#quercus lyrata

[remiicore]

more tracing than drawing, but i did a fun little exercise with some arkansas native critters using negative space! (all are tracings of photos off google, they’re easy to find if you google the species.)

i was heavily inspired by @hoorayitsefe on instagram! she did a cute fish and flower one and inspired me to do the sort of scratch paper design. i definitely needed something to turn my brain off a bit and relax and this is so fun, might be adding more of these in the future 👀

[rjalker]

Kairiz "helping" me take pictures of seeds I collected

Jumping up onto the couch right as I took a picture with flash on:

[ID: A flash photo of a grey cat tilting his head back to look up at the camera, his eyes reflecting bright yellow with green pupils. Below him in the shadowy background are plates and baskets with various acorns and nuts on them. End ID.]

Deciding he wants the exact acorn I am holding right as I take the picture:

[ID: A photo of a white hand holding four types of acorns: Live oak, which is the smallest, being long and skinny, with a shiny black shell that is tan where the cap was. Shumard oak, which is large and boxy, brown, and covered with a light grey dusting. Swamp chestnut oak, which is the largest, shiny deep brown, tall and fat. And overcup oak, which is round, and still covered by its thin, bumpy cap. A grey cat's paw is dragging the overcup acorn off the hand, claws extended to catch onto the cap. End ID.]

And sticking his face directly in the way:

[ID: A flash photo of the back of a grey cat's head as he sniffs a purple organza bag filled with large dark acorns, blocking most of the view with his head and ears. End ID.]

outdoor cat people DNI, you'll just be blocked. We care about pets and the environment here, honoric of your choice. Keeping cats outdoors is animal abuse and causing more native species to go extinct.

Keep your cats inside so they can "help" you catalogue the different species in your area by playing with everything you bring home, instead of bringing you dead native birds.

[artscult-com]

quercus lyrata - high resolution image from old book.

[athertonjc]

Saved by The Marx Brothers and Oak Trees by Allen Bush

I am not shy about telling friends who voted for Donald Trump that I think the president is a clown. Many of them agree Trump is a clown, too, but they argue that he’s a better clown than the clown I voted for. We try to be civil with one another.

What a mess.

I worry about what I can do to be a better gardener and citizen.   I can take better care of my garden, but I can’t battle the president on all fronts, nor even most of them.

There is no reason to think the president has any interest in gardening. And he has tweeted, “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop.”

We are at odds.

I’ve been planting small oak (Quercus lyrata) trees and watching Marx Brothers movies with my ten-year-old granddaughter. These diversions take a little edge off the insurgent political chaos. I love planting trees, and we need a few laughs.

I started the oak trees from acorns. These little one-year-old trees are easier to plant and a lot less expensive than larger container, or balled and burlapped, trees. A heartbreaking percentage will get grazed to the nubbin or rutted by deer. Or they will succumb the first few years to drought or perhaps to my own carelessness.

I’m hoping I can eventually establish two hundred trees—reforestation on a tiny scale. What did you expect? I’ll be sixty-six this year. I’m waiting on my first Social Security check.

I have decided to focus on our farm and garden—and environmental issues. I’ve been an active gardener for over 40 years. I think I’ve been a good earth steward, yet I haven’t been involved in environmental politics. Unlike with the social security, I’m not waiting around for this one anymore.

Rose and I installed a solar system on our farm in Salvisa last year. My business friends—Republicans and Democrats— argue that the cost doesn’t make economic sense. It makes do-gooder sense to me. You don’t have to float a barge down the Ohio River to get coal to the power plant. We’re not entirely off the grid. I understand the current need for fossil fuels; still, it feels good to have a power station in my back yard.

Maybe one day you can have your own peer-to-peer solar grid in your neighborhood. Brooklyn’s effort has  “…implications that could be far reaching,” according to the New York Times.

I can’t fight the Koch Brothers on my own, either. They have little regard for the environment, so I’ve rejoined the Sierra Club after a 20-year break. I paid my dues soon after I read the Koch Brothers were trying to mine uranium within a few miles of the Grand Canyon.

Nor will Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Administration’s (E.P.A.) Administrator, do much to protect the environment. He said recently that carbon dioxide’s contribution to global warming needed to be studied more. (Did you ever hear the one about how cigarettes don’t cause cancer?)

Pruitt should listen to his predecessor, William Ruckleshaus, the E.P.A.’s first administrator, from 1970 to 1973. Ruckleshaus to this day understands the value of the E.P.A. The public does, too. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, Ruckleshaus, wrote: “To me, the E.P.A. represents one of the clearest examples of our political system listening and responding to the American people. The public will tolerate changes that allow the agency to meet its mandated goals more efficiently and effectively. They will not tolerate changes that threaten their health or the precious environment.”

Hedge your bets if you think air and water will become cleaner in the next four years.

We could do so much environmental good.

But as fast as I plant oak trees, we’re dialing back environmental protection and ramping up the military.

The Marx Brothers understood the war economy. Groucho and Chico traded one-liners in their 1993 Duck Soup classic.

Rufus T. Firefly:

Now that you’re Secretary of War, what kind of an army do you think we ought to have?

Chicolini:

Well, I tell you what I think, I think we should have a standing army.

Rufus T. Firefly:

Why should we have a standing army?

Chicolini:

Because then we save money on chairs.

Plant an oak tree this spring.

Saved by The Marx Brothers and Oak Trees originally appeared on Garden Rant on March 15, 2017.

from Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2017/03/saved-by-the-marx-brothers-and-oak-trees.html

[artscult-com]

quercus lyrata - high resolution image from old book.