takes everything

(IC rp sideblog to ssunspotted. Spiritual dumping grounds to a priest of decay who's at least mildly separating work and play. CW: Gore and death)

[headspace-hotel]

i'm so sick of being the only person who can make simple connections of how doing a thing to the ecosystem has effects. so so so so sick NO ONE knows the ways of the plants

[headspace-hotel]

sorry just venting over how i am so so so small and the task is so so so big

[alchemistdoctor]

This year, I had a balcony garden.

I wanted to last year but I 'never got round to it'. I kill a lot of plants (not on purpose. ADHD and constant watering is hard, and sometimes it's just me confused as fuck about why I suddenly have x thing happening to my leaves) and kind of felt it was hopeless anyway.

Then I was reading your posts, and how you were seeing biodiversity in even small little hopeful changes. And I was like. Hey. Even if I do kill the plants. They will feed insects for a little, while they survive, and after, I can put them in my compost pile and they will feed more insects, and the flowers (if I get any) will feed bees (which are my special children) and so, even if it doesn't give me food, and even if they die, it might be worth it to try.

I never ate the cilantro. Turns out my flatmate has the soap gene. But it flowered like CRAZY and there were SO many happy pollinators.

I ate so many green onion shoots. The bulbs I still haven't pulled because they just keep giving me shoots to eat.

The mint is going HAM and also the insects loved the flowers.

The cucumber plants went absolutely APESHIT and produced flowers ALL SUMMER, and they were BEAUTIFUL, and I couldn't walk outside without a bee or, occasionally, a butterfly dropping by. It's STILL FLOWERING in NOVEMBER in PHILLY and now I have ladybugs and fireflies. FIREFLIES! I didn't see a single one last year and now they love my balcony and I love them so much. I only got two cucumbers but I don't even care.

I had a bunch of nonedibles in a little greenhouse thing, and they flowered too, and I'd find random bugs (a grasshopper. Huge. Massive) in there hanging out. They died when the greenhouse got blown over but they lasted longer than I ever expected to keep a plant alive.

The birds came by my balcony despite the cat avidly watching them by the window. More types of birds, too. And my little compost box is constantly happy with fruit flies and regular flies and things I don't recognize. I never did get around to buying worms, but I haven't had to because the insects are having a blast in there and every time I think "oh, it'll be full" it is, once again, not full because it has been broken down further.

There is a tiny ecosystem on my 6th floor apartment balcony because you get excited about plants, and it was inspiring enough to get me off my ass. Because even if I didn't eat my plants, you reminded me SOMETHING ELSE WOULD.

The task is so so big. But if my fruit flies can eat an entire watermelon (yes. There was an entire watermelon in my compost bin at one point), I think you and I can tackle this watermelon together.

[headspace-hotel]

...Oh...Sheds a single tear that contains so much happiness

[disgustinggf]

hey do you wanna come over and rot together

[literaryvein]

L. V., life after the aftermath

[cutevirgin]

when i’m six feet underground the bugs in my body will dream of u

[scribblyspaceskeleton]

Speaking up and educating people on why the most hated life forms on the planet are important and meaningful is a thankless task.

How do we reach out and get people to care about insects and spiders when the average reaction is either "EEWW KILL IT WITH FIRE" or blind panic?

Arthropods are crucial to the survival of life as we know it. Yes, even commonly vilified bugs like wasps and mosquitoes have ecological niches that the world CANNOT do without.

I cannot overstate their importance.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

see i would like to be ground up and used as fertilizer. not right now but yeah, someday

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

"I will grind you into bonemeal and feed you to my rose bushes" was a threat i used so often before I realized that's an ideal burial option. messed up that the two main options (embalming & cremation) are so eco-unfriendly. Repair Reuse Recycle applies to my corpses too dangnabbit!!!

[reasonsforhope]

Mushrooms Help Turn Toxic Brownfields into Blooming Meadows

A brownfield could be an old railway yard or the grounds of an abandoned oil refinery, but the uniting factor is a toxic containment.

"An environmental toxicologist in California is cleaning up areas contaminated with heavy metals or other pollutants using fungi and native plants in a win-win for nature.

Where once toxic soils in industrial lots sat bare or weed-ridden, there are now flowering meadows of plants and mushrooms, frequented by birds and pollinators: and it’s thanks to Danielle Stevenson.

Founder of DIY Fungi, the 37-year-old ecologist from UC Riverside recently spoke with Yale Press about her ongoing work restoring ‘brownfields,’ a term that describes a contaminated environment, abandoned by industrial, extraction, or transportation operations.

A brownfield could be an old railway yard or the grounds of an abandoned oil refinery, but the uniting factor is the presence of a toxic containment, whether that’s a petrochemical, heavy metal, or something else.

Noting that she had read studies about mushrooms growing around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, she came to understand further, through her work, that fungi are an extraordinarily resilient species of life that consume carbon, and even though petroleum products are toxic to plants, to mushrooms they are essentially a kind of carbon.

In fact, mushrooms break down several categories of toxic waste with the same enzymes they use to consume a dead tree. They can also eat plastic and other things made out of oil, like agrochemicals.

At the Los Angeles railyard, as part of a pilot project, Stevenson and colleagues planted a variety of native grass and flower species alongside dead wood that would incubate specific fungi species called arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, which assists plants in extracting heavy metals like lead and arsenic from the soil.

Alongside traditional decomposer fungi, the mixture of life forms demonstrated tremendous results in this brownfield.

“In three months we saw a more than 50 percent reduction in all pollutants. By 12 months, they were pretty much not detectable,” Stevenson told Yale 360.

Decontaminating soil like this typically involves bringing in a bulldozer and digging it all up for transportation to a landfill. This method is not only hugely expensive, but also dangerous, as contaminated material can scatter on the winds and fall out of the backs of trucks carting it away.

By contrast, the plants that draw out the toxic metals can be harvested and incinerated down to a small pile of ash before cheap transportation to a hazardous waste facility.

The technique, which Stevenson says has some scaling issues and issues with approval from regulators, is known officially as bioremediation, and she’s even used it to safely break down bags of lubricant-soaked rags from bicycle repair shops.

“People who live in a place impacted by pollution need to have a say in how their neighborhood is being cleaned up. We need to empower them with the tools to do this,” she said."

-via Good News Network, July 16, 2024

[wreniriis]

Decomposition

[euritsua]

[lncorruptable]

[tenderlypressed]

[jujulebee]

and forth from the sun came the warmth came the beams of light that brought forth life from the still seed so deep in the ground cradled by the soil

what boutiful harvest to be had that life twisting and turning flowering, blossoming the ripe fruit of which falls and falls

and falls

and o how it rots the way the ants take their share fresh and crisp as it still is how the animals peck and chew until it is perforated and dry a wretched muck that only becomes softer and softer

are we so soft?

are we, too, destined for the soil?

i see the way solid turns to liquid a sort of lifeblood that feeds the plants that will sprout in its stead new seeds new life new fruits

until all is rot

until all is life again

[silence-relief]

[walk gently now, heart. the earth is soft and loose, and there are precious things below you. tiptoe and do not disturb the posies]

[plaguedocboi]

Will my bacteria ecosystem outlive me?

Yes

[solointhesand]

When You Die, Your Necrobiome Recycles You

An environmental microbiologist explains why an individual's death is a new lease on life for an entire ecosystem.

I found this article to be really moving and beautiful.

[cellarspirit]

pat barker // @/strangebiology // the foundations of decay -  my chemical romance // kellie smith // forest clouds - windhand

[love-letters-to-bugs]

dear mine (and all other’s) skin microbiome,

you are billions, upon trillions of hard working little guys. you are always with me, even though i never see you. i think it’s beautiful that a wretched creature like me is the foundation of an entire microscopic universe. everyday i remember to be kind to myself, because i want to be kind to you - my little unseen land of unimaginable wonders.

i love you my mites, my bacteria, my fungi. all of that which makes up the skin microbiota.

because of you, we are never alone 🦠 ♡

(also hello hello i think this is one of the most lovely ideas for a blog i have ever come across)

!!! 🦠 ♡ ❤️‍🔥 ♡ 🦠

(hello, thank you! it is a very exciting blog to run!)

[whatifitdoesntendwell]

gonna start decomposing soon for so many reasons

reblog to decompose

you know you want to