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What Can Plants Teach Us About Value?

You can see where the trauma is, where the gnarled and twisted parts of the trunk form. But the tree is no less of a tree, unless you value it only by the wood you can extract from its dead body.

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What Can Plants Teach Us About Hyperindividualism?

As a tree breathes, the leaves release bacteria into the air and up to the clouds. Humidity in the air condenses around these “Cloud Condensation Nuclei”, creating raindrops. The rain then falls back to earth upwind. In other words, the trees literally call the rain. This supports the larger ecosystem.

While turning on the AC immediately brings the temperature down in a room, the ultrafine pollution from generating “clean” energy destabilizes the rain cycles, resulting in humidity, heat waves, droughts and floods. In other words, the electricity generated to power the AC for one person’s comfort can worsen a heat wave for the rest of the community.

Further Reading

https://understandingag.com/regenerative-rainmaking/ https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/11/12917/2011/ https://www.sott.net/article/318260-Harnessing-the-ice-making-powers-of-bacteria-scientists-crack-mechanism

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What Can Plants Teach Us About Our Perspectives?

Unchecked, Knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) can get out of control, spreading and "invading." In some places, however, it is prized for it's medicinal qualities (powerful against Lyme disease) and nutritional merits (delicious in pie). In those places, it is loved and harvested and isn't considered a menace at all.

Further Reading:

Invasive Plant Medicine by Timothy Lee Scott

Healing Lyme by Stephen Buhner

Knotweed recipes

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What Can Trees Teach Us About Our Role in the Environment?

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What Can Plants Teach Us About Striving?

"If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living." -- Joseph Campbell

So often, it can feel like we're spinning our wheels and burning out in an effort to DO something amazing and big for the environment, or for whatever else is going on in our lives. Yet nothing else in the natural world seems to have this dogmatic concept of "should" - they just follow their bliss instincts.

Further Reading:

Humans: Pleasure Activism, Joseph Campbell

Cows: Allen Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change

Dung Beetles: Can dung beetles rein in cattle’s methane emissions?

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What Can Plants Teach Us About Wondering?

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What Can Plants Teach Us About Enjoyment?

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What Can Plants Teach Us About Attitude "Problems"?

Image: Tree trunk with two eyes peeking out of a hole. Upper branch shows smooth leaves, lower branches are prickly.

"Why do you have to be so prickly all the time!?"

"You would be too, if deer kept biting your head off."

The holly tree is heterophyllous, meaning it can grow its leaves in different shapes. As you might expect, the lower leaves get spikier the more they are chomped on.

Further Reading:

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/686024

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What Can Plants Teach Us About the Just World Fallacy?

Sometimes things just happen and there isn't any rhyme or reason to it. The Just World Fallacy is the idea that people get what they deserve. If good things are happening, you've done well and if bad things are happening, you must have done something wrong. It's your own fault things aren't working and you get full credit when things go well.

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Has anyone else noticed how, when you have a chronic condition of some kind, that there’s always the basic assumption from people around you that you’re not already doing everything you can?

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Snowed in

A blanket of snow is like a pause button, insulating plants from cold winds and keeping them moist until the environment is more hospitable to growth. When we’re feeling buried in the storms of life, we too can hold still and wait for it to pass.

Further Reading:

A Blanket of Snow: Good or Bad for Plants? - Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Wintering by Katherine May

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What Can Plants Teach Us About New Years Resolutions?

Growing almost anywhere, Little Bluestem survives and thrives as it is. No need for resolutions. This year, let's notice our own colorful uniqueness and how we, too, are withstanding and flourishing - even in the harshest of conditions.

Further reading:

https://perennialplant.org/news/575083/2022-Perennial-Plant-of-the-Year-Announced.htm

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What Can Plants Teach Us About Appearances?

I get so caught up with what I'm supposed to be doing, and doing well, that it makes it hard to take a break. It's nice to know that my experience has value too, and that I'm not just an accomplishment-bot.

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What Can Plants Teach Us About Wintry Darkness?

The poinsettia is a photoperiodic short day plant, meaning the long dark nights of winter are crucial for it to flower. Darkness triggers replenishment and growth in us, too, if we can let it in. Happy Winter Solstice!

Resources

Waking Up to the Dark by Clark Strand

Wintering by Katherine May

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What Can Plants Teach Us About Preparing to Let Go?

Resources

More about the transformation of autumn leaves:

Why Leaves Really Fall Off Trees

Can you hear the trees talking?

For perspectives on personal transformation:

Somatic Experiencing

Qi Gong

Growth Mindset

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Time's up!

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