M Ljin

That is very helpful.

Could it be leaching down chemicals every time it rains from the cable?

Sorry, I’m flailing a bit. It seems inexplicable. Soil compression?

Let’s see… the ones that survived or at least some of them are really hardy, sandy soil loving plants mostly. Elderberry is mysterious. I don’t know, scrap that idea?

Pines and oaks like their ectomycorrhizae, that jumps out at me. Apples and cherries are less mycorrhizal as far as I know (or endomycorrhizal). But so are elderberries, pears, etc. Goldenrod seems to like fungal soils. Confusing.

How do you kill wild roses??? The only way I know is herbicides, assiduous cutting, or let trees grow up over them. Or maybe desiccation.

However… I actually don’t see that many by roadsides. You’d think you would see more… however apples love the roadside.

I wonder if it’s something they used on the wire, or poles, like a preservative? Or they could have used a different, less effective herbicide?

That’s very weird. And disturbing. If they do that to plants, wh…..

I have not seen any effects like that from energy only but only a few subtle observations. I don’t know if they mean anything yet. I still wonder if it’s some chemical, whether sprayed intentionally or not.

However I can feel the road from about fifty yards away. Unfortunately I live in that fifty yard space. When I get free of it it is an immediate relief. Could be air pollution? There are of course cables going all along the road.

I also think it’s weird that fiber would have issues. We have it here and I don’t notice this effect happening. But maybe I should pay closer attention.

I think that apples—wild ones at least, growing in wild natural soils and not irrigated or sprayed or protected in any way—take much longer than a few years to produce strongly, but when they do mature they really do.

The wild and feral ones that are growing strongly are all around, I’m guessing, ten to twenty years old at least. Some of them are at least a hundred. They have to deal with poor hillside soil, browsing from deer, and all sorts of hardships; in the meantime they grow stronger each passing year, grow deeper soil underneath from leaf litter and fallen apples and manure from nibblers, and then when they are really very strong they start fruiting for real.

The wild ground beans send their flower shoots back into the ground. Is there a chance they would do that?

Edit: oh, I see—too high off the ground.

Any chance the ones you found are spicata?
https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/lobelia/spicata/

Jay Angler wrote: This is why I am interested in marginal/uncommon food plants - just as many people don't know how to hunt (including myself) many people don't know what a potato leaf looks like. They're even less likely to recognize one that's not in a "vegetable patch".  Let's just say that I like the concept of "stealth food". Unfortunately, until those hunters reduce the deer population, many things that I know are edible, and average people likely don't, the deer do! They are totally thieves!

The problem is the solution!

Timothy Norton wrote:There is an economic/political theory known as "The Tragedy of the Commons". The idea is that individuals, working in their own self interest, will overexploit a finite shared resource to the detriment of all.

I think that folks imaging a situation where they have to survive aren't considering the pressures that others will put on surrounding resources. I believe hunting may be of some value, but I wouldn't want to put all of my eggs in one basket.

I think this may be a necessary step we pass through… when the tragedy of the commons happens people will be forced to come together and create shared norms for the handling of the commons. It might be necessary to pass through a time of great suffering in order to get there though.

I once knew someone in school who described how the commons actually work back in Bulgaria where his grandfather lived. We were having a discussion about the tragedy of the commons and he offered an anecdote. His grandpa raised goats and took them to the commons to graze. Everyone else who raised animals took their animals to the commons too. And because of the shared norms and respect for one another it worked out perfectly fine.

We learn to respect other people’s boundaries when we understand what happens when those boundaries get broken and trampled over. Pain is a necessary threshold to pass through before we can live in a humble way in respect and reverence for all our relations—it is how we come to understand the consequences of our own actions. It’s just that modern humans don’t reach this stage for various reasons I will not talk about outside of cider press.

These are two different songs but they belong together in the way they’ve been played and recorded… the one I am thinking of is Sway (beginning of second video), the one interjected between the two parts.

That song was in my head last night keeping me awake. It felt like the song was being pounded like a nail into my skull. Maybe that’s happened to you before?

I’m not sure that it’s really a protest song but it has spiritual and earth themes, shaking off unfreedom. It felt to me like it belonged despite that. Here are the lyrics.

Be still the flight into the night
Unlearn to live like prey
An ear attuned to every sound
The silence overtakes

I'm on the edge of atrophy
It's time I learned to sway
But oh the dawn when we awake
To face an awful day

Run little rabbit run
Oh it never stops pursuing
Into the night and on
Or succumb to your undoing

Oh commoner, oh commoner
Of imminent demise
When the earth calls back her disregard
Should unify

So go find your kinship in all kinds
Be free in how you movе
When the earth calls back shе's absolute
Her loving arms wait for you

Turn little rabbit turn
Oh it never stops pursuing
Turn and face the dawn
And welcome the unknowing