These guys were just about but not quite blooming so I could just cut them down with a shovel, without worrying about trying to contain seed heads. (Way to get ahead of exponential growth).
The sap is photo-reactive. If you get it on your skin and then are exposed to sunlight it causes a nasty rash so it's a job with gloves, long pants and shirt sleeves, and somehow I always get to it on the most humid of days. They are prolific too, taking over whole fields in a handful of years.
Anyway none of us can fix everything, but all of us have little corners of this great big complex world where we can tend things, perhaps even where we can take our energy about invasive parasites that seem to spread and spread and spread and get upstream a little bit with a good sharp shovel.
These noxious weeds I can do something about! I spent a wet and muggy morning yesterday removing what's called cow parsnip around here from a wet meadow.
I recently learned that someone gave copies of Multisolving to the organizing committee for an event as thank you gifts, and that made me so happy!! If you might ever want to do something like that, reach out, because we might be able to help with bulk order discounts!
https://islandpress.org/books/multisolving#desc
Island PressThis is how it is right now.
Keep going through the smoke, the heat, the losses, the emergencies and the emergences (which are also two sides of one coin). Stay grounded. Stay connected. Nothing is final, just endings and beginnings, always.
You can see how shaky the implausibilities are, by the crumbling and by the violence which are two sides of a coin. Outside your window, everything flows, cycles, and supports you. Outside your window everything needs your support.
If ever there has been a time in your life to withdraw consent from extraction and invest in mutuality, now is that time.
If ever there has been a time in your life to imagine the world you really want, now is that time.