Javelina Mngmnt, Restoration, & Peyote Vultures

Well, you know, I'll tell you. I'll tell you when society really
started to go downhill, and I can I can even give you a dating.
The goddamn time. It was the Dayton time that the boss scouts let's
started letting homosexuals in their organization, started letting homosexuals in the weeblows. And
that was the decline of America. Fucking Texas, Fuck fucking Texas. How
am I gonna make it out of here? Well, I know, probably
not. Anyway, Welcome to another episode of the Crime Page. But Bideny
doesn't podcast. Oh god, I gotta fucking you. Got those friends you
can call invent to, you know, like a therapist, you know when
you're because you know, you can't afford therapy anymore whatever, any health care
and it's you know, expensive as everything's fucking expensive as fuck with the United
States dystopian charm. Anyway, you got those friends you can call. I
just called one of them, invented about how I was. You know,
well, first off, I was meeting with uh, the city. I
don't know what they I don't know what they do. They were actually pretty
cool there, pretty cool people. They were the place where the city where
I live. They're in charge of beautification quote unquote for lack of a better
word, and public greenery. And anyway, the meat with one of them,
so you could tell me why why we can't plant trees on the Hell
Strip what's colloquially known as the Hell Strip. This fan is really fucking too
much. You know what I'm leaving on. It's the breeze. It's a
nice backer. You don't mind a white noise, do you. Uh?
He had he had to explain to me. Uh, And it wasn't his
fault. He was just the messenger. But he had to give me a
litany of excuses as to why we can't plant trees on the median strip,
you know, between the or the Hell Strip, between the sidewalk in the
street, in a place where it it's one hundred and five degrees for six
months out of the year. Why we can't do it. We can't plant
all these cool native legumes. And I'm not giving up yet because he is
cool, He's on my side. But uh, anyway, I had the
meat with him, and I forget what reasons it was the someone in the
fucking legal department for this. It's so backwards where I live is like nineteen
fifties. This is good for me because it brings me back to being twelve
years old and wanting to set everything on fire, except now it's not literally,
it's just figuratively. I'll do it kindly, I'll do it politely,
but I want to change this shit because it's completely unacceptable for the fucking I
mean, it's just stuck in the nineteen fifties. The issues that we are
facing is a fucking civilization are just so far off the map, the mental
map of anybody who's in charge down here in the culture at large. They
just want everything to look like a fucking parking lot or a subdivision, and
every little last bit of green space is getting destroyed. Anyway, I was
there with a friend of mine who works at the Butterfly Cuenter, who runs
the Butterfly Center. Really cool woman, real, you know, she's like
sixty fifty sid I think he's like fifty. Real shit's they're a cool lady.
And she had organized this meeting, and I was surprised that the people
I was actually talking to were somewhat interested in what I had planned. I
was like, Yo, this, we're losing all this habitat this is the
public parcel that I was talking about. Well, I want to talk to
the one guy about planting street trees, which I could get volunteers to do
and also get funds to do. Fuck, I'll put my own money and
I don't give a fuck. I just want to see more trees. We'll
plant more trees. Havardia, Texas ebony tepawahe which is another legume. It's
mostly legumes because they're just the sturdiest fucking trees in this summer heat. And
again the intense sun in the summer heat or what we have to worry about
down here, that sun. Will you put a piece of plastic in the
sun, come back two months, a month later, it'll just be it'll
just crinkle up, you know, and then you can go dump it in
the ocean for the you know, all the microplastics. I mean, it's
just the effect that this heat and sun, the ultraviolet and the heat have
on any kind of material object besides a rock that you expose it to for
any amount of time. It's just I mean, if you're building like a
wood framed pergola here and you use treated wood, you have to I mean,
you can't really I mean, you have to like stain it and so,
I mean, you kin't of have to do that anywhere. But it's
just it'll warp, it'll bend, I mean, and it does it within
a week or two. Because the sun down here is just so fucking brutal.
None of these cacti grow out in the sun, except for maybe some
of the Puntia species of the prickly pair. I think it's angle Mannii,
angle Mannie or Lyndheimer. I don't. It's a clusterfucking taxonomy and it goes
back and forth are the species of prickly pair that grow down here. But
the sun is just so brutal. So I was meeting to try and talk
about planting street trees, which I mean planting free trees that won't cost the
city anything, will do the maintenance. We can get a crew of volunteers
to do it, make a fucking video about it, put some nice pr
for the city, even though they don't give a shit. It's always nice,
right, you know. The amount of pushback and obstacles that I've had
trying to do this, it's been a year now, has been insane.
I had a dude called the cops on me for doing it last year.
No offense to any of the fatties. I love the fatties, but this
guy was like three hundred and fifty pounds, totally pre diabetic. I've never
seen him on foot walking anywhere, and he just went on this rant against
this insane rant. And this doesn't matter. This is I'm diverging. It's
juvenile love me, I know, but it's just I take it into account
when you're fucking arguing with someone and you're like what you're saying is the dumbest
shit, and you're also like ill, like how are you there? And
I've did not just like overweight, but like gargantuanly obese, and I'm just
trying to fucking figure out, like man, what like why is this guy
fighting me on planting fucking trees in front of his property. It's not his
property, it's just in front of his property, Like this should be this
is a nice thing to do. This is I'm doing it because it's gonna
make the neighborhood nicer. So when it's one hundred and five degrees, there's
not you know, you get less that sun hitting the fucking asphalt, baking
the concrete, charging the battery. That is the urban heat island, which
continues to radiate heat into the fucking wee morning hours. Like, why is
this dude fighting me? I just couldn't understand it. It was so fucking
mind blowing. Anyway, So I'm trying to do that. That happened eight
months ago, nine months ago. Now I'm trying to go through the city
and do it. I had a little bit more luck, and so now
what we're trying to do is there's the hike and bike as it's called the
hike and bike. It's this little parcel, this crumb of land surrounded by
more greenery like miskeat woodland. It was disturbed at one point, probably bulldozed.
The miskeat is taken back over. There's a little bit of Hamado cactus,
a little bit of Mammalaria hyder isin cactus diversity, and a lot of
buffalo grass in guinea grass and uh, you know, people go. It's
one of the few places that you can actually walk and bike without the threat
of being you know, killed by a vehicle. In South Texas. That's
like the I mean, really, the whole I thirty five Corridor is like
that. It's just a car slum. But uh, you know, but
so and there's a couple patches of cactus diversity which resemble what I saw at
the Chihuahua Woods Preserve. It's a preserve, not now when I came here
in twenty fourteen, when I came here specifically to look at lafafra at astrophytum,
and I just had this hunger for fucking plant diversity, and I wanted
to get the fuck out of California and see some other things I've been reading
about all these cool species. It's actually what I'm writing about my book right
now. Hopefully it doesn't suck. We'll see either way. I got the
advance, so fucking Abrams is out if it does suck, if the book
flops anyway, That's what I came to see was the cactus diversity here,
and it blew my fucking mind. I've never seen anything like it. I
mean, i've photos up before, I think I put them up on the
on the blog, on the website, but it is just, you know,
I just saw these barren patches of dirt, this fine particled silty clay
that's bone dry, or you know, when it's dry, it's like a
powder. It's when it's bone dry, when it's wet, it's like a
rich clay that is so nutrient rich and stays moist for so long because the
fine particles and how it holds onto water that lichen will actually grow on the
ground here. And there was a kind of serious penthealfus which looks like a
big medusa's head full of green fucking dreadlocks or or snakes. Sorry to give
anybody bad mental image root air of the notorious, you know, white hippie
dreadlock thing. I apologize. You know, that's what I think of Sadly,
when I think, I don't think of like Rasta's worshiping John and smoking
dubes. I think of, you know, white dreadlock warriors. Terrible imagery,
terrible, but that's what this looked like. It looked like a medusa
ahead of green stems, huge pink flowers and they go off. It kind
of series any of cant this Mammalaria hideye and ciscro cactus, sheery eye,
amado cactus, set of spi. This incredible cactus diversity and no buffalo grass.
Yet it was a well managed preserve. Fast forward ten years later,
Butterfly centers taken over this little parcel of land. Nature Conservancy just tailed off.
I don't know. They're too busy spending all the money you give them
on fucking mailers to ask for more money and having banquet halls where they farten
the wineglasses and sniff each other's ass. I don't know what they do,
but apparently they weren't doing much in the way of actually conserving the habitat down
here, which really needs it, and this is such an understudied area.
So that's what we're trying to do with thorn scrub all this. Anyway,
so that's the plan was, and the lady we spoke to was really cool.
Hopefully she doesn't listen to this podcast because she'll probably change her mind.
Change her mind than me. I had no idea. He was so fucking
offensive and lude and cursed so much anyway, But anyway, yeah, so
this what we're hoping to do is go in to this hiking and biking trail
area and remove these monocultures of buffalo grass, restore some of the cactus,
and then the havelina are just I thought it was farrel pigs at first.
I think it's just ta Alena are murking, just digging up and chewing on
the hamatocactus, which is all that's left. The Mammalaria hyder eye is already
mostly gone. Mammalaria hider eye is a cool, clumping little rosette can reach
you know, the size of a grape root. If not more really important
do here. It grows in this mud. It loves the mud. There's
a couple residual populations, but like Lofafa and so many other species, it
used to be much more common now that diversities reduced. So this is a
I mean, really this is I did a video one this. This is
shifting baselines, perfectly illustrated. I mean, this is shifting baselines, perfect
case study in it. You know, when every successive generation thinks that what
they're inheriting is normal, and they have no idea on the biological riches that
were squandered by the generation before them, and you know, no one cares
about it that here because no one knows. And I don't fall people for
not knowing. You know, there's that Elder Leopold quote. You know,
being alive with an ecological consciousness today is being alive. It's like being alive
in a world of wounds, because no one knows about this stuff, because
we live in this myopic human world where half of us think that this physical
world is just a journey to go see the man upstairs, whoever the fuck
that may be. You know, venture, you know, whatever fairy tale
it is that you believe in, that it's somewhat irrelevant to the here and
now. Or they just want the fancy shit. They want the glossy shit,
the fucking you know, the botox treatments at age thirty, the fucking
muscle cars, the giant, gleaming pickup trucks that are comically comically oversized.
I had a friend from the UK a few months ago here, my friend
Pria, she was visiting and she's so the fucking She's saw one of these
trucks and was like, she thought my truck was big, and I drive
like a small Toyota. She thought it was. I mean, she was
seeing some of the trucks here and just laughing her ass off. She's like,
that is so ridiculous. It's like a fucking it'd be like it's just
seeing someone driving a clown car, like this is a is this a satire?
Or like what is this you know, this is like such a but
you know, that's what people want. Whatever, without you know, getting
into the particulars of vehicle size. That's what people want. They want the
fancy shit. But I believe like happened them. If you showed them how
cool all this other shit can be and what a nice release it is,
they might want that instead. But they have to be able to see it.
And if they can't see it, they're not going to give a fuck.
They're certainly not going to give a fuck. So we're trying to create
a little you know, mini native just starting off forty foot by forty foot
cactus garden fenced off with hog panel, which is like a really strong fencing.
I think it's like sixteen No, it's thirty bucks for like a sixteen
foot leg to protect these things from the heavily in it. Because at whatever
we plant, we'll just get destroyed. And then we will just put t
posts in, put the hog panel up, start small, and just you
know, put in like a demonstration garden so that people can see what was
here and what could be restored if people give a shit. You know,
this is like doing the onceler thing here, you know, you know,
just like in the Lorax. So anyway, who knows. I don't know.
I don't really have any faith. I tend to be, you know,
somewhat negative, somewhat of a cynic. But who knows. At least
we're talking with people who have the power to put this on other people's radar,
who could possibly fund it. I told the fucking guy too, a
hold the fundraiser, Like we raised thirty k for Thorn Scrub Sanctuary already,
it's just sitting in a fucking bank account that we figure out what parcel of
lamb we're gonna get. I'll talk about that later. We could raise a
few hundred bucks easily and get volunteers to come out and do this stuff.
I would have fun. That'd be fun. What's the fucking come out?
You live in San Antonio, live in Austin, come down, you come
on down here to Mission Texas or Mccanleith Texas, and we'll spend a day
on a Saturday or Sunday, you know, clearing up buffal I prefer not
to use glyphis sate until you know. If some of you are opposed,
you don't have to fucking touch it. I'm not opposed spot applications are fine,
it's the large scale agriculture. If you're spraying food crops with fucking Glyphis
state, that's absolutely insane. That's absolutely insane, if not sociopathic. I'm
talking about small, selective spot applications of this stuff, which is a poison,
but selective applications for invasives, you know. But we don't even have
to do that at first. We have to have to get this stuff out
of You can cut it and then spray it, you know, remove most
of the leafy growth, because you're gonna have to do that anyway, and
then spray it, and then we'll be planting a bunch of cacti that I'm
growing from seed. Other people are growing from seed. I'm collecting seeds of
the cactie down here. We're gonna fucking I'll sell them to people if I
might even I mean, if I can find someone who can contract grow them,
that would be ideal. Just grow five hundred of these things for us.
You know what. I went to this guy who grows for fish and
wildlife down here, and he grows everything in tubes. You buy a milk
crate full of, like Jesus Christ, fifty plants he grows them in tubes,
and he just uses the native soil that find particled clay, silty sandy
clay, with like a silty loam that's got like twenty percent calcareous sediments in
it and a lot of organic, decomposed organic material, all deposited by the
river. The soil here is so fucking cool. I mean, people who
live in Tucson or southern California, the soil here will blow your fucking mind.
If you're used to desert, you know, to desert soils. This
is so different. I mean, it's so hard to describe where I live.
It's not the Southwest, man, It's like a tropical It's a subtropical
desert. It's thorn scrub, and that's where the peyote grows. That's where
the astrophy item grows. All these cool cacti, all these cool plans,
you know, but we could easily arrange that. Come down on a Saturday,
we'll shoot the shit. We'll listen to some music. Anybody can ask
me whatever fucking questions we could talk about whatever. It'll just be like,
you know, I give these fucking presentations, giving one online at Swarthmore College.
Next week I forgot I signed up. It's like, fuck, how
to fuck? The person who wrote me about it wrote me like six months
in advance. I don't fucking know what I'm gonna do. I don't know
what I'm doing. Six months from that, I don't even know what I'm
doing. Two weeks from now, I just live day by day. Man.
No, I just I can't plan. I don't know the important shit
book deadlines up plan. I'll probably miss that too. But you know,
I don't know six how to fuck the people some of you go getters.
You know, I don't know how you do this. And even if you're
on like an aneroid prescription or something, you know you gotta have your whole
life penciled in. It blows my mind. But the power to you,
if you can do that. I can't just think about anyway I found out
this. You know, I'm supposed to go survey Land in West Texas.
The same day I've got this, this presentation at Swarthmore on Zoom Zoom.
I said to cancel my zoom subscription. Jay les Lay convinced me to sign
up for it. I love you, Jay, but that was a bad
call on your part. Anyway, So uh, anyway, I don't know.
I'm gonna have to fucking this like in noon. What is that Eastern
time? Where the fuck is Swarthmore is at Eastern time? I'm so fucked
up? Eleven am Central? Then? What what am I doing? What
am I doing? I need an assistant? Jack. Jack could be my
assistant. My senile dementia ridden dog is gonna be fifteen in May. We're
gonna throw him a pizza party. Maybe we'll do it on zoom. So
anyway, but uh, yeah, you come down here and we'll just have
a nice It'll be like a we could talk, you could shoot the shit.
You will have quite well, just be fun, you know. And
we're doing a volunteer effort to build this little cactus gar But I need to
know that the city is not going to fuck with us and that they actually
give us the okay on it. And if they can fund it, that
would be ideal. If not, I'll find I'll find funding whatever. I
just want to fucking get this done. I was at the one remaining Hamato
cactus population today. I went there with this kid, Sebastian, nice guy
from Star County, like nineteen. He just hit me up. I was
like, he's like, I want to, you know, learn more of
this. Okay, cool, let's go out. I'm consider him a friend
now. So I was like, let's go out to the fucking hike and
bike. Let's dig some shit up and replant these cacti which the pigs the
helina knocked over. So we did that and then that was like a month
ago. I came back today with my daughter and they're already uprooted again,
and there's huge chunks taken out of these hemato cactus. These are like,
I mean, you know, one of these things looks like a small fire
log, you know, one of those it's like the same diameter as like
those artificial fireplace logs, you know. I mean, that's a fucking old
plant. That's like a fifteen year old plant, which is relatively old for
this species. And I can only imagine what other diversity was there before Mammalaria
hydrae all these things. Because they've all got these red bird dispersed fruits.
The birds will pluck them out, eat them in the canopy of the misket,
shot out the seeds, or just make a mess with the seeds.
And then, of course, since that clay soil is so sticky when it
gets wet. If they're a good rain probably a lichen bed is a good
spot to nurture some of these seedlings, some of these beds of lichen.
It's so fucking cool down here, ground lichens, you know, that's where
the seeds germinate. And so anyway, the helena are just destroying these things.
Helena are a native, of course, but they used to be somewhat
rare. There also used to be jaguars down here, which kept the healina
in check as well as hunters, so you know, and some of these
things just gotta get shot. And that's just the way it is. You
need the fucking I'm sorry, it sucks you leave the little ones. You
know, you could maybe, you know, take the little guys, put
a little sailor head on them or something, send them on their way,
just fucking around, of course, and you got to shoot some of the
other way. I mean, they need to. You gotta do it,
you know, because that's checks and balances. That's an eco. You can't
they don't speak English. It's like you could talk to him and be like,
hey, you guys are sucking up our plot. Of rare and endangered
plants left on this crumb of habitat while the rest of this, you know,
the land around us, gets swallowed by this fucking tumor that we've created
for this go nowhere lifestyle. I wouldn't understand. You just unfortunately you have
to shoot one or two. And that's how it works. I had a
friend that has land in a central western Arizona and he was putting water out
for a little critter as that he grows a bunch of cool desert plants,
and uh, and he started getting deer, just destroying everything that he had,
all these rare agaves, all this stuff. I said, I didn't
just shoot him, and it was he eventually relented, that's what he had
to do. But uh, but you know, I just don't understand.
I mean, I it's all part of the way things go here on this
planet. It's part of the people who are against hunting. I don't get
it. I don't even eat I don't only even eat meat. I eat
chickens sometimes. You know, I generitely avoid red meat. Not gonna turn
it down if i'm you know, someone's hosting me and they offer, but
uh, you hear it there's a cactus rent outside. Do you hear that
little anyway? But I can't get I just can't understand these people who are
against hunting. You gotta fucking mark some of these these you know, they
have a liena down here. If this keeps up, will be what deer
are in the Midwest and on the East Coast where they don't have any predators
and no one really hunts them anymore, so they just end up all over
the fucking road and uh, and just all smashed up, and the tick
population goes through the roof because each fucking deer is like a tick farm.
And wildfire has been suppressed too up there in a lot of these places,
like in the Illinois. So you know, the whole the whole ship here
on planet Earth, the whole ecosystem is just out a whack and imbalanced.
Then, uh, hunting's got to be a part of it. You know.
If you take out the main apec predators, fucking jaguars. Can you
imagine it to see a jaguar in Texas and they went all the way up
into Austin. Jaguars went all the way up into Austin and the Edwards Plateau
and the death cult took them out. I can't understand that. It's so
weird, man, just the whole concept of learning to live with things,
you know. But here I am talking about have Alina talking about shooting Helena.
We could live with the Havelina. Put them in birthday hats and sailor
out fits, shoot a couple of the large males and send them on their
way. Anyway, this fucking podcast is getting so deranged, isn't it?
With every episode. Haven't had a guest on in a while. I'm gonna
do that at some point. But so that's the plan, is to set
up this little demonstration garden forty foot by forty foot te posts and and hog
panel which is just the square, you know, steel wire hog fencing,
and then and and set that up and just you know, and then be
able to plant stuff and be able to demonstrate what the habitat looked like.
Got it'd be so great. And you'll need a couple of shrub species too.
If not, if you don't have that overstory of miskit, the miskit
here doesn't get that tall. You know. You go to Arizona, you
got Prosopis volutina, which is like a blue misky, blue leaved misky with
that kind of divericate branching. Here, it's like this weeping green miskuit.
Prosopis glandulosa. I think they changed now it's nel tuma. Because all these
legume, so many legumes, look so much alike legume trees that they were.
It was really easy to lump things together that were not taxonomically very closely
related, and so you know, they got split up, like what was
it nel tuma, and then that dwarf misky got split up into I forget
the I forget the fucking genus anyway. But speaking of deer, I think
I mentioned in the last podcast I hit a deer near Wimberley, Texas.
I was driving the Javiers. I was with Lily. We were in a
sedan, a rental sedan because my truck had a fucking torque converter. The
torq converter shit the bed, which is I think if I'm not and I'm
not a fucking accompt but I think a tor converter is the thing on an
automatic car. It's what I get for driving an automatic transmission own manual.
My whole life first automatic transmission vehicle. The torque converter goes out after four
years. I bought this fucking truck new. I couldn't believe it, just
fucking fucking toy. And you know, of course the dealership was just like,
fuck you get out of we don't We're not you know, that'll be
three grand serves Jesus Christ. Really, so you know, I stole a
couple of pens and fucking mints from their waiting room area, a couple more
than I was entitled to. You know, you got to get this,
the little little achievements in life to make it count. But this fucking deer
if I I don't think I mentioned this the details of how this happened.
Last time we were driving. It was foggy as shit and in Google Normally
I should have taken I thirty five through Austin gotten off there to go to
Hoviers, even though he lives on the Edwards Plateau. But instead I took
Google suggestions and took the back roads, despite the fact that it was foggy
at shit at eleven o'clock at night, and this fucking deer ran right into
my goddamn into the sedan we were driving. It was a twenty twenty three
Toyota Corolla with two thousand miles on it. Now it's probably got a salvage
title. I lost a deposit there, but you know whatever, it's not
my issue. They got fucking insurance. And that was when I learned that
there's a difference between comprehensive insurance and collision totally different things. You know.
I was being cheap and had a high deductible on the collision insurance. I
didn't know that comprehensive, you know, was something different. I thought just
collision. I said, Ah, if I get an accident's my own dumb
ass fault. I didn't know i'd be you know, my car would be
assaulted by a deer. So now I got a lower deductible and a comprehensive
look into it. All right, But anyway, the fucking deer, it
wasn't Steven standing in the middle of the road. It just came out.
It ran into the fucking vehicle, and then I think we killed it and
it went off. You know, I would have ship would have I would
have. I got to learn how to field dress those things, you know,
you get all you know, all primitivists out there hit a deer.
Now's your golden opportunity. You know, go gut it. Take some of
the fur, get the venison, take the wreck, you know, make
nice dog chew toys. Whatever. But anyway, the vida, the engine
was fine. So we continued driving into West Texas and back and uh,
it made the trip fine. Then I just kind of limped limped it back
into the dealership. When I got my truck with a fucking major mechanical issue
after only four years of use a torque converter, it started making it sound
like when you drive on a ridged shoulder of a road. It started doing
that. But it was doing it and I wasn't driving on the shoulder.
It was just the fucking torque converter wasn't catching with a piece of shit.
Anyway. Update on the payote Martin Terry's peyote. God, it was crazy.
I guess all these vultures, I'd like to think none of them learned
of it from this podcast, But all these vultures hit up the dean of
Sewel Ross to see if they could get the payote instead. When they you
know, when I think they found out that morning Stars Morning Star didn't have
the correct DEA permit, which they now have. They now they I guess
all of those plants are going to a research lab that morning Stars associated with,
and so they're gonna be safe, and then they're gonna work out a
way to actually get them back to the morning Star Conservancy to put them in
the ground. But man, I just I've never it just was like pigs
at a trough, like all these different organizations trying to get get those plants
just fucking you know, I just I don't get it. Is it really
that this is like such an easy plant to grow from seed? Why are
you not? And you can grow them from seed and graft them just like
any cactus and get golf ball sized plants in a year that will then start
flowering and you can get more seed. Like why are people not doing that?
Like why would you want? I just don't whatever, man. And
so you know organizations that Martin Terry doesn't even like, we're hitting up the
school to try and get these plants, you know, really divisive organizations that
people don't really a lot of people don't like. I don't know them personally,
but uh, there's a bad there's some bad juju out there about them.
You know, just divisive and also bankrolled by somewhat sketchy people. I
don't know, man, whatever you know, And that's my opinion. No
one at morning Stars is the morning Star is all Leo. They're all fucking
really nice guy has nothing bad to say about anybody, you know, and
if there was anything bad to say, they would only hint it. They
wouldn't say it. I'm jackass with no filter, puts it out there.
But you know, people got to work together regardless anyway. That's you know,
to do achieve a common aim. And that's part of why payote conservation
has been failing for so long. But regardless, these plants, I guess
are going to this research lab and they're hopefully going to do some phylogenetic studies
on them, on different you know, genetic barcoding to see what the differences
are between populations, because as we all know, at least if you've been
listening to this podcast for a while, the West Texas populations are much different.
They're a different ecotype stream. That's what all the drug bros say.
It's a different stream. It's an ecotype, it's eco. Learn the words
ecotype, phenotype, and genotype. What they each mean, if you're a
drug bro. Okay, if you're one of these like Instagram drug bro guys,
no offense to you, but you got to learn it doesn't hurt to
learn a little bit of you know, evolutionary terminology, ecological terminology, okay.
Always try to get people to branch out a little bit more beyond just
the psychoactive shit and just just more anthropocentric uses. It's just more anthropocentrism,
all right, whether it's it's I mean, there's if you were smart,
you'd realize the entire fucking biosphere has an anthropocentric relevance, being that it's all
connected and it all supports us. But regardless, it's it's a hard cell
trying to get some people to a few things that way. But again,
I'm just I think everyone gets into it. Eventually. You start with that
one thing you home in on and you're fixated on, uh, you know,
for me, it was fucking conifers, and then the manzanitas and California
cypresses, and then desert plants and angiosperms as a whole. Then everything,
you know, you find that one thing and then you start branching off.
But the point is you're not just going to be some unquestioning monkey brained schlip,
you know, like so many of us humans are. That's why we're
fucking the planet into a com right now. But anyway, so they're going
to do phylogenetic studies because this is a research permit. It's not just the
same as again saying oh, I'm Native, I can use this this medicine
because I'm Native American church oriented. Uh, it's no, it's a specific
research permit you need. And so anyway, they're gonna do phylogenetic studies and
test some of the differences. Someone needs to do full genome sequencing on the
FAFRAH and see what are the you know where what genetic regions and what do
those genetic regions code for those gene regions that are different between you know,
the East Texas, the South Texas population, the West Texas population, the
San Luis Poto Sea populations. You know, of course that we see a
massive drying out of the landscape as you move west, both in the soil
the substrate type. Again, we have that fine stilty clay here that stays
wet for a relatively long time, to the rocky habitat of West Texas.
West Texas is less humid, which means the nights cool off a little bit
more, which means that maybe it means that the plants don't need as much
cover as they do here in the intense humid heat of South Texas where the
Gulf Coast starts to transition to Chihuahua desert. Cold tolerance, or the West
Texas populations more cold tolerant, being that they have less cumulative heat throughout the
year and have experienced colder nights. You know, shit like that. You
know, is that blue farina, that blue wax on the peote, is
that in West Texas? Is that a result of a phenotypic selection over however
many generations, or is that just because they're growing, you know, in
that particular in those particular visuals are growing in full sun, like where the
South Texas plants produce that same blue color and that farina if they were grown
in that same environment, you know, And then there's the whole thing,
the whole I just met up with my friend Luke who runs at Peyote Gardens
Instagram account. He was just here passing through. We went and got some
nepals. The waivos, my favorite little via Heitho Diner. She's like,
it's fucking god. I love it there. It's great, man, it's
classic. It's all old people. You go in there, it's all old
people in construction workers. It's like a it's like an exact representation of what
the Pretty later Pretty Lady diner in West Oakland that used to be on eighteenth
and Peralta used to be just a working class joint. I used to go
in there hungover all the time because I was still, you know, drinking.
It's like the hangover cafe run by an old Korean lady who would hook
me up all the time because I gave her a shit ton of plants.
I brought in so many plants for her. For Sung was her name,
and good for Sung. She sold that place. She saw the fucking riding
on the wall, all right, we all did, but she was smart.
Took me years to get out of that fucking dump. You used to
be great before what mainstream society would consider a dump. I loved. Now
it's a real shithole. Were just a huge wealth gap, no middle class
people walking designer dogs. At the same time, people are dying of fentinyl
overdoses around the corner, and human shit is draping the walls of all the
buildings that are way over valued. And you know, investors zone like half
the fucking neighborhood. Now what a recipe for disaster that is when you got
half the people in your neighborhood don't even live in the houses that they own,
they're just investors. What a fucking what a trajectory for decline and shitty
place to live anyway, But yes, Sung was she sold that place?
And uh, I think so. I don't know where to fuck she moved
to. She was from Pinole. She lived in Pinole. The suburb was
that where Green Day was from, though they were from Rodeo. And I
know those towns because I used to ride pilot freight trains. I rode freight
trains through them and also worked as an engineer running trains through them on that
fucking we There was a local I worked on for six months. It would
take a train to ozle Yard and Martinez from Oakland, and then it would
take a train back Empties, mostly Low mostly Empties there and then the Roosevelt
train would pick it up and then loads back. That was where I saw
the fucking guy beating off at Penall. Actually, I saw this dude who
looked like, uh, what was it Tommy Chong. Yeah, so this
dude looked like Tommy Chong. God, it was so so disturbing. If
I told this story on the podcast before, I don't know. But this
is a great fucking sidetrack to go off on too, because it's so funny.
And I saw that dude. Todd Francis Todd Francis art on Instagram.
Great fucking account, really cool, uh skateboard artists for Anti Hero. He
drew a picture this idyllic scene of the Golden gate Bridge viewed from the back
and there's like some yuppies running and shit, and there's a dude jerking off
in the bush. But anyway, it brought back a memory. But that's
we were. I was taking that train that Ozel train got it was so
great. I would ride my bike to work at eight in the morning,
get on the train, take this train, run it to Ozol, drop
off, run around our power switch ends on the power on the locomotive,
pick up, the loads, go back, be done by four And it
was just you know, going along the San Francisco Bay on a sunny day,
fucking beautiful. Had a cool crew I worked with, and uh,
it was just a nice three person crew too, because you needed it.
So it was more, you know, if you had a good crew,
you know, instead of just being two. It was like it is on
a road freight. Uh, since we were a local with a three person
crew, and if you had a good crew, it was just like hanging
out with your friends, just bullshit, cracking joke, sitting and sitting in
the locomotive. Locomotive smelled like piss and electrical fire, but that's okay.
But I remember we were going past Pinole and the brakemen and the conductor were
talking to each other, and I was just looking out the window at the
beautiful northern California day on the San Francisco Bay, And we went past the
signal bridge at Pinole, and I looked out the window of my right and
they didn't see any of this. And there was a guy who looked like
Tommy Chong with his pants around his ankles and a giant heart on masturbating,
and he was wearing like a headband too, like a like a white sweat
band. It was fucking disgusting, but so hilarious at the same time,
like something out of a John Waters movie, and just stroking his cock,
and he looked right at me and we made eye contact, and I sent
a chill down my spine, and I could tell this sick fuck grinned a
little bit when he knew that. I was appalled because I had the window
open. Normally can't see through locomotive windows because they're tinted, but I had
the window open. Those things will stop a bullet too, it's the thick
glass in there, but they won't stop the glare from a serial masturbator.
I don't know if he was cereal. I assume he was sick fucking probably
got off on doing this, seemed to be doing it a lot, seemed
to be enjoying it. We made eye contact and I just sat there,
gate mouthed, unable to think, and just and then I said to the
to the crew, I realized they didn't see it. I'm like, did
you just did you guys see that? Did you? Did you? And
they didn't, They didn't see it, and I just I was at a
loss. I couldn't, you know, I couldn't. I don't know.
I forgot I even was able to tell them about it. I was kind
of shell shocked. It was so disturbing. Anyway, I forget how the
fuck I got to talking about that, but but anyway, Yeah, that
was a great fucking job to work on. So anyway, Uh, before
I before I got into that segue about the fucking wonderful local job that I
was on when I worked for Union Pacific, I was talking about my friend
Luke and how he was visiting. I love it. He can be a
curmudgeonty old though he's not even is my age, but a camogeney bastard.
I can be a commergencie bastard to whatever. Anyway, But the point is
met up with him and he was talking about you know, the uh and
I don't even know if it's been tested. I just assume it's true,
the lore that you know, the South Texas population of lofafra of peyote is
self fertile, meaning the flowers. You know, you can have one plant
with a flower on it, you'll get seeds. And the San Luis Poto
sea populations are not their obliged outcrossers, like I think eighty percent of the
cactus family is astrophied. Them included that would be a good thing to test
for. And what selects for that? Right? What, evolutionarily speaking,
what selects for self compatibility versus being an obligate outcrosser. You know it did,
did the South Texas population go? I would assume it's some sort of
perhaps a genetic bottle in that event, or some kind of stress. I
mean, obviously, you're gonna have more genes and more alleles, more copies
of genes in your tool bag. If you're an op obligate outcrosser, you're
gonna you're gonna have more variability in your population, which is good to deal
with selection events, you know, stress events like the introduction of a new
herbivore or a freeze or something like that. You know it's say an herbivore
suddenly the population comes through or you know, crosses a mountain range or whatever
the fuck I mean, user imagination, what's happened over you know, the
last hover many millions of years of deep time that these plants have been growing
in the Sierra Madre and in the mountains of West and South Texas. But
you know, I would assume that's beneficial in that way. But also if
a population is reduced to a very small size, and or or you know,
a population is split into somehow by a river or something else and they're
not able to outcross as much. Then if a few plants evolve that are
self compatible and can produce seed no matter what, even though there may not
be much genetic variability, that's gonna be an adaptive benefit. So who knows,
man, I mean, there's I'm sure there's much more eloquent hypotheses than
what I just described. But but it is it it's curious, or maybe
it's just you know, genetic drift. Who knows. Maybe there's no reason
for it. Maybe it's just what evolved. And I don't know. But
certainly self compatibility among cacti is quite rare. Most I will get out crossers.
Think about that. When I got the thlo cactus and the ancestral cact
this is my front yard, you know. Now I get two, I'm
self pollinating these. I'm taking stamens off, putting them in the stigmas of
others. I got some nice Cora phanto macro maris seed. That's what I'm
turning my yard into. I'm turning it into a fucking seed farm so I
can grow more. If anyone wants some uh home Alosetephi Texensus seed, horse
crippler seed, I'll sell you some for fifteen bucks. I was gonna say,
I give you some, but then you fucking give it to someone.
People are more likely to just throw it in a drone forget about if they
actually spend money on it, you know, and then save me two seedlings,
two or three seedlings, you know, if you get if you uh,
if you can, and then we'll put we'll plant it on this property
at Thorn Scrub. So God, my fucking yard was looking nice today.
It's already eighty degrees here. It was hot in South Texas today on February.
What is the date? What the fuck is the date? To seventh
to eighth. I don't know. I don't even know what date is,
but uh, it was nice out today. It's gonna probably be a really
fucking hot summer, another brutal summer. It's so unseasonably warm all throughout the
United States. Man, the climate's so fucked up. It's kind of get
it's gonna get real real fast. And rather than looking for pragmatic solutions,
much of the world population believes that their invisible friend and the sky is gonna
save us or that or they're either that or they're inviting the apocalypse because that's
part of their crazy you know, myths and fairy tales. No offense to
any religious people, we can get down. I'm fine with religion as long
as it's you know, not sociopathic or psychopathic like some of them. Some
sects of these religions tend to be uh, you know, they just what
humanity is facing is so fucking I try. I'm sorry, I get into
this all the time, these philosophical larger perspective, you know, arguments and
rants, but it just blows my fucking mind because it doesn't have to be
like this. You know, we can be so much smarter, but we're
just there's such a void of leadership and where we act so fucking unenlightened,
like Jesus Christ, Like just the fucking people up top, man, are
just fucking up. The people down below are supposed to be stupid, they
don't know any better the people up top. There's a void of leadershi hip
up top, and capitalism isn't gonna save us, of course, you know,
I don't know, it's just the capitalism is just a fucking it's just
the machine through which all our silly bullshit runs at present. You know there,
no ism would save us. It's gonna take an entire paradigm shift and
values changes a species. But anyway, so yeah, my fucking year was
I've grown this plant, Ashley dug Weed Thaimofla tefer Luca. I fucking love
it. Timafla is in the Marigold tribe of Astaace. The Marigold tribe is
tagidi t A g E t A E A or maybe it's e a E
I don't know. Whatever the point, whatever the fucking Latin spelling of it
is, I know it if I see it. So but this Timofla is
super rare. It only grows along a small stretch of highway. Uh on
That that what they call the Jackson Group, the geological structure known as the
jack I think it comprises a number of different formations. I got these Texas
geology maps. You can download them for free. It's like a thirty megabyte
PDF. I just had some printed out, and then I was selling them
for like twelve bucks at presentations I give because they're so fucking cool. They're
so great. It's so nice to have this map on the wall and be
able to reference it. And so this Jackson Group, it's all this sandstone,
it's mostly Eocene sandstone. And then to the east, because all these
occur in strips that kind of these geologic formations kind of occur in strips the
parallel the Gulf Coast. To the east of the Jackson Group, you've got
the Ctahula formation, which has the volcanic tough that settled out of the air
from in a volcanic explosion somewhere south in Mexico and wable alone with tim Alepis.
Then you got the Goliad formation, which is younger and has all those
gravels, the gravels that you frequently see astrophytem growing with. But anyway,
this Jackson Group sandstone, you know, prostrate milkweed tends to grow on that.
A number of rare plants do with I'mafla tephra luca grows on that.
That's a federal list of plant. Prostrate milkweed's a federal list of plant.
Now. Sapata bladder pod is a federally listed plant. Physaria f M.
Naphula used to be less corilla, but it's just I means Nebrassica whatever,
it's Brassic case. Phyxaria is such a cool fucking genus. Who studies visaria?
Who's the phisaria expert? That's a fucking weird one. I've seen some
really cool ones all throughout the American West. Rosett leaves flowers don't tend to
vary too much. But uh, god damn. There was a really cool
limestone lover I saw on some karst like formations in West Texas. I think
we were on private land, but it is fine so anyway. That but
that's a pot of bladder pot And I was there once and saw growing right
next to it on these sands because it's sandy soil, because it's just weathered
sandstone. It's weathered Eocene sandstone, which was the posited in a shallow marine
environment back when it used to be the ocean y'uring an e scene. But
this plant is so cool. It's so fucking fuzzy. It's like these fuzzy
leaves just covered in hairs, almost like a Q tip, and it's just
can take such a beating of full sun like that plant can grow out exposed
in the open and it's it produces prodigious amounts of seed. If you live
in South Texas want to try growing some, Uh, send you know,
send me a d DM or a fucking email. I'll send you some seed
if you could donate fifteen bucks cool. Otherwise I'll just ask you to pay
shipping. But uh, you know, I really would appreciate if you could
donate, you know, for the for the troubles. You know, if
I see you in person, I just give it to you. But when
you we're shipping shit, it's a whole other fucking pain in the ass.
I need some motivation. Just got too much shit to do. Otherwise,
I've been selling these fucking T shirts, and oh god, that's a whole
other can of worms to talk about. The fucking printing hoodies, I'm just
outsourcing it to al. We're gonna be selling kill your lawn hoodies in masks,
really pumping it up like a sleeze bag Chicago merchant, because I was
printing them in my garage. But this, the printing hoodies is different than
printing shirts. I don't have the right press for it. It's a different
thickness of material. These hoodies are like forty percent polyester, which I know
sucks, but it's warmer, and it's just what they were offering, you
know, probably made in a fucking sweatshop. Should really buy it a nice
you know, if I was a professional operation, I'd be buying some of
the American made stuff, you know, so it's made by underpaid American workers,
not grossly underpaid workers. We're being abused overseas, you know, abuse
our own people here in America. God damon, that's rat. But anyway,
this Timofula was there when I was there with Ken King, I collected
some seed, which I guess is is I guess it's a crime. You're
not supposed to do that, but here I am admitting it on a podcast.
It's stupid. Who the fuck would actually prosecute you for collecting seed of
an endangered plant to grow more of it? Someone some of these fucking borderline
autistic you know, buy the book Pencil Neck Botanists in Texas. Maybe never
mind, I'm not gonna go down that rant, and the off chance any
of them are listening to this, I apologize. I'll take you out the
Olive Garden or Red Lobster or any other depressing chain restaurant of your choosing.
If if you were offended by that. But timofla teughra luca, the ashy
dog weed, I don't know who where the fuck they get that common name
too. Someone just had to come up with that. I feel like like
they were they were working on like the fucking pdf the government reports on this
endangered plant. What's the common name? I don't know. Just come up
with it, you know, because because because uh, thimafla tefra luca wasn't
enough. Did I just say fyzeriat tamophila before this? I can't remember anyway
I confuse us to thaimafla tefer luca wasn't enough. You gotta just gotta have
a common name. So just come up with one ashy dog weed. Ashy
dog weed. It's got to moisturize. But the thing that's so goddamn good
and cultivation, man, I couldn't believe it's it's you know, it's it's
a plant that surprisingly I have not seen anyone growing here, and now it's
volunteering in my yard too. I've just had seedlings come up, so I
moved some of those to a more full sun area, and I'm a collected
seed. I'm gonna male seed of that out too. I just want to
see more people growing all of these plants. That's what really warms my heart,
that's what gets me jazzed, That's what makes me feel like my life's
purpose is complete. And indeed, you got to have that outlook, you
know, because the ship is sinking, and at least if we can help,
you know, increase biodiversity on our way down, you know, till
we take the final big plunge, the big gulp, and civilization fractures into
different warring sex as a result of global ecosystem collapse and climb and change.
I'm sorry, come on, it's fine. You gotta have a good philosophy
and you gotta be real about it too. Just find a way. This
is why we you know, do we watch stand up comedy? We do?
We do stand up comedy. Watch stand up comedy. You gotta find
a way to laugh about all this shit. So at least you can you
be real about it instead of lying to yourself. You know, people say
you need hope. Yeah, there's hope. You don't need hope. I
mean I would do things no differently if I knew I was bound to lose
anyway. I still I do, because it's fun. The process is fun.
Hashtag process. Yeah there was her manny a text sayna at that spot
too, right on US eighty three. Where is it? I think I
got it? You know what. I normally don't give locations up, but
I'll give this location out because this is not a plant that anybody's gonna poach,
and at worst, uh, somebody would just collect seed. But if
you want to see ashy dog weed, it is. The population is on
the east and west side of Highway eighty three, uh, just northeast of
Newestra Delories. If you go on a map, you look at find Highway
eighty three just south of South Texas International Raceway by like a mile and a
half, and you find right on the river there's a spot called Nuestra Delarees.
I'm looking at Google Maps. It's a historical landmark. And the road
to Newestra Delaurees you take that goes southwest to northeast, take it northeast till
it hits eighty three, and about five hundred feet south of where that road
hits eighty three, you'll find thimaflat Tephra luca growing with all the shitty buffalo
grass in a couple yuccas and Hermannia texaya, et cetera. And if you
go collect some seed, the seed does need a brief chill to germinate,
so you might need to stratify it, might even need to start it inside
if it's you know, the ball breaking heat of summer, because a lot
of things won't germinate here in the heat of summer. I germinated Prunas tex
ana in the fall, sow the seed, collect the seed, and march
or April sod it. It of course didn't come up. It needed the
warm stratification of intense summer fucking heat. And I just put the empty pot
there, buried the seed, and I was too late. I thought it
was dead, and I thought there was a slight chance that might come up
later on, but I thought it was also largely dead, and I just
put it in with all the pots of all the other shit that I water
and it it turns out it just needed a hot stratification, a warm,
moist hat stratification, like a Kel zone. It was the Kel zone of
stratifications. Of it was the Kel zone of seed treatments. And then they
just came up, like five or six of them. The Texas almond Prunus
Texan a super rare sandsheet in dem It grows on up into San Antonio too,
And again no one I know has grown this. A guy I know,
a guy down here has got one in his yard. But you know,
these sandsheet endemics don't need sand. They can grow fine, I think
in a cultivated setting. Two if they get full sun and a little bit
of moisture. Snisio Ridelli I, which is a sand pandemic that was a
fucking hard one. You'll see it on the Texas sandsheet between San Antonio and
McCallan, and you know, blooming in the fall, just fucking covered in
butterflies. Lit up. I saw the Texas wasp moth on it. Coolest
case of baitsy and mimicry I've ever seen, well one of them. Fucking
moth, a diurnal moth that can afford to be diurnal because it looks like
a wasp. It's got patterning like a wasp. But anyway, why are
there's so many more moss than butterflies? Is that fair anyway? Yeah?
So go collect see to the ashy dog weeder if you want. You can
email me if you're gonna grow a shit ton of it and not fuck around,
no fucking around, actually do it. I hate when you give shit
to people and they just torture it inside or this doesn't happen with it actual
plant people anymore. But I remember I would give trees or plants the people
and they'd be like, look, can they keep it at a putt?
No, you can't put it in a fucking ground. What do you do?
Were you torturing it? Whend you just waterboard it? Huh? Make
you watch Blippy and waterboard it? Right? Blippy is a great torture.
Blippy the child uh star on you not child star, but you know the
children's show, the host of the children show, Blippy. That's some great
potential for integrating into a torture regime somewhere. You know, if you need
to get answers out of someone, stick a red out poker in their ass,
water board them and put on Blippy. Great fucking torture, great form
of torture. Right there. I can't believe I've just talked for an hour.
I didn't mean to do that, but there we go. We got
a podcast. I keep going. I'm not done yet. I really need
to fucking write. That's what I need to go do. And I've been
procrastinating for so long, I mean, not doing enough, but I've started
actually doing the plant write ups. I finished like the first half, which
is all gonna be autobiography, some fun stories in there, and then the
second half is it going to be basically plant porn from all around the world
with a species right up, basically what I do on Instagram, but more
fun with more photos in a paper version. And then after that book,
I've got to start another one about the invasion biology of cities, and it'll
basically be like a book form of what I've done with all the fucking you
know videos I've done of It'll be a book form of the videos that I've
done where I'm walking train tracks, checking out what's growing there, you know,
surveying the fucked up ecology these neglected places, basically the places I would
love to hang out as a teenager, you know, where i'd be painting
my little graffiti pag banger stuff and exploring and just getting some peace of mind,
you know, as a kid, going to be going to these places
and seeing what's popping up. And it's mostly going to be a mixture of
it's funny because it's mostly invasive plants, and the native plants that grow there
are the ones that are extremely vasive, invasive on other continents, you know,
And that's the thing you really got to. It's really like a continent
the continent thing when you're talking about invasion biology with lay people who don't know
anything about botany, because it's you know, I didn't understand shit about this
fifteen years ago. I thought native versus invasive or native versus non native was
bullshit. I didn't understand it. I thought it was like some weird purity
thing, and it didn't help out. The people talking about it were extremely
condescending, obnoxious, mostly white people, you know. Or maybe it's like
someone who identifies as a bipock but they still got a white parent, one
white parent, but they still like put it their profile bios all like identitarian
horseship, bipack, eighth indigenous, but hey, you fucking have white shut
up, you know, I'm sorry, I just it's just fucking hilarious.
It's like that that doesn't that doesn't define you. You're right, there is
not that, you know. I joke about being Italian, but only as
a way to, you know, write off my neurotic, obsessive, compulsive
personality flaws and various idiosyncrasies. I don't really identify as you know, Italian.
What I'm not putting my fucking bio who I am is all this weird
shit I'm into, and my fucked up childhood and all this other shit.
You know, that's what's all this superficial shit. But I get it.
Everyone wants an identity to cling through because we're raised not to have any,
because that's good for the retail economy that we're a part of. You know,
Insecure people make good consumers. Anyway. Lastly, I'll talk about the
thorn scrub property land we're trying to buy. I don't know if we're gonna
get that same property anymore. It's really infested with buffalo grass. I was
talking to someone who's who's actually already done this with habitat closer to Brownsville and
has they took agricultural land that had been completely denuded and replanted it with all
kinds of cool plant species. It was Ken King, actually, great fucking
guy. He created a parcel called Indigo Habitat. I've still never been out
there. To see it. But I half the time I call him,
he's out there spraying glyphosate on invasive grasses and he knows all that shit is
poisoned too. But again it's you know, round up ready crops and glyphasate
application to large scale agriculture and putting it in your fucking food, which is
completely insane, is much different than just using it specific spot applications on very
invasive weeds. You know, when it comes to picking your poison between invasive
monocultures smothering native biodiversity, you know, versus having possibly mild contact with an
herbicide, which is like the least toxic of all the herbicides. Some of
those ones out there are fucking nasty. It's not that bad. But again,
using cliva state on agriculture's fucking nuts, And there's actually good science out
there in terms of how it's affected human biology and physiology when we ingest it,
or the breakdown products of it. So that said, But anyway,
I was talking to him about this, and because he someone actually donated him
a parcel of land that was all agricultural land. And of course the further
east you go to Brownsville, the more expensive real estate becomes because that's where
the larger human population centers are, and that's where you know, these families
that are selling parcels of land that's been in their family for generations and the
parents suddenly the parents dying, and the siblings are all greedy and they fight
over it, and they want to divide these parcels of land up into little
ten acre plots because they think that the suburbs are coming and they're gonna be
able to sell these things for you know, way more money than their worth,
so that people can build McMansions there, so that you know, dumb
rich phrases can build the McMansions. I had a friend who didn't know that
the word fraisa is not only Spanish for strawberry, but his Mexican slang for
yuppie, for like gaudy, materialistic yuppie. And well, now you know,
you know, but she was great. I got to inform her and
tell her. But it's such a great word too, like just fucking fucking
strawberries. Oh god, it's fucking where's the origin where the etymology of the
Mexican slang term frase that come from? It's so fucking spot on God damn
it anyway. So yeah, so frasa is Spanish for strawberry, but also
for yuppie, at least in Mexico if they got that in Chile too.
So anyways, talking to to Ken about this, and uh, you know,
it's the the land is unfortunately too much money, and it's kind of
far out and doesn't have a building on it. We're looking at another parcel
that's actually got a building on it, but again the people selling it want
too much. We're trying to talk them down. Uh. And you know,
I'm self righteous about it too, because what we're doing is fucking good,
like this isn't We're not We're not buying a parcel land to build a
fucking McMansion. We're doing it to build a research station and education center and
plant a shit ton of thorn scrub plants, restore habitat and protect the ones
that are already there. And it's but it's got less. This parcel has
less buffal on it, which is cool too, so there's less grass to
remove, less shit we would have to spray. And there's already like a
storage shed on it, which would be great. And it's closer to where
you know, we are, so it wouldn't be as much of a drive.
We can keep an eye on it more. But they still just want
too much money. So maybe we need an economic meltdown. I don't know,
but uh yeah, man, I'm self righteous. It's like we shouldn't
be paying that much for this. It's fucking insane. What we're doing is
good. And you guys are greedy, you know, fuck you, and
you can come visit the land still if you have any personal attachment to it.
They probably don't, they know what he gives a shit. People just
want money, especially you know down here. I mean most of Texas is
get that. As far as I've seen, it's like that that. I
mean, most of the US has that death cult more, you know,
the hoarding, obsolute primate hoarding complexes. More than you need right now.
It's not enough to just be comfortable and know you're set and the people you
care about are set. You need more. You gotta be able to buy
motor boats, frivolous material goods, set up a little fucking man cave by
an oversized, comically oversized truck. You know, fake boobs, botox,
fancy handbags, all the dumb shit, you know, it's a it's a
death cult. It is it's a it's money is a religion to some people.
It's disgusting, it's fucking and I don't feel bad being I know it's
very Unbuddhist, you know, it's very uh somewhat toxic that be so self
righteous. But I am about about this stuff. I am because this is
the same mentality that's killing the fucking world. Man, there's the same mentality
that's got us here. I just don't get it. You know, no
perspective. Your humans are a life for eighty years at worse. You're burning
all this shit down for this, you know, very temporal lifestyle, This
gone on a blink of an eye. For all this dumb shit you can't
take with you. You know that doesn't define you. Your experience is defining
you, jackass. No one can take your experiences away from you. The
crazy things you've seen, the beautiful things you've seen, the beautiful sunsets you've
seen, the time you've laughed your asses off after setting your farts on fire
with some friends around a campfire, you know, after drinking non alcoholic beers.
It's just the personal anecdote right there. But no one calls it out.
I mean, I just like just growing up, I just that was
like such a cliche, a good cliche. The fable is that like money
doesn't buy happiness. All this shit is toxic and sick beyond a certain comfort
level. Wealth is a mental illness the whole fucking you know, it's easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle for a rich man
to get into heaven. What happened to that? The fucking this is you
know, this is like a majority Catholic area and they're not listening. They're
not listening to this what the church is telling them. I don't get it.
There's a disconnect. You know, How do just we as a culture
forget that this shit is poison, That the money is poisoned, That when
you worship money, it's a fucking poison. That when money is your religion,
it's poisoned. When you give a fuck about what people think of you
to that extent and you validate yourself through all this material bullshit, it's a
disease. Like, how do we how do we as a culture forget that?
You know, I don't know. I was reading fucking that Kennedy's record
inserts when I was thirteen some great art, though great satire was when I
first learned what sattire was. Confuse the shit out of me, my young
mind. But you know, you see the juxtaposition of like a nineteen fifties
Caucasian with a sheet eating grin, you know, taken from an ad in
Life magazine, collaged with you know, a nuclear bomb explosion or a picture
of someone running down the street with their skin on fire from napalm. You
get a nice idea of, you know, how deranged the value system is.
I think it was a nice week, some of those record ins searts.
It was at Winston Smith was that collage artist that the Dead Kennedys used
to use for all their record inserts. For anyone that doesn't know, Dead
Kennies of course, was a phenomenal punk band that was too smart for most
of punk rock. You know, rather than just writing you know, really
simple hitch over the head songs with their just how blunt they are, Dag
Kennedy's were really you know, it was all jellyby effort. They were just
doing satire, theatrics, really getting the point across. And you know,
for me reading those records when I was like, thirteen was a great way
to learn about world history and news and news events all this other shit.
I mean, they were just they were too heady, they were too smart
for most of punk. Anyway, I guess we can wrap it up there.
But anyway, so I don't know what we're doing with Thornscrub, but
it's all all that money is there sitting, and it's in the bank account
for the nonprofit, and uh, hopefully we're gonna be raising more. But
if we see something good, we're gonna get it. So then of course
everybody's you know who donated, I mean shit, anyone is welcome to come
visit, uh and and have a hand in it. But god, it
would just be so great to be able to show people this habit habitat and
host researchers, et cetera. So if you know any rich people who'd like
to donate a significant amount of money, let me know. Yeah, I'm
excited. I'm excited for it, man. Uh. And on that note,
morning Star might be purchasing some land in West Texas that's got a cool
population of Aerocarpus and l'afafa on it, as well as uh some other really
cool plants, including those Xerich firms of the family Tero Dacey, which I
guess are possible to grow. Like if you look up myriopteris propagation, what
is it? Let me look this up for you so you can actually look
it up, because they've got it's crazy. There's like an online guide to
growing these things from Spor and they're such fucking cool plants. The astrolepis our
guyracosma, not the lena. All those fuckers are just such cool genera that
Jamisonia, which my friend Matt realogists saw in in the higher elevations of Costa
Rica. Let me look this up for you. Ah, there we go,
growing meriopteris from spor. You just google growing meriapteroris and then there's a
whole page on the American Fern Society. Did you know that was the thing?
I bet those parties get raunchy, eh, just kidding. I bet
I bet this is some of the most I bet like ninety percent of that
The membership of the American Fern Society is over the age of sixty. No
offense to them. You know, some of those old people can get real
loose and get filthy mouths. On them too. Got a lot of old
friends that'll be me in fucking twenty five years. If I live that long,
I'm gonna I'm gonna make a fucking great old man. I'm gonna be
off the chain. I'll be getting arrested still at age sixty five. Been
arrested plenty of times. No convictions anyway. Cultivation of myriopteris formerly Kylanthes,
the genus Kylanthes ch e I L A N T h ees for anyone that
doesn't know who this is, you know, just new to These of course,
are known as the kylanthoid ferns, and I think it is a monophyletic
group, meaning they all share the same common ancestor, and everything that diverged
from that common ancestor is included in this group with no outliers. So the
Caylanthoid ferns, which I think is an actual family kylanthoidi are some of the
coolest. They grow in the deserts all over the world. I've seen them
in South Africa, I've seen him in Brazil. I think there's some in
the Mediterranean, of course, and then there's a ton of really cool ones
in the Southwest the America. Excuse me, the American Southwest, not the
Lena Greggy I is one I just posted on Instagram. Not the Lina.
The genus not the Lina is known for having that white wax on the undersides
of the leaf blades. The whole family, I think, the whole family
tarod Ac has those revolute margins on the leaflets as well, where they fold
over, you know, And that's what protects the spores because spores are produced
in clusters of Sporangia known as sri and most ferns have an dusium, which
is like a little scale like bract that protects the story. This family does
not. They've got false indusia, a false indusium singular and they just use
that revolute margin it over a lip to protect Some of them use that to
protect the spores. But uh Myriatress Alabama and sis is when you get out
east. But that grows again in dry sites and like rocky outcrops I've seen
in Oklahoma, Virginia. They're all fucking cool. They're they're amazing ferns.
Though you get Pilea the coffee ferns p e l l A e A out
in California. Some of those are I mean, they're get them in Arizona
and Texas too. They're fucking all incredible. You know, some of them
are blue. But but there's this whole guy that growing them from spore.
God damn, it's gotta be fucking hard, and there's probably a fungal symbiant
that's uh, that's required. But anyway, you know, it's got this
whole process spore harvest, grinding them up in a fucking mortar and pestle,
and then growing them in shallow glass containers you know, like saucers or petri
dishes, uh, and growing them on a medium of clean fine sand,
which I assume you'd have to buy from somewhere, you know online. The
fuck uses clean fine sand looks like white. It's basically white quartz. But
the important thing I guess is not getting them directly water like the correct water.
This is what it says. I'll just quote right here. The correct
watering regime is crucial. After planting, the cultures will remain moist under aluminum
foil. When they are uncovered and air is allowed to flow, the cultures
should dry very slowly. The ideal condition is one which moisture beads on the
glass. You've got these things covered, and the sand feels dry to the
gentle touch, but not so dry that it forms a hard cake. The
sand should remain loose. Adopt this mantra. Water vapor is good, standing
water is bad, so you know. And this is the same thing with
like growing cacti in a closed environment, because you need humidity. When growing
cacti, you don't need it, but that's what most people do, and
that's what has the most success. I'm growing these tiny little mammalaria hyterized.
I should actually be adjusting them, you know, slowly taking the cover off
for a few hours a day to adjust them to a lower humidity atmosphere so
that I can have better luck planting them out. Because if you just do
it immediately, you know, remember, they've created they're they're so used to
having the humidity that they'll just I imagine they would just shrivel so and they've
probably got more stomata since they can afford to. Since there's a lot of
humidity, you know, they probably produce less stomata. Actually, I don't
know, don't quote me on that. You know, the gas poors that
let in CO two and let water vapor route. But either way it said,
you know, you deal with the same thing with humidity growing cacti from
seed, because you know, you keep you give more humidity. They can
keep those stommates open longer, and they can grow, they can spend more
time actually growing, you know, whereas they probably grow much more slowly in
situ in the ground and their their habitat, you know, and then they
would inside. So I would love to try growing Myriapterus or or astro leapis
from sport Martin Grantham. My friend Martin Grantham's done it before. He gave
me a beautiful astro leapis once that he had grown from sea. I don't
know what the fuck happened to it, but uh, you know, it
would die back and you just get these wiry stems sticking up, the wiry
rakish and the leaves would shrivel up and die, and then you'd let it
kind of go dormant, and then you'd water it again and temperatures would cool
off from the heat a little bit. You know, you get a good
full sun but cool and then you water it and then it would just start
producing fronds again. Blades. It got such a but they're like fuzzy ferns,
man, they're so cool. The nath alinas are insane just because they're
they're like frosty and waxy. I saw a really fucking cool one. Oh
there's a genus called Gaga too, named after Lady Gaga and also after the
DNA sequence GA g A H. Supposedly. I think they just wanted to.
I think the people who authored that paper just wanted to name it after
Lady Gaga. It was never really a Lady Gaga fan, but you know,
I uh, it's better than name it after some fucking dead European white
guy. But yeah, man, the fucking god, the that's a feat
You're growing ferns from spore and uh I've grown those birds in that's ferns from
spor. But they're kind of invasive so it was easy. But these desert
ferns, man, that's the whole lot. I almost want to set up
like a boulder. I got to get someone to air drop a boulder into
my yard, so I can, you know, grow on on the h
on the north facing crack out of a north facing crack in the boulder.
So uh, anyway, all right, well, I think i'll wrap it
up there at our fifteen minutes. Some surprises are still listening. We're gonna
be selling these kill your Lawn hoodies me and Al a joint venture. Uh
and because I just can't fucking print hoodies apparently it fucks up way too easily.
All the shirts are fun. I like it. It's printing my artwork.
It's it's good shit. But these hoodies are hard. So we're gonna
be printing mostly black and army green. If you got any other ideas for
things you'd like to see in terms of, you know, shirts or apparel.
You know, all this shit ends up in the Pacific garbage patch when
we die, of course, but whatever, the killer Lawn at least is
a good message maybe to'll rouse some people up when you're standing in line at
the grocery store or the bank or wherever the fuck. Uh you know,
if you want to get one of those, just email me. It's crime
pays about and he doesn't it Gmail. If you want to donate to Thorn
Scrub, that'd be fucking great. We could certainly use it. We really
need to start applying for grants. If you know anyone who knows how to
apply for conservation and education naturalist education grants. Please let me know. I'm
stretched extremely thin right now, but I can still, I mean, we
could still you know, put these things out there, and and I think
once we're actually able to acquire land and get moving on this, it'll be
much easier for I mean, when you can show what you're actually doing,
it's much easier to raise money. And uh, you know, that's that's
what that's what's going on right now. So uh, I don't know,
I'll be posting the links to the killer lawn hoodies. We're doing hoodies mostly
because it's still chilly and much of the northern latitudes everyone needs a hoodie,
right They last a while, shirts can get holes of them. It's a
thinner material. Hoodies last longer, uh, and they're just more comfy.
Soon we're gonna we're gonna have kill your lawns snuggies out there, uh you
So, you know, to really take it to the next step and really
hock the merch. I was thinking me and Al could make some you know,
semi facetious only semi facetious Chicago land style, just really tacky, fucking
local commercial style of videos advertising to Kill your Lawn, hoodie, and then
season two will be out of Kill your Lawn, which I'm very proud of.
We're actually doing voiceovers for it tonight. Fuck is that tonight? God
damn it? Fuck? I forgot about that, son of a bitch,
Is that really tonight? Fuck? I gotta keep a date book or something
man or a planner. Yeah, that's in fucking forty minutes. I was
gonna go right, I don't have time. Fuck anyway. Season two will
be out in April, and I guess there's a company called Filo where you
can do it. They stream for like twenty five bucks a month, and
I think they still have that one week trial where you can watch Kill your
Lawn. Just still not still not streaming. I mean you could file as
a streaming service, but you know it's not ideal, but at least you
can watch it if you so choose. And there's always pirate bay dot org,
where you can learn to use a torrent to illegally download, which I
didn't tell you anyway. That's all I got for you now for today.
Have a rest of your day. Write me if you want. Crime pays
a body. He doesn't a email go FuG your somebody,