrote me yesterday and
they were like, yeah, one of these old growers told me that growing
you know, growing stuff and containers is like growing things hydroponically, meaning like
there's just a constant flow of water moving through the pot, you know,
and it is. It's much different than growing in the ground, where roots
are in the ground and moisture can move freely through the ground and there's oxygen
in the ground and the ground's never gonna fully dry out because it can always
pull more moisture up from down below. Versus a fucking one gallon pot on
a hot ninety five degree day, especially if it's the sun, will dry
out in thirty minutes, completely dry out in thirty minutes, bake. You're
basically kiln drying, especially if it's a black pot too. So I don't
know, I'm just fucking losing my mind thinking about this. But it's good
because it's you can read all about it, you can whatever. But unless
you're actually out there mixing up soil, mixing up your own soil and a
big tub and feeling it and doing experiments and watching how shit grows in it.
You know, you start with an organic base and you add different particles
in there of different inorganic materials, all right, and even organic materials like
even just like barks, you know, fucking the thing with the conifer barkers,
they're not gonna rot that easily. You know, you invite certain organic
materials, big chunks, the sapartrophic fungus is going to go for that,
and then whatever and bacteria and whatever, you know, saparotrophic, you know,
eating dead material. Fungus goes for that, or bacteria goes for that.
Once it's done with that, then it can you know, the question
is is it a species of fungus that can later move to living material.
That's how a lot of shit starts, you know, so you don't want
to give them an edge in by giving them the dead stuff. Depending on
what you're growing, if it's super rot prone stuff like cacti. Cacti roots
are like dry sponges. They're meant to absorb water as fast as possible because
they don't know when they're gonna get it again, and then they store it.
They can only store so much and so they start to rot if they're
just sitting in water and it's not hot. But at a lot of the
cac di from down here are a lot more tolerant of moisture than cacti.
In like the Sonoran desert or something, you know. But again, you
put shit in the ground. At least here, I feel like it's so
much safer get something, put it in the ground. I'm not trying to
keep a bunch of shitting pots. The only reason any potting soil is because
I'm growing things from seed, getting them big, and then transplanting them to
you know, native plant restoration projects or the people's yards like plant native plant
gardens. So that's why, you know, I need a decent soil mix.
God, when I lived in Oakland, San Francisco Arboretum in a Tanta
garden had their used soil pile and it probably had some pathins in it,
but it was also you can get rid of those just by turning it and
you know, making sure it doesn't go anaerobic and whatever. And uh and
and also like there's there'd be beneficial microbes too that would if it's a if
it's a healthy enough soil, you know, would would uh take up take
up that they'd compete with the the pathogenic bacteria and fungi you know. But
but also just you can't grow. Yeah, some stuff you just can't grow.
And I'm fine with it, Like you can't be growing ship that's super
prone to to uh things like phytafta. You know the the quote unquote water
mold, which is actually a relative of brown algae that became parasitic. It's
a swimming It's like a does it? What is it? What is the
the How do you say that? Ooh, ooh my seats oo, ooh
my coda, oo oh my coda. Oo oh my seats. I don't
know how to fuck you pronounce that? Oh, oh my seats. It's
a clip. Let me look that up. Actually, just get oh my
seats. Oo ooh, hear that. Hear what he's saying, Oh my
seats A fuck, I'm gonna call it, oh my seats whatever. I
don't know why I think that's so funny. Ooh ooh my seats. Anyway,
interesting, really interesting? When did they evolve? Man? When did
fightafta? When did Fightaftra evolve? When did fuck There's Fightapthra infest Thans Cinemai,
cinemaonie. I don't fucking know. When was fightatherraa? When did no
one's done a molecular clock and fitaftera? Huh what is this? Ooh ooh
mice eats. Okay, so from the Wikipedia page ouh, my coda form
a distinct phylogenetic lineage of fungus like but they're not fungy, remember that all
right? Oh Jesus cried there a fuck? What is God? Some of
these clades I've never heard of before? On the tax on page sa R
What the fuck is s A? Herosa is a highly diverse clade of eukaryotes,
often considered a supergroup that includes strominophiles. What the fuck? What is
that? Jesus Christ. The strominophiles, also called heteroconts, are a clade
of organism distinguished by the presence of stiff triparthite external hairs, these little microscopic
bastards. Many stremenophiles are unicellular flagelets. So they got a flagella. They're
over. They are just flagellating around on a ground. Yon Streminophiles are eukaryotes.
Most are single cell, but some are multicellular, including some large seaweeds
the brown algae. There you go that. The group includes a variety of
algyl protists, heterotrophic flagelets, opalines, and closely related pretero monad flagellates the
tripartite hairs exert. The tripartite hair is characteristic for the group have been lost
in some of the included taxa. Diatoms are fucking whoa, So these are
photo somebod These guys are photosynthetic overt. I didn't know it. I didn't
know it. Word, I didn't know. The diatoms they build their little
shells. That's cute. Diatoms. They build their little shells. Oh okay,
and they're uh yeah, okay yeah, And they build their little shells
out of silica. The diatoms they generate about twenty to fifty percent oxygen produced
on a planet each year. Do you know that about the diatoms? They
take in over six point seven billion tons of silicon each year from the waters
in which they live. That's the carbon silica cycle, you ask whole Nobody
knows about that. Not a lot of people talk about that. When you
get that pelagic shirt, that radiolarian and diatomaceous shirt, you know, diatamacious
earth. Like when you get a bad bedbug infestation, you know, or
you get crabs in your groin or something, you gotta rub diaetamacious earth all
over your crotch. Just I just take a leaf blower, you know,
I put the dietamacious earth in the back end, and I just sit there,
you know, nine shees total wind buck naked in my garage with the
leaf blower pointed right at my groin, blowing dietamacious earth right at my crotch
in my groin area. And that's the best way you get to deal with
that. You know, maybe you put a little half on your dog or
something so you don't, you know, a braid or your read through.
But aside from that, you'll be fine. Diatoms you ever have? Do
you think I could make a living just reading Wikipedia pages? Maybe maybe we'll
just have a podcast or we go through because I got to learn this shit
too. This has been a while since I've read about the streminophiles, which
I don't even know what the fuck they were, but I knew roughly in
this clade of eukaryotes, diatoms, brown algae, and it's all just third
because we were reading about ooh ooh mi sis. Anyway, Yeah, so
the shells of dead diatoms can reach as much as a half mile deep on
the ocean floor. Jesus fuck and the entire Amazon Basin is fertilized annually by
twenty seven million tons of diatom shell dust transported by transatlantic winds from the African
Sahara, much of it from the Boudolat Depression, which was once made up
of a system of fresh water lakes no ship. Yeah, you know,
in the Pelagic Ocean, not the near because limestone is mostly formed in the
near the near coastal, in shallow oceans, right, because most of the
wait I thought diatoms are photosynthetic, aren't they Yeah, they are, okay,
right, but anyway, Yeah, but the near shore, most of
the I think, because cocoa, lithophores and form an inphra make their shells
that a calcium carbonate. That's what settles that. When they die, they
settle down at the at the bottom of the seafloor, you know, and
form a calcareous ooze. It's like a limestone that hasn't been lithified yet.
It's what limes. Limestone's progenitor is that calcareous mud, the squishy MUDs.
You're too good for the squishy MUDs. And when that lithifies over time and
with compassion and pressure, uh, that turn that forms a sedimentary rock limestone,
whereas in the deeper parts of the ocean you get more of a silicious
ooze down there. You get more of a solicious ooze down there. You
know when this when it's a deeper ocean, when the fucking floor of the
ocean is you know, so deep? And why why is that? Though?
I think, hold on, let me look this up again. Oh
this is okay, You're not gonna believe this. And I knew this at
one point fifteen years ago. Areas of the ocean that lie beneath the carbonate
compensation depth below which calcium carbonate dissolves, typically beneath four to five kilometers,
will be dominated by silicious ooze because calcium carbonate based material would dissolve in these
regions. So because of so much pressure, no shit, wow, yeah,
so that's why, Because in the deep ocean, the calcium carbonate would
just dissolve. So that's why limestone is typically shallower. What is the depth
at which calcium carbonate dissolves in seawater? Though, fucking a, I knew
this, can't believe I forgot this is important, man, the formation of
biogenic hirt and you know limestone. But remember that radiolarians and diatoms they build
their shells out of silica, their cell walls out of silica, whereas cocoa,
lithophores and fora maniferra build their cell walls out of out of calcium carbonate.
And that's what that's what forms limestone. So shirt, biogenic shirt,
like radiolarian shirt like you see in the Franciscan complex out in Bay Area,
California. Beautiful walls of these rock walls are fucking red, you know,
like in a road cut red shirt that's been rot tossed and turned had its
salad tossed by tectonic forces as it was being accreted to the continent once the
subduction zone was, when the subduction zone was still there before the san andres
was. But yeah, that's that's what you know. Diatoms are single cell
algae that contains silica and their cell walls, and so are radularians, and
the cell wall of both those organisms can decompose and become sediment for the seabed.
And that's how radiolarian shirt and diatomaceous earth are formed. That's fine,
How do we fuck do we get to talking about that? I can't even
remember. How do we get here? I don't know, I don't know.
I can't even remember either. So again three iterate coco lithophores and forum
iniphra, calcium carbonate diatoms, and radiolaria silica. Coco Lithophores are autotrophs,
meaning they generate their own food. They're photosynthetic, and Foraminiphra are heterotrophic like
animals, they need to eat other things. Diatoms, conversely, are autotrophic
and orally they're they're photosynthetic plankton, and radiolarians are generally heterotrophic. I don't
think are there any photosynthetic radiolarians that would be kind of amazing, Let's see,
I don't think so. Yeah, man, I got I learned all
this shit a long time. That was a fucking great there was. I
learned this in an oceanography class. It was very, very enriching my life.
Anyway, Then this all started because we were just we were reading about
we were just reading about oh my seats, ooh, oh my seats.
But definitely I got a radiolarian tattooed on my hand. That's what that that
thing is. I was so inspired by learning about these fucking years ago and
there their shells are so beautiful, these little you know, the these single
celled fucking organisms. Man. Anyway, yeah, so uh anyway, I
don't know what the fuck. Go get some of that limestone dust from the
road cut throw it in your soil mix. God, I can't look at
the fucking I can't look at these Wikipedia pages. I get too excited because
I'm like, why don't I fucking know this stuff? Why don't I have
this clade? What would you di diaphorathtics? Do you? Diaphora tikis is
a major group of you caryotic organisms? Over? What the fuck is this
clade didn't even exist when I was studying all this shit, you know,
but being that these are microscopic organisms, I guess that would make sense because
it was, you know, and fuck when I was learning this stuff,
like DNA sequencing like was just really coming at like two thousand and six,
it was just starting to come into play with all this stuff. I mean,
this is shit you couldn't really study before DNA sequencing existed. At least
you couldn't study the taxonomy of it, because it was just looking at these
tiny, tiny things through a microscope. But I got now, I'm now
I'm tripping out. I gotta notice stuff. You know, why did I
notice stuff? Instead of last night I was eating a bowl of cheerios,
and you know, watching Sopranos for the ninth time. It's the only fucking
thing I watch. Old reruns of Sopranos are like fucking uh. TV is
such poison generally, but you know, that's ay, that's a really in
depth show. It goes really deep with the character development. Everyone's kind of
rotten except for the therapist. Everybody's tainted except for the therapist. And you
know, just just it. It's a fucking what. It's a lot of
a lot of good stuff going on, sleazy Jersey guidos. Instead of doing
that, I could have been reading about this and memorizing. I gotta write
this down. I gotta. I'm also gonna work on my fucking annotated checklist
of Texas vascular plants, and it's just gonna be the crime Pace version all
the ones I've seen and I'm interested in. So the sedges will probably be
left out. I'm sorry, I just you know, unless it's a nice
looking sedge, it's a nice looking sedge. If it's a nice looking sedge.
It'll make it in the check. It's not going to be the entire
vascular plant flora of Texas, obviously it would be nice. It's just gonna
be a nice PDF you can pull up on your phone if you forget a
genus name or something, but you remember the family, which happens to me
all the time, So it'll be organized by family, and then beneath every
you know, every fucking tax on, every species will have a few sentences,
you know, a nice remark about it. You know that just written
by me. That's just about where it's observed, something notable about it,
et cetera. So it's meant to just be something you can easily consult in
your flat. It's not a it's not a key. It's just something to
be able to look up and be like, oh, yeah, right,
that's that was the name of it, you know, instead of like because
it happens to me all the time. Now I'll forget genus names because there's
just so much shit in my head that I've seen, but I always remember
the family, what family something was in just by the way it looks.
I mean, it's it's like second nature, you know, That's why it's
memorizing synapomorphis and characteristics of a family is so worthwhile because even when you forget
the genus name or species name whatever, you can always remember the family and
be back on track to remembering, you know. And but you got to
go through this shit every six months or something too, especially if you're seeing
a lot of plants and traveling a lot. That's you just got to go
over it every six months. That's what primarily what I use I naturalists for
all my locations are obscured and not one of these dwaves. It goes out
and tries to fucking identify everything. For some I'm glad some people do it
all right. Some people are really on point, like Joshua, Texas Josha
ekro Is how you pronounced it, Like that dude goes like, you know,
he knows his shit really well. I'm glad he's out there. But
then there's people who like will comment on my shit that live five thousand miles
away, and they're just it's like, buddy, you're just throwing shit to
the wall like to see if it sticks. You don't even know, Like
what are you doing? Like just settle down, like you live on the
other side of the ocean. Like you know, I don't do that.
I'm not trying to. Like, if I can be of service and help,
you know, I'll identify something. But if I'm not sure, I
won't. Also if I have time, you know, my main point of
iyin ad is to keep along of all the things I see. It's not
to use it as like a social media got somebody's fucking nerds. God,
I just I feel like there's just so many people. Not it's mostly dudes.
I will say that it's mostly dudes, and it's mostly young dudes,
like under the age of twenty five, who are just trying to come off
as fucking know it all and showboat and impress people and just like you know,
but that's so you know young my well, young men are jackasses.
I was fucking I'm still a jackass, but I was a really bad I
was a really big jackass when I was much younger. I don't really trust
anybody under thirty, no offense, just not reliable. You don't know yourself
yet, you don't have a sense of your identity, don't have a strong
enough backbone yet. You know, it's just just fucking you know, it's
just the human thing. It's don't trust anybody into thirty, especially if they're
fucking male. I think just the male neurochemistry is so much so there's just
so much more at stake and so much more potential for bullshitting. Well,
it's nice you'd say that. It's think it. They think it depends on
where someone was brought anyway, it's not we're fucking talking about. The point
is you gotta you gotta di diaphoretic keys. Diaphoretic keys is the clade four
hundred thousand species, a major group of your caryotic organisms. The majority of
the Earth's biomass that carries out photosynthesis belongs to diaphoretic keys diapherretic keys DA p
h o et. I hopefully this clayde Now, if I memorize this,
it doesn't disappear, and they don't rename it in fucking, you know,
ten years, and I think they think they're done shuffling shit around, at
least on at least in these major levels. I think, you know,
the DNA sequencing, the PCR has been out for long enough. Molecular phylogenies.
Yeah, this is cool stuff, though, Holy shit, yeah,
man, all right, hold on, okay, so do you anyway?
This is diaphyretic. Plants and algae are in diaphyretics too, but they're on
a different branch. You gotta look at a phylogy, at a cladogram of
this. What the fuck what is haptista? Oh my God, Jesus Christ,
this is such a fucking this is so beyond my reach, but beyond
my realm. I think it's a coco lith I think Coco lithophoors are in
that. But this shit is important. These are all these cool microorganisms that
fucking support life on Earth. You know they've been around for a long time
too. I just wanted to read about ooh my seats. I don't know
how we got here anyway. I think we could wrap it up, but
you should really go through the Wikipedia page. You read about some of these
bastards, you know, these these little micro micro you know, turn yourself
into microbiologists for a minute. You know the Stremino files, all these It
doesn't even say like, it just says Claye. There's not even a fucking
label like division order, not of this, just clade. What the fuck
this is? God? Is there a book you could read about this,
like advances in the last twenty years of microbiology of how these fucking things,
You know, because I just I said, I wanted to just learn about
Okay, filum, here we go, Guyrista. I just wanted to learn
about ooh, my seats. Guyrista is a phylum of heterocont Protus. What
the fuck is a heterokont Oh? Yeah, the stiff part tripart external hair.
Okay, Now we're just the parasitic pseudo fungi, the mostly photosynthetic ochro
fita. Oh my god, what is okra fida? Is this brown algae?
No kelp is okra fida? Okay, oh god, this is fucking
a. All right, I don't let you go. I'm just repeating myself
now. All right, well, thanks for listening. Have a GRACERD.
They go fucking upbody,